Resets and repops

[Chris Gray]

:Heh, there was some cheesey fantasy book I read a long time ago where
:the only 'effect' of spellcasting was that it aged you.  So at one point
:when the demon invasion occured, the main spellcaster guy stood around
:casting nonstop fireballs at the bad guys, all day every day for two weeks.
:Of course, at the *end* of this time, he had aged about a dozen years...
:One idea we mulled over (but rejected) was making the timespan very short.
:Ie, one RL month ~= 80 years on the mud.  Thus you make characters, advance
:very quickly, and then age into range of death all in a fairly short period.
:This makes players both less attached to their characters (a good thing,
:IMO), and makes the jack-of-all trades thing no longer an issue - there
:just isn't enough *time* in one lifetime to learn it all.  Plus you get
:cool things like aging spells, fountains of youth, and racial choices based
:on age.  Ie you've got a race like gnome, who's stats all suck, but they
:live twice as long as anyone else, which would actually be quite useful.

This sounds really cool. Why did you reject that idea? Having a variable
aging rate, controlled by the admin, might be useful. Much like the
controllable update rates on Empire, where you can have a regular slow
game that goes on for a few months, or you can have a blitz that is over
in a day or two (which also totally blitzes the players!).

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA