[MUD-Dev] Logical MUD Areas

[Kwon Ekstrom]

From: "Greg Munt" <greg.munt at btinternet.com>
> From: Scion Altera <keeler at teleport.com>

>> Ditch the human built areas and go for generated ones. Seperate the
>> mobs from the areas entirely: create groups of mobs that go
>> together, for instance "a goblin village" and "a human
>> village". Then, your group of goblins can be loaded in a suitable

>> The goblins, fed up about being attacked and killed so much, check
>> out the humans and decide they are outmatched, so the village is
>> unloaded and the game picks another suitable location to put

> I think that this scenario is unrealistic. A community would not
> leave, unless they lived in mobile dwellings, or were constantly on
> the move, to follow their food supply. I would expect goblin
> communities to band together against their common enemy. I would
> expect a war to develop. Or terrorist attacks aimed at getting the
> humans to leave. You just don't leave your home that easily! I'd be
> interested in portraying goblins in a realistic way, too. Instead of
> the player-fodder token evil NPCs, they should be seen as simply
> another race of sentient intelligence. They should bear children,
> raise them, make demands on local resources, just as humans
> do. There should be some empathy.

First off, as someone mentioned (Michael Stoddart), goblins are not
humans.  IRL this isn't a problem, there's only one sentient race,
that'd be us Humans, in an RPG setting with multiple races, this does
become a problem...  simple racial hatred might be a driving force
(even amung us humans this was/is a more than adequate reason for
extermination)

Second, computers need a somewhat limited range of options to make an
efficient selection.  In this case, Goblins are more likely to get
mobile and raid outlying human outposts... They might not move too
far, but they'd move and then they'd likely not pick on a force unless
outnumbering 4-1 (reminds me of some local gangsters...)

The equation for the computer at this point is simple, they've found
us, lets move (goblins tend to have somewhat meager possessions,
except for rare cases)... we've run across someone, do we outnumber
them ? attack : retreat

As for empathy, I admit that there should be more to a game than kill
kill kill, there should be more flavor to mobs than just wander attack
die, but I don't think empathy is the correct word for it.  For some
reason I don't have "intellectual identification with the feelings,
thoughts, or attitudes" of inanimate objects.  Inanimate objects don't
have feelings, thoughts or attitudes.

-- Kwon Ekstrom

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