[MUD-Dev] Re: Mudschool

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 14 May 1998 07:50:47 -0500 (CDT) 
Travis S Casey<efindel at io.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 May 1998, Richard Woolcock wrote:
>> Enter your name: Bubba New character!  Enter a password: *****
>> [Press enter to enter the game]

> The "enter your name" prompt is something that's always bothered me
> about many muds.  The first time I ever got on a mud, I saw "enter
> your name", and naturally entered "Travis Casey" (after all, it's
> asking for *my* name, not a *character's* name).  It then told me
> that names could only be one word.  So I entered "Travis".

> I went through the character generation process, expecting it to ask
> me at some point what I'd like my character's name to be.  Of
> course, it never did, but it did eventually ask me "enter your real
> name".  At that point, of course, I knew what they had meant.

> So, I went through and made a character again, while muttering
> aspersions on whoever chose to put "enter your name" instead of
> "enter your character's name" or something else that would let me
> know it wasn't *my* name they wanted.

> The moral is: explain things clearly during character generation.

Another moral:

  Allow all decisions to be delayed until the last possible logical
point.

Your characters have castes (barbarian, warrior, mage etc)?  Why doe
he need to decide that when creating the character?  Why can't he
delay that until that point when playing the game that he either HAS
to or feels the need to specialise?

You have races/species?  Again, why can't that be delayed?  Sure, you
then need some non-race type, the amorphous non-descript unremarkable
humanoid "thing", but you can still allow the decision to be delayed
until the point where he can't continue without it.

Etc etc etc.

Moral: Always allow to be put off till tomorrw what isn't needed today.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

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