[MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds

[Dan Shiovitz]

On Mon, 15 Feb 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> So I learned an interesting bit of historical mud trivia this weekend. I
> always knew that Merc MobProgs were derived somehow from Worlds of Carnage's
> acts system. But I never knew how. I was informed that they were coded up in
> crude imitation of Carnage's acts by Satin, a Carnage immort, who was
[..]
> So my question is something that sort of overlaps material that is in the
> FAQ, but not really. What do you think are the most important and/or
> influential muds, and why? What contributions did they make to the state of
> the art, or what significant muds owe a lot to them?

Um. I can't speak for more than the diku scene, but let's see. I think Epic
was the first or one of the first to have the "big city", ie, not midgaard.
It had a bunch of other things that are considered fairly standard today; I
think Sojourn, one of the most popular dikus around now, owes a lot to
Epic, or at least has a very similar feel. It's sort of hard to keep things
sorted out, and to distinguish between muds I have a fond memory of and
muds that were honestly influential. 

Fajita probably counts in both categories, though. It had, let's see.
Skills for the traditionally spell-casting classes. Weird psionics that
were innate to characters when generated but had to be unleashed in a
random and dangerous process. Monsters with immunities (to non-silver, to
non-magic weapons.. so ask about the time they charmed the werebear and had
it tank against the most powerful mob in the game, with a unicorn along to
keep kicking the mob so it couldn't cast spells and fry the werebear when
its weapons were useless). Fajita had an extensive set of mob specials,
including mobs casting defensive spells on themselves just like players, a
druid that would summon up the master of the hunt and his hounds who would
chase you all over the mud, etc. I believe the people who came out with the
merc branch of diku met up on fajita; I suppose that's its biggest claim to
fame (and then the machine went down, and the mud went away, and the world
has never been the same *sob*).

I think Copper may have had one of the first remort systems, where you
could start over as another class and get the powers of both. Hmm. I'm sure
MUME was the originator of something or other, but I can't think what.
Maybe travel points?

 > -Raph
--
Dan Shiovitz || dbs at cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs 
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
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