[MUD-Dev] Re: generic objects, behaviors

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <3.0.32.19970510225833.00b561a0 at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 05/10/97 
   at 11:01 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:

>I see a rather different approach, but i coem from the traditional
>adventure game backaground as well as game design/implementation. A
>question-- how many of us doubted the reality of the Colossal cCave
>and the Flood Control dam?

Me.  There were too many things I couldn't do to it.

>Game design is about experience and illusion, not reality and all
>successful games I knwo of have as much if nto more smoke and mirrors
>then they have actual simulations.

There is an obvious requirement for smoke and mirrors -- that's the
stuff of imagination.  However, put enough mechanical support in there
and you start getting all sorts of interesting side effects as people
play with them.  A good example perhaps comes from a prior discussion
here on mana systems:

--<cut>--

I'm not real comfortable with either point.  For me MUD worlds are a
question of accidental ongoing unforseen synergy and going the route
of auto-generating areas as of time-predicted states just loses that.

Its not that your magic system encourages players to hoard dead rats,
its that dead rats discourage most rumour mongers from visiting you
(aversion to dead, aversion to rats), and thus you can better conceal
the fact that you are running a rat breeding/slaughter factory above a
pool of TC's which feed mana to your highly unstable hoard of super
magical objects.  Hang on!  You're not supposed to be breeding rats!
Why not?  Rats will eat dead TC's.  TC's will eat dead rats.  Ensure a
fairly steady food supply (divert a stream?) and voila!  You have one
huge mana factory.  Best of all there's no external mana leakage to
make your area appear on mana flow detectors.

Its compleatly unplannable for -- but its the sort of thing players
(or at least players like me) would and will do.

--<cut>--

Similarly, add the sort of base physical laws, components support or
however you want to implement it into your world, and when Murgo the
Mage wants to conquer the city he merely collects a load of trash,
assembles body-like items, casts a Sorceror's Apprentice style spell
to animate them, and sends them off to be his unkillable army.  Boom
boom, boombada boom boom etc.  The mops and mop fragments go off to
war.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...