[MUD-Dev] Introducing the background hook

[Ling]

Unlike fantasy muds that can assume some cliches are universal, eg:
dwarves are short, elves have pointy ears, I have a sci-fi mud which has a
huge unknown factor.  Absolutely nothing can be assumed so somehow, I must
introduce an almost entirely different universe to the players.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

What I don't want is to have a whole bunch of help/info files that the
player is forced to read thru before playing (eg: DartMUD).  It looks like
a webpage with lots of pretty pictures is a must-have...

Apart from that, are there any tricks I can use to teach the player how my
imagined world works?  My current ideas include having excerpts from an
'Encyleopedia Galactica' appear around login screen and menu as well as
having in-game news broadcasts but this is too 'in yer face' for my
liking.  I'd ideally want background information to creep in, as naturally
as possible, eg: Bubba books a cruise to England and gets given an
interactive pamphlet for his perusal.  One of the coolest tutorials I've
seen is on Final Fantasy VII when your hero, an ex-super trooper person,
teaches other people how to fight, thereby informing the player how to do
things.  That's the kinda thing I'm looking for but for the background
theme, not just for the mechanics. 

  |    Ling Lo (fish)
_O_O_  Elec Eng Dept, Loughborough University, UK.     kllo at iee.org