[MUD-Dev] characters per account

[LexaH at aol.com]

Jeff Freeman wrote:
> But are there are any commercial science-fiction games in the works? Seems
> like all I see are techno-fantasy or stock-fantasy.  Either swords and
> sorcery, or swords and sorcery and laser-pistols.  But sort of
> Traveller-esque type online multiplayer game.

I don't know if you only mean graphical, but the text scifi-MUD Federation 
(http://www.ibgames.net/) has been out for years -- I played it for about a 
year before AOL went flat-rate (I can't remember quite how long ago that 
was). It's been off AOL for a few years now. It's described as a "space 
opera," and there aren't any fantastic elements (nary a sword or spell to be 
found). 

The RP, though, (at least when I used to play in on AOL) was slim to none. 
Although maybe it's improved over the years. But I wouldn't have classified 
it as RP at all when I played it years ago. 

Mike Sellers wrote:
>Map size is definitely an issue for any such design -- 
>where do you want to go in your Traveller air/raft or your
>Lucas-drive X-wing?  How big is the planet really?  How 
>many planets are there and how long will it take me to go
>between them?

As to world size, the way they solved that was upon attaining level 9 
(Squire), players were allowed to create their own planets through a custom 
OLC system (I never got that high, so cannot attest as to how it works). In 
fact, "allowed" is mild -- in order to progress farther, one HAD to build a 
planet. This is a way of getting around having a building staff make 
everything. The world (or universe, in this case) always seemed to be big 
enough not to have very much crowding. It also uses the traditional "rooms" 
so it took only as fast as you could type to get from planet to planet.

Mike Sellers also wrote:
>One other big problem is character death: resurrecting 
>people by spell or just because is one thing in a fantasy 
>environment; people don't blink twice at it. Will they do 
>the same in a science fiction game?  Or do you need to
>go to cloning or some other device to keep the threat of 
>death credible?

Federation has a semi-permadeath situation: you are allowed to have one 
clone. If you die once, you wake up in the cloning room. In you die without a 
clone, you are dead-dead, and have to totally start over. After a death, if 
you make it to the insurance office without dying again, you are allowed to 
buy a clone. The price goes up each purchase (not linearly, either). I liked 
this sytem, because it made people not want to die, and punished death, but 
not too harshly -- generally, people only double-died on planets that had 
sadistic owners (and those got a bad rep very quickly) or if they were stupid 
(or if they died too often to be able to afford a clone any more, which fits 
under the "stupid" category). 

-Lexa



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