[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Jon Lambert wrote:

> Matt wrote:
  
>> Or, why assume that you have clerics at all? And why assume that if
>> you do, they can resurrect dead people? There is a very large (and
>> to me very annoying) presumption by many people on this list that
>> we all make games that are basically taken straight out of TSR
>> products.
 
> Excellent.  We've been living with these 4 character stereotypes (ie
> cleric, fighter, wizard, thief) since the 70's..  They even permeate
> modern games and sci-fi games.  (medic, soldier, techie, spy).. etc.
> Add anything new to the game... and one is forced to describe it in
> terms of "well the frobozz is like a cleric and a mage...blah blah"

Yes, it's quite lame. I remember a thread here a year or so back that
just made me sick. It wasn't just a thread about the thief class in
your game. It was a thread about how to make one specific thief
ability work better. The implicit assumption being that we all have
thieves and that we've all ripped off our thieves from D&D.

On the flip side, however, is the fact that people like and identify
with the familiar. For example, what we did in Achaea was name a few
classes with familiar names. The classes are: Paladin, Priest, Druid,
and Monk, Magi. (Our other classes don't have familiar names at all:
Infernals, Occultists, Sentinels, Serpentlords). Originally Paladins
were called Templars, but we eventually changed them to Paladin to
provide a stronger association for most people.

Once you actually have the class though, you realize that our classes
have almost nothing to do with standard D&D classes. The abilities are
completely different (for instance, Priests can heal the 40 odd
afflictions quickly with their Healing skill, get a Guardian Angel who
can do about 30-40 odd things, and get Devotion, which lets you do
various abilities like convocate friends out of danger, or set up a
Rite of Prayer, etc. Most of the functionality of the abilities is
completely unfamiliar to D&D types. We refuse to even put in something
'basic' like a fireball for Magi.

On the one hand we get a lot of compliments on our originality and I'm
sure that is why some players are willing to spend so much money on
Achaea. On the other hand, I have little doubt that the lack of
familiarity causes a lot of Diku types to go "WTF???" and log off.

--matt

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