[MUD-Dev] Affecting the world

[Adam Wiggins]

[Jon L:]
> The majority of existing muds allow one to succeed/win/maxout/havefun 
> without any imperative need for player cooperation.  There also exist 

I know it may be a bad word on this list, but don't forget about the
dikus!  This is a fundamental problem I've always had with LPs - cooperation
is not only not necessary, but it's often frowned upon.  On any diku worth
its beans, 'soloing' is usually pretty unproductive, and in many cases there
are puzzles, quests, and fights that you just can't get past without large
groups of people.  (See my previous post about moving the rock...)
On some of the bigger ones, the group leader practically becomes the
general of a small army.  A good leader is highly useful for any size
group, but once you get over twenty or thirty members, it will disintegrate
into chaos without a well-organized, knowledgable, patient leader...

The approach we (that is, Orion and I) are using is simply to make the players
be small components in a very large world.  Although I don't think a 'solo'
player would necessarily be bored, they'd find that they have a hard time
having much of an influence over the world, or achieving major goals.
This is drawing on the same principle illustrated above, except even more so.