[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[shren]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001 SavantKnowsAll at cs.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/5/01 9:53:22 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> jfreeman at verant.com writes:
 
>>  Which brings us to the obvious solution to the problem: Don't
>>  tie advancement (solely) to the character.
 
> That brings up a good question: How do we offer a game, with an
> associated montly fee of course, where advancement does not tie
> solely to the character? The biggest draw to a persistant world is
> that your character advances and remains - persistant.  Even the
> socializer likes having the trinkets and "ownership" that come
> with the persistance.  So how do we tie persistance without the
> character?  And when/if we do come up with this solution, isn't
> the true meaning of permadeath that you lose absolutely everything
> and have to start over? --thus bringing us back to the original
> point?

Dark Sun (the boxed tabletop set) had this odd little idea called
character trees.  You had not one but four characters, and when one
character gained experience, you got an equal amount of experience
to split between the four inactive ones.  The best advantage to this
in tabletop was that you had characters of nearly the same level to
replace your fallen comrades.  There are lots of other interesting
things to do with this, such as have completely non-combat
characters, such as craftsmen, who now have a way to get experience
other than making a hundred thousand widgets.  (I'm thinking of UO
in the last sentance.)

I wonder what UO would have been like with this concept from the
beginning?  There would be some rough problems, but if they were
worked out, then you could make a good mage without buying enough
reagents to fill a swimming pool.

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