[MUD-Dev] Re: Administrative notes

[Adam Wiggins]

> [Adam W:]
> :Why?  Why, why, why, why?  I don't get it.
> :If you want to be good at something, you do it a lot.	What is the problem
> :with becoming a good healer by healing, becoming a good fighter by fighting,
> :and becoming a good juggler by juggling?  You just don't like for thinks
> :to make any sort of sense?
[Chris G:]
> I think the key is that in order to increase your skill, you have to
> be doing more difficult things. So, the healer sitting in town healing
> all of the broken fighters will not gain much (if any!) experience from
> the standard patch-and-set stuff. He needs to do other kinds of healing
> (fighting a plague, doing surgery on innards, sawing holes in skulls to
> let out the nasty demons, etc.) in order to gain more experience as a

Fine.  Why can't he do those things in town, exactly?

> healer. To simplify it to the level of the simple combat experience, a
> healer must heal more severely wounded people, in order to gain more
> experience, just like the fighter must fight tougher monsters in order

Uh...fine.  I still don't see why he can't do this in town.

> to gain more experience. Similarly, in a skill system, there will be
> many healer skills: bone setting, simple wound patching, poison curing,
> disease fighting (several types, perhaps), major trauma handling, etc.

Right.  All of which you can do in town, which was the original argument.
Our healers can make use of quite a few skills - in particular you need
knowledge of the anatomy of your target, knowledge of what you are doing
(bone setting, patching flesh wounds), knowledge of how to use drugs (which
usually translates to the set of druidish/herbal skills), and possibly
theology (our catchall solution to 'uncurable' wounds...pray for someone's
arm back).  The healer can still do all of these things just fine in town.
However...in order to become knowledgable about herbs, they probably
need to travel around, since the various plants we have grow in different
places in our world, and actually change with the seasons.  If you want
to drag the healer along for combat ala more traditional muds, that's fine
too, but be warned - we track emotions as well.  If he's been sitting in town
his whole life healing people, he's likely to shit his pants and take off
running in the other direction as soon as he sees that dragon.  Or, more
realistically, he'll probably be unable to do his job under the preassure
of his first combat experience.  Thus there's a rather large difference
between the doctor who is used to a relaxed, clean, high-tech operating
room and the field nurse who is used to splinting people's arms with two
riffles and a dirty rag, all the while dodging incoming bullets.