[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Maddy]

Previously, Nathan Yospe wrote....
> On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> :On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:48 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] 
> :wrote:
> 
> :> There could be a religion that requires its members to kill
> :> anyone with blond hair.
> 
> :There could be all sorts of things. What exactly does this religion add to 
> :the game? Ummm... pissed off players and roving groups of antisocial dorks. 
> :Maybe we should do something different.
> 
> The most fun I've ever had on any game was engineering an escape from just
> such a horde (donut cult), where said horde was played by other gamers. The
> most fun on a mud was in defending my own Order of the Dew against a
> bloodthirsty lot of wargod worshippers. Sounds like there are exceptions to
> your own preferences. Ever stop to think that maybe YOU are trying to lump
> ALL players into your own mold, as much as any of the rest of us are trying
> to lump OUR MUD'S players into our molds? Lay off the righteous trip already,
> it is starting to piss me off.

<cheek position="in tongue">Could this be another idea for a mud
religion?</cheek>

> :> Well the problem is, is that all your balance problems seem to be based 
> :upon
> :> XP/Level based systems and they don't really make sense if you don't have
> :> either of them.  I'm sure that I'll have loads of balance problems to 
> :start
> :> with, which is why I'm going to take most of my system from an already
> :> stable PnP system.
> 
> :I'm basing my examples on level/XP based systems because it's relatively 
> :certain that we all understand how those work. I could always base it on 
> :the attribute/skill based system White Wolf uses, but that's very MUSHlike 
> :and people would complain. I could also base it on Amber diceless, but 
> :people would still complain. I could base it on Man, Myth, and Magic which 
> :had a dozen nationalities and a hundred odd skills and sixty some classes, 
> :but I don't think anyone here has any experience with it. What *should* I 
> :target toward? 'Level' is a generic term we all understand. Race, class, 
> :experience, spell, we all understand what these mean. There IS an 
> :equivalent in your system, regardless of how you classify it. Ars Magica 
> :doesn't really *need* a canned spellbook; you can do anything you like, 
> :magic is infinitely mutable, and really a 'spell' ought to be a foreign 
> :concept under this system. But there ARE established 'standard' magic uses, 
> :because people demanded them -- thus, they are spells just like any other 
> :game might have.
> 
> Unless I misremember, Maddy had his own developed PnP? In any case, there is
> not going to be an analogous concept in any game. Certainly, the analogy is
> tenuous at best for my system, nonexistant for JCL's...

I think you may have misremembered - my GM has developed his PnP (Lucky13)
but at the moment I've not really thought much about exactly what system
I'll use although I was originally planning on using RuneQuest.  Lucky13 is
very similiar to RuneQuest anyway, so it's only when I get down to the finer
details will I have to make up my mind.

Either way you're right - the similarities are few & far between.

Maddy