[MUD-Dev] Focus (Was: Usability and interface and who the hell is suppo)

[Matt Chatterley]

On Fri, 26 Sep 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:

> On Thu 25 Sep, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> 
> > On 24 Sep 97 at 9:59, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> > > Note that you would not actually need a fishing skill or musical instrument 
> > > skill for either of the above. I agree, musicians are a nice thing, they 
> > > contribute vastly to the enjoyment of the world; but why do we actually 
> > > need game mechanics to handle it?
> 
> > I can easily imagine an entire game geared around musical talents.  
> > Where magic and combat are inextricably linked to music and musical 
> > instruments.  Methinks I recall several fantasy novels where this was 
> > the case?
> 
> True. But you can equally well imagine a game that is not geared around
> combat at all.  To me  thinking of games as focussing on combat only is
> too restrictive.

Jon's point that music does not have to be superflous (although it
frequently is) combines with Marian's more general allusion that a very
focussed game is limited by its own nature.

This is not specifically a bad thing. This is however, generally, a bad
thing. Its also something a lot of us are striving to do away with, I
believe - personally I have worked hard with my development team to make
methods of "advancement" as general as possible.

The first step being to make the term "advancement" more general, namely:

Improving oneself, by way of financial, social, physical, or mental gain,
or any other method as yet undisclosed.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics." -?