[MUD-Dev] 3rd person text MUDs

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 12:18:23 +1200, Colin Coghill
<C.Coghill at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> Every MUD I've ever seen worked in the first person "you do this",
> "Bob laughs at you".

Technically, the *MUD* is working in second person. It's the
*player* that's working in first person. But that's just being
nitpicky. ;)

> Has anyone tried it in the third person. Where you "look" in a
> room and see your character from the outside?

Well, I suppose you could say my system does that. The display shows
*your* ship as well as other people's, and makes no effort to
replace your name with "you" when you look at something you own.

The system is not currently public, though, and hasn't been for
about five years. It was *never* public in a true multiplayer
capacity. I don't know what the players are going to think of this
now that MUDs are pretty common things; in the past, those who
played it regularly thought it was incredible, but those who didn't
thought it was just too complex.  I'm trying to address the
complexity issue, but the complexity is a large part of what makes
it so much fun.

I'll refrain from gushing about all the really cool implications
this has. ;)

> Aside from making the code behind sending event messages to
> players a little easier (guess what I'm writing at the moment) are
> there any other advantages to this?

It promotes a certain degree of player disassociation. That may or
may not be a bonus in your system. With an individual, I think it's
probably NOT a bonus... but with an object, as in my system, I think
it is. Your mileage may vary.

The primary bonus is how easy it makes multiple characters and
character-sharing; since you already have a conceptual gap between
player and character, you can make the player and character objects
completely separate. Then who "owns" the character and who's *using*
the character can be two different things, just like having one and
playing one can be two different things. Basically, while characters
interact with the game world and the objects there, players can
interact with characters in the same fashion -- using them,
borrowing them, even giving them away.

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