[MUD-Dev] RE: CGDC, a summary

[Koster]

On Sunday, May 10, 1998 2:14 AM Adam Wiggins [SMTP:adam at angel.com] 
said:

>  - Indocrination.  Air Warrior has a training school he cited as 
being an
>    obviously retrofitted tack-on, and UO has nothing at all, but 
rather just
>    dumps you into the big bad world.  I guess he wanted a Merc mud 
school :)

An issue we have wrestled with a LOT. After all, even newbies tend to 
hate mud school.

>  - Rites of Passage.  He said that this was something completely 
lacking in
>    Air Warrior when it came online, and the ones they tried to add 
later were
>    poor.  The players ended up coming up with their own that were 
much better.
>    He also complained about UO since it's entirely skill based; 
there are
>    few-to-no 'platos' of accomplishment one reaches.

Yep, an accurate criticism. We've discussed this here before. Amy Jo 
Kim also discusses rites of passage under "events" usually, though it 
sounds like her presentation got abbreviated and she wasn't able to 
cover that in much depth.

While built-in rites of passage are important, one also has to 
acknowledge that players will make their own ANYWAY. Common ones on UO 
involve guild initiations, for example. A creating "pomp and ceremony" 
in code often fails. How many of us felt the "go back to town to your 
guild and gain" routine was actually a powerful ritual? Yet that is 
exactly the sort of thing that rites of passage means. More commentary 
on how to accomplish this would be welcomed by me on the list!

 >  - Player vs Player.  He stated baldly that no game should allow a 
player to
 >   'take away' something of value from another player.  This PvP is 
"okay" for
 >   games like Air Warrior where you only loose some pride when you 
get killed,
 >   but completely unacceptable for games like RPGs where you "ruin" 
or
 >   otherwise damage someone's character, whom they may have invested 
a lot of
 >   time in.

So he stated this, but then went on to say

> that conflict is
> essential, as it accelerates the bonds between those involved, and 
since
> on-line communities have so much less time availible to them (since 
most people
> play for a small fraction of their total real-life time), this 
acceleration is
> necessary to form meaningful bonds in a reasonable amount of time.

? Interesting. I've made the same latter point myself many times, but 
I would argue that to the victim, the difference between being 
harassed and pkilled isn't that large, regardless of the "loss" 
factor.

>   The second and most interesting class I attended was a round 
table, hosted
> by Amy Jo Kim, who seems to be in high regard with a few folks on 
this list.
[snip]
>  6. Events.  This is the one topic she hit on that I don't think 
we've ever
>    discussed here in any depth (or at all?).  She started by asking 
what
>     major community that has ever existed that didn't have regular, 
repeating
>     events - ie, holidays.  They greatly enhance the sense of 
belonging to
>     those in the community, as well as offering a good chance for 
folks to
>     socialize.  I found myself realizing that this particular topic 
is a lot
>     more important than I've ever considered it; the things that 
continuously
>     drew me back to the muds that I played the most were events. 
 However,
>     I don't think I've ever played one with mud-wide events that 
repeated on a
>     regular basis.

LegendMUD celebrates a number of holidays, including the annual April 
Fools' "change the mud around" day, the Easter egg hunt, Christmas, 
and many others, with special events. These have become very popular. 
We also have hosted quarterly trivia competitions, pk tourneys, etc. 
And I don't think Legend is particularly unique in this regard--many 
muds have run similar programs. Renegade Outpost used to do Chaos 
Nights, where the whole server was made PvP for a night and then the 
DB was rolled back the next day, so nothing counted. Meridian 59 
lifted this idea and did something similar involving a blood red 
sky...

> she said that UO recently implemented an internal calander which
>     displayed upcoming events, and allows guild leaders (?) to add 
their own
>     guild events to it.  (I haven't seen this, but I'd like to.)

Not internal. On the web: 
http://www.owo.com/calendar/curblockmonth.html is the current 
calendar. Players submit events via email and we publicize them.


-Raph


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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.