[MUD-Dev] Character development [was Re: ]

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 4 Apr 1998 18:45:52 PST8PDT 
Travis Casey<efindel at polaris.net> wrote:

> I know... it's been a while since this was posted.  I've been
> working two jobs and my wife is pregnant, so I haven't had time to
> reply to any interesting mail in a while...

Congratulations!  First kid?

> On Monday, 23 March 98, J wrote:

Could you make sure you get a bit more compleat attribution than just
the first initial please?

>> I posit:

>> Character development is fundamental to the concept and definition
>> of a MUD.  The only variation in application of this definition
>> between games like Tron, and say LambdaMOO, Duris, Sojourn, MUD2,
>> etc, is that the character development occurs solely in the human
>> player for the former, and partially in the virtual character for
>> the others.  This creates a scale of development locale with some
>> MUDs having the balance of their character development in the human
>> player, and some almost utterly in the virtual character.

> It should further be noted that "character development" doesn't have
> to mean "an increase in character power."  It could mean *any* kind
> of change to a character, including personality development.  For
> that matter, character development could include a *weakening* of a
> character in some way -- although most mud players would probably
> not enjoy playing in a mud where their characters get weaker with
> time.

True.  An idea I've been playing with for a while now for more
"typical: MUDS is the idea that the character as a net whole never
changes, but that the balance of allocation of stats changes.

Possibly the simplest example:  

  The initially create character has almost no strength, but enourmous 
endurance.

  Given hard woork and sufficient "development" the character now has
enourmous strength, but is exhausted within seconds...

Other models are easy to come up with, and pose some intersting
challenges.  (Note: This is a variation on the sum-zero particle
economy I use).  

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...