[MUD-Dev] If JRRT did MUDs...

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miroslav Silovic" <silovic at petra.zesoi.fer.hr>

> On the other hand, certain things don't matter so much in
> MUDs. For instance, players are likely to forgive inferior
> literary style, for the reasons you explained yourself below:
> since they participate as not only the consumers, but also the
> actors in a story, you can make them tell stories to each other.

> In other words, I don't think Tolkien would necesarily be a great
> MUD admin, even if the room descs on his MUD would rule. The
> relevant skill for telling stories, IMHO, is social engineering;
> the rest can be picked on the way.

Apart from the fact that LoTR contains almost no description at all
(relative to contemporary sci-fi/fantasy authors). I think if
Tolkien did a MUD :), every single character could be guaranteed to
have some major story attached (or to have had their major stories
already), and everywhere you went there'd be something interesting
going on. But not much in description, certainly not the 30 lines of
dense prose per room that became popular on quite a number of MUDs a
while back (and someone on here remarked recently that they never
even bothered reading any more. I quite agree).

Adam M

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