[MUD-Dev] Re: DevMUD Objectives?

[Travis Casey]

On 30 October 1998, Thandor wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 01:54:38PM +0100, Niklas Elmqvist wrote:
>> Well, Diku has the advantage of offering a large amount of players a
>> roleplaying system they are familiar with -- AD&D (quite close, at least).

> Well, I can only speak for the way I play AD&D, but the similarity I see is
> many dikus have a fantasy theme. Beyond that, not much. Meaning, race/class
> names, and some spell/skill names have been adopted, but I'm yet to find a mud
> that plays remotely like a tabletop game of AD&D. So I think that's more of a
> theme issue than a server issue - you could take pretty much any mud and slap
> a medieval fantasy theme on it.

As a paper RPG designer, I see a huge amount of similarity:

  - use of a class/level system, with experience points
  - the four basic classes (fighter, thief, mage, cleric)
    (in particular, the spell-casting cleric with an emphasis on
    healing spells is a sign of being derived from D&D/AD&D)
  - hit-point-based damage, with hit points increasing with level
  - armor that makes you harder to hit instead of absorbing damage
  - a magic system in which spells have arbitrary effects (that is,
    there is no "spell design system" -- spells are simply made up
    and assigned to a level by GM fiat)
  - access to spells based on level (i.e., a 4th level mage can't cast
    this spell at all, but a 5th level mage can)

These characteristics are rarely seen in paper RPGs that aren't direct
derivatives of either D&D or AD&D.  In particular, by the time the
first Dikus were built, most paper RPGs had abandoned class/level
systems, hit-point-based damage with hit points increasing with level,
and armor that makes you harder to hit.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)