[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Sat, 24 May 1997 23:17:25 PST8PDT, coder at ibm.net wrote:

>Bartle raises the point that on a goal/level oriented game, that
>without permanent death, a mediocre or even flat out incompetent
>player can have utter certainty that they will make Wiz or top level
>if they merely persist in their plodding way for long enough.  His
>contention, and I agree, is that this is a Bad Thing.  

Agreed. My concept is that good work and long effort should count for
something. My thought on the matter at hand, currently, is that if a
character in the game I'm building (a White Wolf WoD MUSH thing) dies,
then the player's next character starts out with a number of experience
points equal to *half* what the previous character had earned, minus
ten. What this means is that unless he has earned 20 XP, he gets no
benefit. The idea here is that since the player has proven himself (XP
are given on this game only when someone else recommends you for them;
this is reviewed by a human being, not a piece of code) he should be
given more leeway and permitted to play a more "important" character. 

>The problem
>however with the strict interpretation of this view is that it
>discourages players from investigation and experimentation with their
>world.

This underscores the difference between a MUD and a MUSH (usually; there
are ALWAYS exceptions). On a MUSH, there is really very little in the
*world* to experiment with; it's very player and person centered. On a
MUD, it is indeed possible (and more common than I like) for someone to
have no contact whatsoever with any other players and *still* play the
game perfectly well. In the game I'm planning, there's not much in the
world to be experimented with, and what there *is* doesn't tend to be
deadly.

>I don't have a pat answer.  

There isn't one... there rarely is such an answer to anything
information-intensive enough to belong on this list. ;)

>I don't like the classical game definition of your character's body is
>synonymous with your character, so I split that.  I also don't like
>the idea that a human player can have multiple characters in a game,
>but has to bend over backwards (login twice or some such) to play them
>both simultaneously.  

I kind of like that, myself. It makes things easier for me...

>I made a single character able to simultaneously control multiple bodies.  

I'd get confused ;)

>This separation into bodies and characters also complicates several of
>the old MUD models for stats.  I've handled this by deriving the stats
>into three classes:

Fascinating. I like the ideas you come up with, but I'm a little
concerned about them; I don't know if I'd like to play a game like this.
However, I do see a major advantage to things like this... a staff
member can hold several NPCs at once during a quest or the like, and
with proper coordination and command familiarity manage to run a VERY
large scene with little trouble. I like that thought.

>I won't pretend its a roleplaying game in MIro's definition, nor that
>it fits Jeff K's concept of the beer swillin' armpit scratchin'
>minimally literate hormone driven game buying/playing out there.  OTOH
>I do think it is fun.  With luck, should I ever get it up and running,
>others will think so too.

It sounds like it's a really cool set of ideas, but as I said I'm a
little dubious about its playability.

-+[caliban at darklock.com]+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
 I am here to grind your eyes harder into the miasmic bile of life; to 
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 the crimson scent of blood as it rises to meet the caress of a blade. 
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