[MUD-Dev] Re: PK and my "Mobless MUD" idea

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 6 May 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Fri, 1 May 1998 11:57:24 -0700 (PDT) 
> Adam Wiggins<adam at angel.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 1 May 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> >> Caliban Tiresias Darklock<caliban at darklock.com> wrote: > ...Some of
> >> the suggested rules would be like, Eldar the Everstrong > creates
> >> the mighty Sword of Dragon Slaying, which will decapitate > any
> >> dragon with one swing! So he offers it to Bob the Wimpy, only to >
> >> receive the message "You cannot give an item of this power directly
> >> > to a player." So he goes, fine, I'll leave it somewhere and tell
> >> Bob > to come and get it! Then he goes to drop the mighty sword in
> >> a room, > and receives the message "This item is far too powerful
> >> to be left > unguarded." So he has to construct a big powerful
> >> monster to guard > it, which he does, and then drops the monster in
> >> the > room. Cunningly, he then tells the monster to leave, but the
> >> monster > refuses -- he's on guard duty!  So Eldar tries to kill
> >> the monster, > but is told that he cannot directly assist in the
> >> destruction of his > own guardians. And so on. And so forth.
> >> 
> >> First thought:
> >> 
> >> 1) Create super-weapon, and put guard on it.  2) Create slightly
> >> less super weapon and put slightly wimpier guard on it.  3) Repeat
> >> #2 until until both weapon and guard are easily killable by newbie
> >> 4) Sic newbie on bottom level guard/weapon.  5) Newbie uses each
> >> new weapon on next higher guard.  6) See Newbie with super-weapon!
> >> 7) Run newbie!  Run!
> >> 
> > Of course, this opens the door wide open for what is practical
> > another game going on above the regular players' heads.  Feuding
> > gods raining fire on each others creations, trying to gain followers
> > by leading potential recruits on quests for powerful artifacts (see
> > JC's quote above), and so forth.  Could really kick ass, and the
> > best part is that you'd get a constantly changing and expanding mud
> > without requiring any special fractal algorithms or random room
> > generation - just a handful of fevret players.
> 
> What is to prevent such gods from creating a simple monotonoous series 
> of rooms, connected by doors corridor style.  Each room contains a
> weapon and a guard one step up from the one before...
> We're looking at the minimal case for a hack-n-slash.  The problem is
> that the minimal case is unplayable.

Not unplayable -just awfully boring. :)

However, I still think that this could work (call me an optimist).  It
would require a lot more than just giving every third player that loged on
a god flag.  Can't remember if it was in another post or if it got snipped
out of the above, but one of the major points I mentioned was a careful
ladder of power to ensure that the creators that create the "best" stuff
(rated however the admin chooses) get more power to create more.

Then add lots of dependencies between creator and createe.  For instance,
Bubba the God has N god-points (mana, if you want) availible to create
each day.  He saves up his points for three days and then creates
StormBringer, Blade of Chaos.  Not only does he want to try to get the
blade into the hands of one of his followers, but he wants to make sure it
will be a follower that will use it regularly.  For you see, StormBringer
normally sucks down n (where n < N) god-points each day.  The only way to
end this is by destroying the blade, which takes (for instance) the same
number of god points to destroy as it did to create.  However,
StormBringer is a vampiric weapon - it *gives* Bubba up to 2n god points
each day, as long as it is allowed to suck the souls of powerful enemies.

Throw in lots of other nice relationships - for instance, gods aligned
with Lifeforce energies loose a number of god-points equal to the number
drained by any vampiric affect in the game - and now you've got the
makings of some serious heavenly battles.

At this point you throw in lots of arbitrary rules to make it difficult to
use god-powers in a straightforward way.  This both rewards clever
players and brings the mysterious motivations of the gods into the fray -
which we already know is lots of fun from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and
other pre-monodeity religions.  Ie, Buffy tells her followers that she
wishes that they seek out the evil blade StormBringer and hide it
somewhere where no one will ever find it.  The followers don't know why
she wants this, but she promises to reward them well, so they obey.  While
invading the stronghold of Biffy, follower of the evil god Boffo, they are
beseiged by Boffo-summoned frooblegiants.  The situation looks grim, and
they call on their godess for aid, but she ignores them.  "Why, oh why?"
they cry out.  Little do they know that godesses of Lifeforce cannot hear
prays from their followers who are within one-hundred meters of a
Firbiggle Crystal during full moons.  Biffy just happens to have a
Firbiggle Crystal in his throneroom, since it allows *his* god to have
extra powers on alternate Thursdays of the month...

I think this defintely could be cool, if you set it up so that being a god
was as much a 'game' as being a mortal, it just involved a lot of creature
summoning, dungeon creation, object creation, trap setting, etc.  Note
that the areas you'd end up from this would be classic hank-n-slash-style
dungeons and fortresses.  I don't see this as a problem.

Adam


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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.