[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Travis Casey]

"Freeman, Jeff" wrote:
>> From: SavantKnowsAll at cs.com [mailto:SavantKnowsAll at cs.com]

> I suspect that the character-centric nature of muds is one of
> those things that's done just because that's the way it has always
> been done, since that's the way it's done in PnP RPGs.
 
> I also suspect it's not the best way to do a MUD, since MUDs
> aren't PnP RPGs, even if they are big and graphical.

I've pointed out before that, while that may be the way that the
rules of most PnP RPGs are written, that's not the way they're
usually played.  In most D&D groups, for example, if one character
dies, that player's next character does not start out at zero
experience points, but rather either about on the level with or
slightly below the rest of the party's current experience points.

Further, many groups will allow a player to abandon an old character
and start a new one of the same experience or point value, if they
grow tired of their old character.

A few PnP RPGs have written in rules to allow for this sort of
thing. In Bushido, for example, a character's Karma value at the of
the character's death could give the player bonus points to use in
creating his/her next character.  Most characters in the RPG Nobilis
are humans who have had a soul-shard of an Imperator (basically, a
god) implanted in them, and because of that have a share of the
Imperator's knowledge and power.  A character may be killed, but it
is nearly impossible to destroy the soul-shard within it, so the
player's next character can simply be the next person chosen to
carry that soul-shard.  In some games with a mystical or fantasy
bent (e.g., WitchCraft), a player may be able to play the ghost or
revenant of their dead character, thus giving them at least a second
shot with that character.  Multiverser has a rule whereby characters
never die -- when they would die, they're simply moved to a new
universe (I haven't played the game myself, but I understand that
this can be very hard on the GM... if you think running a split
group is bad, imagine running one in which the characters are in
three different universes!)

Heck, even second edition AD&D had a rule in the Legends & Lore book
for allowing PCs to be reincarnated after their death -- that was in
their writeup for the Hindu religion.

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