[MUD-Dev] \"An essay on d00dism and the MMORPG\"

[Travis Casey]

Tuesday, November 28, 2000, 10:02:12 PM, gmiller at classic-games.com <gmiller at classic-games.com> wrote:
> Jeff Freeman <skeptack at antisocial.com> wrote:

>> Really, there's a wide range with True Foaming Roleplayer on one end and
>> kewlio dewd on the other end, and I'm not overly fond of either extreme.
>> I've had more dewds be more friendly and helpful to me than TFRs though,
>> since they won't talk to me OOC and sometimes game mechanic stuff like "How
>> do I walk?!" can't be explained in-character.

> Over the last decade or so, I've spent a lot of time on muds. My tastes have
> shifted from one form of play to another, but the one thing that hasn't changed
> is the sheer number of immature jerks in the RP camp. Sadly, they seem to do all
> the speaking for the entire group.

Well, I think the immature jerks in each camp seem to be the ones who
speak the most loudly.

> I've never understood why people create a character on a non-RP mud and complain
> about the people who don't enjoy the same style of play they do. I'm a
> Republican, so I wouldn't show up at a Gore rally and complain about all the
> Gore/Lieberman campaign signs. If UO and EQ had a "roleplaying required" notice
> in their terms of service, I'd be more inclined to listen to this guy's rant.

Just as players aren't either "RPers" or "d00dz" with nothing
in-between, though, muds aren't either "RP" or "non-RP" with nothing
in-between.  An RPer on UO or EQ isn't the equivalent of a Republican
at a Gore rally -- that would be an RPer logging into, say, one of the
well-established PK-war muds.  It's more like a Republican at a
meeting of a city council dominated by Democrats, I'd say.

>> The only thing that bugs me about dewds is their names.  "CaPtAin
>> CoRnHOLiO", etc.  I don't find them to be as antisocial as TFR's personally.

> Doesn't bother me a bit. Name filters always struck me as petty, at best, except
> when used to satisfy the law, host rules, etc. Honestly, I find the random
> collections of syllables that people use as names on fantasy muds to be far
> more tiresome.

Which brings me to where I have an actual point.  :-)  For a strong RP
mud, names like "Captain Cornholio" are definitely out, but random
collections of syllables aren't a whole lot better.

What I really like to see is names that are chosen to fit the world
background.  In paper RPGs, that's easy to do -- there's only a dozen
or so PCs at most, and the GM can work with players on coming up with
names.  On a mud, it's much more difficult; manually reviewing names
would be a pain for a large playerbase.

But how about name generators?  People have written name generators
which can be given a specification for a language, and will then
generate random names which could come out of that language.  Some of
the better ones allow you to give a list with roots of names and
their meanings, so that the name generator can create names that mean
something.

So, questions for those of you who do like strong RP muds:

How would you feel...

about your character's name being generated for you?


about being given a randomly-generated list of names to choose from?


about being asked to come up with a descriptive name for your
character (e.g., something like "slayer of beasts" or "stealthy one")
and having a name that means that created for you?  (Ignore technical
considerations here, please... I'm asking how you'd feel about it, not
whether it can be done practically.)


about being asked for a name, and then having the software check it
and suggest possible changes to make it fit the language?


about being given a choice of one of the above?


about a combination system, where characters have two names -- you get
to make up one name, and the other name is generated by one of the
above methods?


Would you be puzzled or annoyed if the character creation setup was
such that you couldn't choose a name until after your character's race
or place of origin was established?


--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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