[MUD-Dev] "The Artisan's Hands" - Storytelling tools

[Miroslav Silovic]

Michael Tresca wrote:

> While I find the term "get real" ironic in a discussion about
> virtual games, I submit that most MUDs believe that they folks who
> "know about this stuff" are the ones they want to play their game,
> which are other MUDders, not other gamers in general.  The
> implication is that all MUDs WANT completely new players and from
> my experience, that isn't true.

This discussion was rather frequent on the MUSHes and MOOs where I
played and adminned. The general conclusion is always the same: the
population that we can draw from is suffuciently small that every
new player matters. And a player will very likely stick to his very
first MUD for his player lifetime (which is, in places where I play,
3-6 years as active player). Also, the most valiable player is the
one who does stick to your game - they will form the community that
you can count on, regardless of what happens to the game.

This coming from somebody who spend awhile on RetroMUD (not nearly
as much as I wanted to spend, due to a rather nasty access loss):
RetroMUD player community is more than equipped to deal with the new
players, and I never had any problem at all getting help (mind you,
I was far from a new player when I started on Retro, but the game
itself is sufficiently idiosyncratic that I had to learn things
before I could do anything).

Perhaps the good answer to this is that you have to train your old
timers to work with the new players. After all, it's a fun thing to
do for them, too. Especially since you're offering remorts, allowing
the oldbies to restart as low levels again.

    Miro



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