[MUD-Dev] Multiple Character Races

[Michael Tresca]

John Buehler posted on Monday, February 26, 2001 7:38 PM

> It may also be the simple answer of: players.  When I have multiple
> races, I have more players because that's what players immediately
> expect from these games.

Welcome the boring but rampant world of generic fantasy.  Like it or
not, those staples are propagated by fantasy writers, Dungeons &
Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering.

Race selection harkens back to Tolkien, who didn't use them as a means
of artificially creating a culture, but as social commentary to human
culture.  Copies of copies of copies of this original foundation have
created a "quick and easy" society tag.  Elves live in woods, like
art, love nature.  Dwarves dig mines, are greedy, no sense of humor.
Halflings are curious, prone to thievery, and like good food and
drink.

This is ridiculous, of course, because any particular "race" should
have an extremely rich diversity as well.  However, casting this in
game terms is very difficult without it manifesting as a nebulous
function of in-game role-play.  That is, it's hard to quantify what
particular subsets of a society (not a race) act a particular way.  A
society that acts one way today (orcs hate elves) may suddenly act
differently tomorrow (elves hire orc mercenaries in their wars, and
orcs start seeing them as rich potential employers).  Races are a
quick and dirty means of making those artificial distinctions.

What this brings up, however, is portability.  Popular MUDs appeal to
all styles of game play and in essence, allow the player to transport
their "favorite self" into the game and play there.  We have 60 races
on RetroMUD -- but because we don't have dark elves (or Drow), people
complain.  We made minotaurs gentle behemoths who were forced into
insane rages when trapped in mazes -- people vociferously complain.
Mummies are a race of guardians who are meant to protect the human
race -- and everybody wants to know why they're not lurching undead
monstrosities.

In the future, we'd like to subdivide these races further, by allowing
players to choose a particular culture.  That is, there's the forest
elves of Anathaera, the desert elves of the Meritoson, etc.  But
still, this is a distinction we're creating because our role-play
element isn't nearly as strong.

On the other hand, we've encouraged players to generate racial
histories within their own role-playing spheres.  This has worked
well, but not well enough that we're going to dump 60 races tomorrow.

> I'm beginning to think that races are like sex, violence and
> EverQuest magic.  It's flashing, it's glitzy and it gets customers.
> Why would I want anything less?

Yup. Races sell a MUD.  Buck that trend and you risk alienating the
same player base who was turned off by Skyrealms of Jorune's famous
quote: "NO ELVES!"

D&D is still around.  Skyrealms of Jorune is a lot harder to find.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org

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