a fruitful exchange on classlessness in r.g.m.admin

[Cimri]

Aaak! lost my attribution.  No: found it.  Alex Oren asked recently
if there were much of value on the r.g.m.admin list.  Most answers
were 'no' (and rightly so).
Nevertheless, the following post seems to have sparked a
reasonably flameless exchange.  Heck, _I_ even put in a few cents
worth just to see what sort of rise would come of it.  So far it
may not have been amazingly info-laden, but I think the discussion
has been reasonably constructive.

The post is in the midst of the thread
"Diku vs. LP from the player's POV (was: muds on port 23)"
and is relabelled as you'll see below.

Jay // Cimri

------- originating post to follow ---------

Subject: 
             Classless muds
        Date: 
             9 Apr 1998 11:02:24 GMT
       From: 
             scatter at thevortex.com (Scatter ///\oo/\\\)
 Organization: 
             IBM
 Newsgroups: 
             rec.games.mud.diku, rec.games.mud.lp, rec.games.mud.admin
  References: 
             1 , 2 , 3 , 4




In <352BE723.203DFDC6 at micro.ti.com>, Holly Sommer
<hsommer at micro.ti.com> writes:
>michael.willey at abnamro.com wrote:

>: > And then, there is the case of NiMUD, which is classless, 
>: Really?  I don't think I've ever played on a NiMUD.  
>Yeah, NiM is classless by default. I'm not surprised you've never
[snip]
>: I generally like classless games..  It ends a lot of the 'cookie 
>: cutter character' syndrome.
>So long as it doesn't end up achieving the same thing as a 
>multiclass game does. That is to say: everyone can learn every
>spell or skill, because it's not a single-class MUD.

I've decided on a classless system for the mud I'm building, mainly to
get away
from the cliched mage/fighter/thief/priest moulds and because I feel
'class' to
be a highly artificial way to restrict what people can learn. My
concern at the
moment is how to make sure players don't become clones of each other
with
all the sames skills and commands. 

I'd be interested to know what methods you use to prevent that
happening?
--
Scatter
///\oo/\\\