[MUD-Dev] Re: You think users won't number crunch and statis

[Adam Wiggins]

On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Holly Sommer wrote:
> Re: the player stats
> Seems that this would make even MORE sense to bother with the minutea of 
> implementing, if you have lifespans, and age-related stats. Ie: strength 
> rises in the early stages of life, stabilizes in the middle, and falls 
> off, as a player gets older. Dexterity remains stable initially, and then 
> tails off, etc. Wisdom could be on the increase, always (on average) if 
> you chose to use it as a reflection of accumulated knowledge, in a 
> quantifiable statistic.

Fairly typical on diku and LP muds, if you're not familiar with them.
PK-enable muds which offer the "haste" spell are particularly nasty - on
Arctic a favorite way to screw someone over *really* badly is to paralyze
them, then cast haste on them until they are so old they can barely move.
Even more harsh was Shadowdale, where as you got older your regen fell off
until finally it was actually negative, and thus sitting around doing
nothing would eventually result in you "dying of old age".  One fellow, a
longtimer on the mud, was 120 years old, kept alive only by virtue of
being a cleric with lots of mana regen items who could continually cure
himself.

Adam