[MUD-Dev] Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6]

[Christopher Allen]

At 09:55 AM 2/13/99 , Mik Clarke wrote:
>For those who are interested in the odd features I've mentioned over the
>last few months, the CthulhuMud Driver 6 code base is now available for
>download.

Though I'm not interested in the code, per say, I am interested in your
insights into the development of a game behind a horror based mud (which is
what I assume that the original Cthulhu Mud was, which could be way off
base ;-)

Take Cthulhu for instance, as a genre, the 'investigators' are quite weak,
and never will compete with the monsters on any sort of basis other then
avoiding them, and keeping others (NPCs or other players) from invoking them.

A more pure horror, the genre has to have considerable suspense, and that
means real fear that your character might die.

How can the game system in a mud better support this type of genre? Fantasy
based muds seems to lead to game design that are very different and
potential incompatible with the horror genre, as you are suppost to be able
to grow to be fearless of the horrible (say a dragon) and even evil can be
commonplace (some of the necromacy that I've seen in some MUDs for
ressurections would in any other culture be evil, but isn't even commented
on in the mud.)

Can anyone point me to a mud that has tried to solve this problem?

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