[MUD-Dev] Games within Games [Was: Gender and Mud Development]

[Kristen Koster]

At 1:01 PM 6/9/99, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
>Here's a list of games/activities that I'd like to see implemented on a
>mud:
>
>Tag or Blind Man's bluff

Whoohoo!  LegendMUD has this.. of course we kinda stole the idea from
World's of Carnage. We play recall tag. It's now in it's second
implementation for automation and is a popular and oft requested game. I've
also seen social tag (again.. Carnage).

We've also traditionally held "flag hunts" to encourage exploration. We've
talked about various capture the flag variations as well, but suspect those
would work best amongst the pkill crowd.

For April Fool's day this year we did try a "king of the hill" style game
to stress test our dynamic clan/guild system and to give all the players
who logged in that day a chance to experience it without having to form or
join an established group. Each clan/guild tracks the leader by tallying up
which members have pledged loyalty to which other members. Many complained
this was just a popularity contest. For one day, yeah it probably would
have been just that if I hadn't given out a small prize to every character
that ended the day with someone else loyal to them, or loyal to another
player. I can also think of pkill variations on this one too.

>Team Croquet

This would be interesting. *ponder*

>Karoake

We've had a couple of nights of Stand-Up Comics and StoryTelling. We used
to run a Lecture Series that often had players as the speakers sharing
topics that they were suitably knowlegable about. And we get lots of
Karoake on the global channels. We occaisonally set up a conference(dynamic
channel) just for song lyrics or jokes.

Trivia is another popular past time when they're bored with hacking and
slashing.

Another popular but administratively taxing game is "Casino Night" which is
similar to a huge scavenger hunt (we've done plain jane ones of those too)
where everyone who wishes to participate is given a "token" one of several
different types. People have to gather as many as possible or match a
certain preset list in order to get a bigger prize. Often these "tokens"
are coveted to use as "strung items".

>Multi-player card games, like Hearts, Canasta, Bridge or Euchre

I recall a couple of our players mentioning they'd sat and played cards.. I
know there's a full deck available to them in the game as individual card
objects.
We also just added a dicetoss/coinroll command to allow for simple games of
chance as well.

>Baseball, Football or Cricket

We have a new area coming in that will allow players to participate in a
baseball game. The games will run with or without players, so if you just
want to sit and watch you can do that too.

>Ballroom dancing

Sure would be more interesting than just the silly dance socials. *grin*
We have had Halloween Costume Contests, which were interesting to say the least.

>They needn't be known as the same thing, or exactly the same rules.
>After all many of us like to stay within a theme.  :)

Themes are always good. Even for those who claim they despise roleplaying. =)

Wow.. that ended up longer than I had originally intended... =) Guess
that's a good thing tho, huh? Btw, LegendMUD has always strived for the
impossible -- a nice balance between Bartle's suits. Some days you win..
some you don't.

-Kristen Koster    (koster at eden.com)
Kaige of LegendMUD (kaige at mud.sig.net)




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