[MUD-Dev] Mihaly's Combat

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Sat, 5 Jun 1999, Greg Munt wrote:

> I get the impression that Mihaly's mud has more to do with 'fun', then
> representing any kind of reality (real or imaginary). This is not a bad
> thing. I believe that Island had the same philosopy? Of course, you are only
> appealing to a specific sub-set of players, but that's incredibly difficult
> (some would say impossible) not to do.

Cheer! You understand what I was on about!

> 
> I guess any aspect of any world has to be viewed in the context of that
> world, rather than in the context of some other world. Matt has discussed
> previously that when he plays, he sees only text, rather than a world - and
> this is the context within which we should discuss his combat system. His
> mud does not seem to attempt any suspension of disbelief. Rather, it is a
> game where players interact, rather than characters. He does not need, for
> example, to worry about the 'reality' of death, because in the context of
> his world, death doesn't really exist! Yes, I'm starting to understand his
> stance in a previous thread, now.

Yes, Achaea is consciously about pitting people against other people
rather than character against character. On the other hand, this view of
things really only applies to our player vs. player combat. We enforce
roleplaying otherwise, and a lot of players seem to get into roleplaying.
Combat, despite being quite integrated into the rest of the game, is
really a sort of sub-game that can be entered into seamlessly (by just
deciding you are going to attack someone and going and doing it).

> 
> In Mihaly's world, you could liken combat to sport (as Mihaly has), with
> gods (the players) controlling characters as avatars. If an avatar dies, it
> doesn't matter, the god simply takes over control of a different character.
> The use of healing potions, etc is part of the sport. Indeed, when and which
> one to use is part of the strategy of that sport. It may not be a sport that
> interests you, but that does not mean that it is 'wrong', to quote Darren
> Henderson.

That's exactly right. We use terms like "healing elixirs" and such to
represent healing because the rest of the game IS role-based to some
extent. We could have taken out all role-references in combat, but since
there isn't a distinct line between combat and the rest of the game, this
didn't seem to be an option.
--matt




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