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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <3.0.32.19970529114028.009c9d00 at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 05/29/97 
   at 07:48 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:

>Lastly remember most combat-twinks are AFRAID to roleplay.  So much
>so that they felel the need to denegrate those who do...

Funny that.  Why then were you able to list half a dozen pejoritive
names for "munchkins" as you say, and yet I can't think of a single
equivalent pejoritive used by combat-twinks for RP'ers?

>>This is not to say that powergamers are evil and should be slaughtered
>>wholesale in nazi-style concentration camps.
>
>Well, after a year of runnign a comemrical MUD Im beginnign to wonder...
>A few questions:
>(A) Wh oabuses bugs?
>(B) Who hacks?
>(C) Who actively drives other users from your game?

Consider it from a software systems PoV:

  An RP'er concentrates on using the system as it was intended to be
used.  From a QA viewpoint they are the ideal user -- they do almost
exactly what the designers and programmers intended them to do.

  A "powergamer" plays to exploit the system, as a system and not some
contrived game or story, for all he can get from it.  As such he
pushes the system, as a system and as a system design, as hard as he
can, and as such he tends to find design weaknesses and oversights. 
He also drives QA nuts.

Were this the world of word processors the RP'er would only ever edit
one document, of limited size and controlled complexity, at a time. 
The powergamer conversely will try and load 150 30,000 page documents
into his WP, each of which uses a dozen+ different typefaces and has
scores of embedded graphics etc all while he does mass edits on all
the documents at the same time.  One tends to break software and
system designs, the other doesn't.

If your game system allows that advantage to be taken of it, or breaks
when it is, then it would seem that your system is broken, not your
users.

--
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...