[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is suppon

[Adam Wiggins]

[Caliban:]
> On Thu, 25 Sep 1997 10:31:35 PST8PDT, "Jon A. Lambert"
> >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?
> 
> Alan Dean Foster's "Spellsinger" being a good example... there are no
> doubt others. But even here, I could, for example, make a woodworking
> skill (which few people have ever needed) a requirement to build certain
> magical items; however, I have not now given woodworking a use as much
> as I have complicated the use of the existing system. I could have
> selected any skill, really, and whether it is logical doesn't really
> matter. The end effect is to subtract development from more 'useful'
> skills to place them into a peripheral special-purpose skill. 

Useful is as useful does?

> Add to this that I have found it almost impossible to give the proper
> feel to musical events and actions in a game context. Perhaps, being a
> musician, I'm just too picky; but I've always felt that even Foster's
> descriptions of existing songs paled in comparison to the real thing.
> Describing an original composition is even harder, as evidenced by my
> extreme difficulty in describing the kind of music I write and
> perform... "Well, um, it's sort of industrial and sort of techno and
> sort of punk and it's um, kind of alternative but sort of like rap or
> house and um.... have you ever heard the opening theme to the movie
> 'Seven'?" "No." "Uhhhhhh..." ;)

Categorizing music via words is difficult, even more difficult than trying
to describe incredible vistas or complex architexture (which muds certainly
attempt).  I would tend to make the description much more detached.  On
the one mud I played a 'fun' bard (as far as game mechanics go, RP aside),
the descriptions were something like this.

<there are pauses between the lines, of course.>

Nightfall plucks absently at a silver lute.  It seems out of tune.
Nightfall fiddles with the strings on the lute, tuning it up.
Nightfall takes a long drink of beer and clears his throat.
Nightfall begins to pluck at a silver lute, and a sweet mealody fills the room.
The music from Nightfall's lute flows in you and around you, enveloping you
 in its sweet sound, lifting you up with its proud marching rhythm.  Visions of
 heros long dead fighting glorious battles in ancient times dance before your
 eyes.  The blood rises in your veins and you feel the urge to be once again
 on the field of battle, spilling the blood of your enemies and watching the
 blue blades flame and crimson...
As Nightfall's tune ends, you feel yourself coming back to reality, and feel
 somehow changed inside.

No specific descriptions of the music, although one can make certain
assumptions based on the instruments he's making use of.  Whether he's
playing a tune that sounds like Kenny G, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult,
Front 242, a John Cage score, or an Emporer tune is left to the tastes of
the reader.