[MUD-Dev] an essay on PK

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 02:29 PM 9/23/1999 -0700, I personally witnessed Ilya, Game Commandos
jumping up to say:
>On Thu, 23 Sep 1999 01:05:32 -0700, Rhonda Alexander wrote:
>))Hmm. This will be the first time I've responded to the mailing list though
>))I've been 'listening' for a long while. I am not a MUD player, to be honest,
>))I'm a player though a MUX and MUSH player. My interest in this mailing list
>))is as a MU* designer (and many of the RP issues are the same).
>
>Yet another example, this time from the mush/mux/muse/muck community, 
>that some people treat the term MUD as exclusive of those ideas.  Fascinating.
>I've heard plenty from the MUD world who think of this barrier as present
>(mush/mux/muse/muck people aren't mudding).

Well, to a large extent it's true. I think one of the major failures in
this community is to distinguish between MUSH in the game-server heirarchy
(TinyMUSH, PennMUSH, TinyMUX) and MUSH in the game-objective arena (largely
RP based as opposed to combat based). Likewise, I think there should be a
distinction between MUD in the server heirarchy and MUD in the sense of a
primarily automated and combat-centric game environment. 

>Never thought it worked that way meself, thinking that the term was
>rather inclusive.  

It should be, but MUSH players get very angry when you call them MUD
players and MUD players get very indignant when you lump those pathetic
wimpy MUSH servers in with their LPs and Dikus and other hardcore servers
that could kick any TinyMUSH square in the ass. In short, I drew the
distinction because I was sick of getting flamed for lumping themtogether,
and then I started getting flamed for not defining them "properly". 

>But then I've tried to use ORPG this way (before the
>term MMORPG was coined).  Then non roleplaying types somehow insist
>they aren't included by the term!  can't win I guess.

Kynn Bartlett once used the term "musterisk" as a pronouncable version of
"MU*". I tend to like the term, not just because it covers most servers and
has legacy roots, but also because it gets away from the pattern-matching
reference and turns it into a nice happy little word that can stand on its
own. Maybe we should steal it.


-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
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