[MUD-Dev] Sex and MUDs...

[Malcolm Tester II]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Travis Casey [mailto:efindel at earthlink.net]

> What would you actually code in?  Are you proposing that muds have
> characters get pregnant and have children?

I saw a system like this on a mud once where I was a player.  I
wrote my own system based on that for another mud.  basically, you
bought 2 potions.  One for 'verility', one for 'fertility'.  Each
player drank their potion, the one who drank the verility typed a
command...something like "impregnante <player>".  And voolah,
preggie.  Eventually they'd have a baby, which was just an object
carried in their inventory and did nothing.

When I wrote my system, I first created a black potion that would
cause, you guessed it, an abortion.  The Admin of that mud was
pretty unhappy with the whole system, but agreed to allow it if I
made abortions impossible, so I did.  He also wanted to make it so
only a married 'male' and 'female' could have a child, and then
limit it to a certain number of children.  Ok, fine.  whatever.
What happens to the 'neuter' characters, much less the gay people?
"Not that there's anything wrong with that", to quote Jerry
Seinfield.  My own personal views are actually aligned similarly
with this Admin's, but the coder in me wanted it to be more free.
So I made the changes, and also added in a 'baby sitting' feature
that required you to drop off your kid before going to fight.  Can't
put your child in danger, now can you??  You could also give your
child to the other parent if you wished.  At this point, the Admin
decided it was too controversial for his mud and I removed it.

However, I plan to add it back into mine.  Other features though
will include aging and feeding.  I believe if you're going to have a
kid, you should get all the good stuff that goes with it, just like
rl.  Staying up all night, the kid clinging to you when you want to
drop them off at the daycare, always hungry or sick, etc etc.  And
someday, they get old enough to go off to school to learn to be a
mage or warrior and then on to whatever.  The idea would be to
create new towns to be discovered by these "moderately advanced
NPCs".  Once grown up, you might find them as a shopowner in a town
far away or maybe the innkeeper next door.  And who knows, maybe
they'll give their parents a good discount *wink*.

Going back to the subject, "sex", that's a totally other thing.
Drinking a potion and typing a command leaves a lot to be desired.
But that's where the players can -choose- to expand with their own
roleplay.  Or not.  Maybe its some ice queen that just wants a baby.
But I agree with Matt Mihaly.  If they're on a mud, and they're
under 18, you should be more concerned about the violence than a
little bit of roleplayed sex.  They can only roleplay what they (or
their partner) knows about.  Violence, they learn.  They learn it
quickly too, when they have to kill kill kill to advance.

Oh yes, I'm back from vacation.  Now to those algorithms :) 

Malc

Malcolm W. Tester II
Information Technology Manager
PlanetCAD, Inc.
2520 55th Street, Suite 200
Boulder, CO  80301
Tel.  303.209.9220
Fax.  303.209.9200
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