[MUD-Dev] Justifying twinking

[John Bertoglio]

> Travis S. Casey
> Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 10:26 AM
>
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Lee Sheldon wrote:
> > > On Tue, 18 Apr 2000, Raph Koster wrote:
>

<<discussion of digital rats vrs. reality>>

> > So it -should- matter, shouldn't it?
>
> From my own experience, I'd say it does matter.  Playing paper D&D, I
> don't feel belittled by having my 1st-level PC beaten up by orcs, goblins,
> and such.  On muds where my newbie PC is beaten up by squirrels, rats,
> etc., I *do* feel belittled.
>
> To me, it seems ridiculous -- no real squirrel or rat is likely to
> inflict significant harm on a normal, healthy, awake & aware adult
> human even *without* armor and weapons.  To have my PC be at significant
> risk taking on a squirrel while wearing armor seems to be a declaration
> that my PC is no more physically competent than a toddler.  To me, that
> feels insulting.
>

This is a classic problem which I feel relates to the huge power curves
present in traditional muds. They have to start at a ridiculously low
level to balance the growth to ridiculously high levels later on. Another
is the tendency of MUDs to be designed with the interests of high level
players in mind. A little imagination applied to "newbie areas" can
allow the new player to bag easy kills and get a fine intro to the world.

An example: The new player is told that the town will pay x per head
for rats killed in the city sewer. You report to the Minster of Rodents
and are given a bag, a stout stick and directions to the sewer. Enter
the sewer, kill rats. Make it so high level characters (anyone who has
killed y rats) does not see any rats in the sewer or just finds that they
scurry away and cannot be targeted. Now, the Newbie has made a level,
has a bag full of dead rats (which is traded for some starting cash)
and perhaps a random item or two of modest quality spawned after a
certain number of rats were dispatched. This way the player has a
reasonable sense of accomplishment and a nice start in the game.

This can be repeated several times if the designer wishes in
progressively more difficult areas. These kind of "perma quests"
can teach ingame mechanics and expose the player to new features.
Being killed by a rat is bad enough. Being nibbled to death
because I failed to issue the "AIM LOW" command for my strikes
is even worse.

There is no reason for small herbivores to have any attack value.
They are game. They may be hard to hit, but are easy to kill. Killing
rats is a very low risk adventure.


John A. Bertoglio
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PulsePoll.com <http://www.pulsepoll.com/>
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