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

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 02:07:02 PST8PDT 
> Matt Chatterley<matt at mpc.dyn.ml.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> >> On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 21:16:49 GMT Richard Woolcock
> >> <KaVir at dial.pipex.com> wrote: 
> 
> >>> Character development is an important aspect of muds (for
> >>> example, would you play a mud where your character never saved?).
> >> 
> >> Err, yes.  Tron is a perfect example, if debateable as being a MUD.
> 
> > Fascinating question - "If you remove 'character development' over
> > the long term, can you still have a successfu game?"
> 
> > Perhaps not so interesting after brief thought - yes, you can. One
> > of the muds I used to play (and which I liked very much) was a
> > PK-only mud in a vaguely futuristic setting which focussed on high
> > violence, high damage, and short-term development (pick up better
> > weapons, gain a few hps, etc), and also on very short lives.
> 
> 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.

Great take! This covers all perma-death games which enforce a high level
of fatality by the way (personally I do the latter but not the former);
transferring game-related development (this might be a better term than
character development?) to the player, rather than the character.

You develop socially, and your game-playing skills develop - just as one
might imagine a character developing (although the *actual* development is
different in ways, rather than its appearance; its mostly social and of
course 'learning' based). It might be fun to create a game of this sort,
although it has been done before (one case in point: PK muds which don't
allow the character to develop beyond his equipment, but where more
experienced players will do better).

--
Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
Spod: http://user.super.net.uk/~neddy/spod/spod.html