[MUD-Dev] The Best Guy on the Mud Thing

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 11:15 AM 9/25/1999 -0400, I personally witnessed Travis Casey jumping up
to say:
>On Monday, September 20, 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> On 09:18 AM 9/20/1999 -0500, I personally witnessed Travis S. Casey jumping
>> up to say:
>
>>>IMHO, the problem with "word-combination" spell systems is that finding
>>>spells is being made a player-level puzzle, rather than something that's
>>>done on the character-level.
>
>> I *like* player-level challenges!
>
>I wasn't trying to say that player-level challenges are bad -- just
>that, in this case, the problem people were discussing could be
>avoided entirely by handling learning of spells on the character level
>instead of the player level.

But that's what every *other* MUD does. I don't like everything being
handled on the character level. It all gets so political in the end; the
admins settle into some concept of what the "right" way to play is, and if
you don't play in that "right" way your advancement is hamstrung. When the
advancement is placed in the hands of the *player*, it doesn't matter where
he learns it so long as he learns it. This goes a *long* way toward getting
away from the whole PK argument, too; when a player's character dies, he
doesn't have to start over at square one -- he has a large body of
knowledge which is immediately applicable to his new player. This softens
the blow of death, and makes it more acceptable. When the concept is
central and common to the codebase and not just the individual game,
transitioning from one game to another is also much more palatable. (Not
really much of a benefit for pay games, of course.)

>>>At the player-level, players can help each
>>>other out easily.  If spell knowledge is moved back to the
>>>character-level, it becomes much easier to restrict.
>
>> Consider this.
>
>[snip system]
>
>I didn't say it was *impossible* to stop -- other people had already
>suggested mechanisms that would work.  Just that moving it to
>character level means you don't even have to make the effort.

True, but what I was getting at wasn't "you should do this", but "here is a
way you could do this, which I find interesting but have absolutely no use
for in any of my projects". It wasn't so much an argument as an option I
thought other people might want to use. I have a great many ideas which
just aren't useful to *me*, but which ought to be useful to *someone*, so I
like to throw those out into the community whenever openings arise. ;)

-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
| U L T I M A T E   U N I V E R S E   I S   N O T   D E A D 
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H       -=CABAL::3146=- 


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev