[MUD-Dev] Interesting dilemma

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peck, Matthew x96724c1 [mailto:x96724 at exmail.usma.army.mil]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 12:39 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Interesting dilemma
> 
> There are several issues that I see here.
> 
> 1)  Trusting my immortals. 

I suggest the following which are in use on LegendMUD:

- have specific standards for who you immort and why. Applications for the
job are a good step. Sample applications for Legend can be found at

http://mud.sig.net/help.indexes.html

- creating a better division of responsibility among your immortals. Classic
mud admin models cram many different jobs into one heirarchy. In-game
administration, programming, database building, and running events are four
completely different things. Recode your command structure to allow granting
of individual commands (aka a "wizbit system" on a per-command basis, with
perhaps jobs conferring aggregated groups of commands by default) centered
around what jobs an immortal actually does on your mud (there may be more or
less types than what I described above, based on your mud's design).

Legend divides its immort staff into:

* builders: responsible for database additions, updates, and maintenance
* coders: responsible for source code additions, updates, and maintenance,
plus also server machine sysadmin duties
* administrators: responsible for in-game administration of the player code
of conduct, and general assistance to players
* player relations: responsible for events, q&a sessions, community aspects
of the game, advertising, etc.

Interestingly, Ultima Online divides its staff into very similar groups:

* designers, responsible for database additions, updates, and maintenance
* programmers, responsible for source code additions, updates, and
maintenance
(the above two make up the "dev team")
* network operations, responsible for network infrastructure and sysadmin
duties
* game masters, responsible for in-game administration of the player code of
conduct, and general assistance to players
* interest game masters, responsible for in-game events
* community relations, responsible for out-of-game events, community
aspects, etc

- an immort code of conduct that explicitly lays out as many rules as you
can. Make the punishments for favoritism, etc, clear and severe. An example
of a fairly vague but perhaps useful code of conduct can be found at

 http://mud.sig.net/immcode.html

(Worth comparing to the player code of conduct available at the first URL I
gave)

- log use of immortal commands and have the higher level immortals within a
department be obliged to adhere to the standards in the code of conduct.

- be sure to creates avenues of appeal upwards through the chain of command

> 3)  Restrictions on equipment stats.

- if you do not already have building standards in place, develop guidelines
and implement them. You should not have area go in unless they meet a
rigorous set of standards, which should be as specific as you can get--what
the maximum allowable capability on an item should be, what it needs to cost
for said abilities, what disadvantages it must confer, etc. Retroactively
review the entire database to ensure that everything fits these criteria.

- Spread the load of evaluating new content out around other immortals
within the specialty (eg, have coding immorts do code reviews, builders do
building reviews). On Legend, an area doesn't get greenlighted for building
until approved conceptually by reviewers; and an area does not go in to the
game proper until a review panel has signed off on it, which includes
manually reading every piece of data related to the area, as well as
playtesting it.



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