[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Ling wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Travis S. Casey wrote:
> > Among computer RPG and RPG-like games, there are some in which the
> > only form of "advancement" is through gaining equipment.  There are
> > also some games, such as some MUSHes, where characters do not have any
> > statistics, and therefore there is no advancement.
> 
> If gaining equipment is "advancement" (I personally do class it as such)
> then so is gathering money to get better equipment.  So therefore
> Traveller has advancement (in my loose meaning of the word).  Er.  And so
> is gaining contacts and favours. :)  (sorry for the blatant plug)

This seems to suggest that there are many categories of advacement, any
one of which any given game could include.  A rough breakdown of what
seems to have been presented so far in this thread:

- Player/social advancement.  Any and all interactive activities which a
human being can attempt will contain at least one of these.  The former
occurs as the person involved ("user" or "player") learns the different
options and nuances of the interactions, presumably choosing the methods
which best allow them to meet their own ends and goals within the
activity.  The second occurs when there is more than a single person
involved in the activity.  Neither of these require any specific traits be
present in the activity, but certain properties of the activity can
greatly enhance the occurances of these traits.  For example, easy methods
of communication with other players greatly enhances the social trait.
Also, although both of these are usually expressly outside the game's
mechanics, there are usually some rudimentary mechanics for judging a
given player's "advancement".  Score is a perfect example - the number of
matches of tennis a given tennis player has won in their career is "player
advancement", yet has no effect on the mechanics of the game.  A mud
example of this is Tron - all players are the same, but you do gain
"levels" based on your score, which does nothing except provide a ranking
system so that you can easily tell who the most effective and active
players are.

- Non-volitile token advancement.  This requires that the game have
some sort of token ("character") which the player controls which can
change and develop in the course of the game, and "save" its attributes
gained during a given session for an indeterminant amount of time
(presumably infinitely).  The most common example of this would be D&D
style levels and experience points.  This kind of advancement is usually
the slowest since it's the most peremenant.  I call it "non-volitile"
rather than "permenant" because usually there are ways to regress, they
are just rare.  For example, there is a "drain level" effect in D&D.  This
is one of those feared and loathed effects simply because it does affect a
normaly non-volitile attribute.
In addition, this sort of advancement must be local to the token which the
player controls.  In the case of player advancement (see above), the user
can never become a "newbie" again.  A master tennis player can pretend to
suck, but in truth they do not.  There's nothing that they can really do
about this - even not practicing for years will probably leave them still
very good at tennis, just rusty.  In the case of token advancement,
changing to a new token does indeed leave behind the advancement acheived
by any other tokens.
I'm not sure whether it should be considered required, or just common,
that this sort of advancement be non-exchangeable.  In every example I
can think of, this is the case.  Experience points cannot be exchanged
between characters, for example.  But I'm not decided whether this is a
requirement to be in this category or not.

- Volitile token advancement.  This is very similar to non-volitile token
advancement, except that the advancement is achieved quickly and lost as
quickly, if not more so.   Also, volitile tokens are almost always
transferable, if not easily so; they are not considered bound to any
particular player.  The most common example here are trapping objects for
your token: clothing, tools, weapons, money, or other independant objects
which a character can possess and use to certain ends.  In most cases
these things are very easy-come-easy-go: Bubba the Newbie may find the
might Sword of Power laying on main street, thus "advancing" with almost
no effort whatsoever ("get sword").  But he may later be killed and loose
the sword, plus whatever else he happened to own, in an instant, even if
death is not permenant. 


Did I miss anything?

Adam