[MUD-Dev] Character evolution

[Shawn Halpenny]

coder at ibm.net wrote:

> Of all the membership of this list, other than myself and Nathan, are
> there __ANY__ not doing a fairly standard variation on a fantasy
> world?  Oh, I know the details will be different, you'll have various
> forms of internal economies, or magic systems, or family or clan
> systems, or interesting forms of heavy/light RP, or whatever.  But the
> base structure of a glorified medieval world overstocked with magical
> touches...

I'm not.  Precisely what I'm going for, however, I'm not yet sure. 
If you took the look and feel of "Beetlejuice", "Batman" (the first
installment of the current (and increasingly deplorable) series),
"Edward Scissorhands", and "The Nightmare Before Christmas", you'd
get what I want for atmosphere--something rather dark where strange
things happen and not all works as you'd expect. I've always found
those Tim Burton movies to have something not quite "right" with
them, as though reality had been grossly but subtly tweaked and then
left to continue on its way and to me that's a perfect breeding
ground for a virtual world.  (In a related vein, the recent Nissan
commercials in the U.S. have a similar feel to them).  

Take a healthy dose of Dan Simmons' _Hyperion_ and throw that into
the mix as well--not names and places, but the technological stuff
behind it all.

--
Shawn Halpenny

"I bought me an illusion and I put it on the wall
 I let it fill my head with dreams and I had to have them all"
                                        - "Locomotive"