[MUD-Dev] RP=MUSH/PG=MUD

[Adam Wiggins]

[Caliban:]
> 'here we have a group of servers that does this part well, and here we
> have a group that does that part well, so why not look at the
> possibility of doing something that combines the natural strengths of
> the two types, a sort of hybrid server?'

*nod*..this is what I desire, and I think most folks think that this
is a Good Thing(tm) too.  However, there seem to be large disagreements
of what the 'good' parts of any given server (or, more signifigantly,
game type) are.

> This would be a completely new kind of mud that someone or other would
> need to develop from scratch. Which places it quite squarely on subject,
> if anyone would sit down and respond to the QUESTION instead of the
> terminology. 

We're always talking about this _sort_ of thing, I think, but it's
usually in very general terms rather than in terms of actual
functionality you want to lift wholesale from a certain server.  As
you've said, any hybrid worth its beans would have to be from-scratch,
forgoing a lot of the assumptions and setup things that have kept
existing servers from heading this way.

> There's a lot of talk here about internals, and next to no talk about
> what finally ends up on the screen when a user logs on. The user is

It depends.  I recall Wout's list being a lot less technical, but maybe
I just wasn't paying very close attention.  About 6 months ago the
list went *very* technical and I didn't post for quite a while; it's
actually gotten quite a bit better with the recent influx of so many new
people.

> different now. He's not as likely to be a CompSci major at a university
> as he is to be a twelve year old kid sitting at his dad's computer. But
> we're not discussing ways to make the game more accessible to a wider
> variety of users. I think that's a pretty big mistake. 

Depends.  I'm not interested in making my game accessable to a wide number
of users.  I *am* interested in making it more playable, fun, and enthralling
for the users that I am targeting (namely, those who like to play the same
kinds of games I do).  One thing my parter and I have always paid very
close attention to is making sure everything works in an intuative way.
Even the most intelligent and experienced gamer will be turned away if he
can't figure out how to interact with the game.  Ours is particularly
bad since the game world is so open-ended (no easy-to-define goals from
the moment you start playing) and so complex (no simple list of special-case
rules as with a pen and paper RPG).