[MUD-Dev] Forks or Frameworks?

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Koster, Raph wrote:

> Well, I think (based on your original statement) that what you
> actually oppose in the non-original CONTENT, moreso than the
> codebase, correct? There are certainly many important and highly
> well-crafted muds out there than started with a stock mud codebase
> in one way or another, however they may have evolved since then. The
> thing that tends to make them impressive is the content, not the
> codebase per se.

Absolutely. The only reason I object to stock codebases is that the
most prominent one (DIKU) encourages non-original content (I want to
puke everytime I see Midgaard). Areas aside, they seem to encourage
group-think, though this may be an incidental rather than causal. In
other words, maybe the reason DIKUs generally seem so similar is
because the people who run DIKU codebases generally were heavy players
of DIKU muds, and thus turn out similar content.

 
>> I think it is a very bad thing for the community, and, more to the
>> point in my mind, it is a very bad thing for me. I should not have
>> to be embarassed when I tell people that I run a MUD for a living,
>> yet I feel twinges of embarassment if the person I'm talking to is
>> familiar with text MUDs, because most of them are so bloody awful.
> 
> Once upon a time I was talking with Mike Stackpole, a good science
> fiction writer who makes a living sharecropping other people's
> universes (including some pretty nice work on one of those mech
> series whose name escapes me, plus Star Wars comics, plus some
> videogame titles, plus more I can't even think of just now...). Nice
> guy, we talked sf over some decent Italian food, with Jessica
> Mulligan (hi, Jess) & a few others.

That's not an apt analogy in my opinion. Mike Stackpole is using
someone else's context more so than someone else's content, I'd
imagine. I sincerely doubt he goes onto the net, searches around for
stories, and then tries to publish barely-altered (or not altered at
all) versions of those stories. Imagine opening a book, reading the
first paragraph, and seeing the _exact_ same thing there that you saw
in a supposedly different book you read yesterday.

In any case, Mike Stackpole is engaging in work that takes a
significant amount of original content to be publishable, and is,
presumably, of some base level of quality. The same cannot be said for
the 500th DIKU clone that Bill the 17 year old has downloaded onto his
buddy's server so that he can work out his frustration at not getting
a prom date on whatever unlucky and hapless souls blunder into his sad
little world.

What is a much better analogy, in my opinion, is comparing serious
artists with people who consider paint-by-the-numbers to be art. Sure,
I have no doubt that somewhere out there are a handful of people who
elevate paint-by-the-numbers to something really cool, but they in a
laughably small minority.

Have you ever actually gone to Mudconnector and let it connect you to,
say, 20 random muds? It's embarassing.


> Mike had a very negative reaction, because he saw what Bruce
> represented (the "elite" of SF) as being snobbish and very
> hoity-toity towards those like him that he saw making an honest
> living as a WRITER fer gossake, doing what they love with nice
> fast-moving plots.

Well, I, at least, have no more problem with Mike than I do with
Bruce, which is none at all. At the risk of belaboring what I see as a
flawed analogy, I'll just say that Mike strikes me as the equivalent
of one of the handful of really good muds based off a codebase.

 
> I also know that when people suggested to a few extremely prominent
> writers like Margaret Atwood that they were writing science fiction,
> they were rather vehemently against the notion. I imagine that they
> "feel twinges of embarassment if the person I'm talking to is
> familiar with [sf], because most of them [the books] are so bloody
> awful."

Yes, I feel quite bad for them too. Sf and Fantasy get lumped in with
pulp romance novels for the most part, as being utter dreck. True? In
most cases, I'd have to agree, there being the not-really-so-rare
exceptions of course. (God, I bought 3 Forgotten Realms books recently
about the super-mega-ultra mage, Elminster, and couldn't make myself
even finish the second in the trilogy, it was so badly written and
thought out.)

> Personally, I read all three. I also know that Mike sells more copies
> of anything he does than Margaret Atwood does. He may be forgotten
> sooner, but I wouldn't say that it's "a very bad thing for the
> community" that they are all out there.

Again, apples and oranges. A more relevant comparison would be comparing
the average DIKU with a 'book' cobbled together by taking passages from
random sci fi and fantasy novels, with no concern given to the overall
picture, and then changed just enough so that the near-illiterate nature
of the sexually-frustrated 15 year-old author (who is also an l33t hAX0r
d00d of course) can shrine straight through. I particularly enjoyed the
bit of the book when LuuK Skyw0lk3r (wielding a giant laser dildo of
course), jaunted on over to Moordor with his companions Alanon, Lancylot,
and Eminem to kick it with his homies and shag some bitches with his
massive penis, which he reminds said companions of on a tri-hourly basis. 

That is what most muds remind me of, sorry. If that is what Mike Stackpole
reminds you of, then I am once again sorry, though this time it is for
your poor family, for polluting your household with such trash. =) But
somehow I suspect you've got slightly better taste than that.
 
> A lot of people think that all fantasy is Dragonlance and all
> science fiction is Star Trek, too. And yeah, I bet some are chased
> away forever. But I also bet that the number of readers of Gene
> Wolfe or Bruce Sterling (or Greg Egan or John Crowley or Sheri
> Tepper or whoever) would be LOWER if there were no Star Trek and no
> Dragonlance, not higher. Maybe the same can be said for muds.

My god, if ONLY most muds were Dragonlance and Star Trek. Hell dude, I
wish Achaea was of that quality. I am quite pleased with our backstory
and whatnot, but it doesn't even come close to the quality and depth
of both of those worlds. I have yet to see _any_ mud that does quite
honestly, particularly Star Trek.

You're really kidding yourself if you are comparing even those
mediocre works of fantasy and sci-fi to your average stock mud.

> In other words, I think the clones may serve as entry points to
> mudding, breeding those discerning players you need (who surely
> don't spring fully formed into being). They also likely absorb the
> overflow of players you really don't want. And of course, I
> definitely think that they are the breeding ground for those who
> write the more advanced codebases. It's a lot easier to write a good
> codebase if you've had to work with a bad one, don't you think?
> 
> -Raph, who argued in favor of SF while in grad school, and generally lost

I actually believe that what the endless crap clones do is dampen the
development of a more discerning text mudding population, because the
majority of them are never stimulated by anything better, due to the
fact that the ocean of crapness is so large in comparison.

I also don't know many educators who would advocate learning to have
good habits by first adopting bad ones and then trying to change
them. I know in everything I've ever been taught, the emphasis has
been on not developing the bad ones to begin with.

--matt, who is just trying to be realistic, and doesn't condemn the people
running said crap textmuds, but does resent their impact.
(well, he might condemn the haX0r d00dz).

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