[MUD-Dev] Enforced log out aka "real sleep"

[Michael Tresca]

Brian Hook posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 1:53 AM

> One of my guilty, embarrassing pleasures is reading World of
> Darkness fiction.  Vampire: The Masquerade, Wraith, Werewolf,
> Mage, etc. fiction put out by White Wolf.  There are a couple
> authors that are actually reasonably good (Richard Lee
> Byers)...but I digress.

My sympathies. > :)

> Now, take this and stick it straight into an on-line game and you
> have a problem.  Vampire characters aren't going to want to be
> limited to the hours they can play.  So do you just give up on the
> concept, come up with some hacky work around, or do you pretend it
> really IS a World of Darkness and thus daylight never comes into
> play?  Mandatory log out seems like a really bad idea though, but
> in this particular case, it's what's necessary (hell, I'm not sure
> how a mixed werewolf/vampire PnP session would handle this).

There are several elements that are necessary to a universe to
really enforce these kinds of penalties.  This is how RetroMUD
handles it:

  - We do have day/night cycles, which vary by world.  Some worlds
  are bright all the time (the jungles of Sosel) while others are
  eternally dark (the underworld of Crypt).  Which means that
  vampires party on Crypt all day long, but avoid Sosel.  The other
  worlds have "normal" cycles wherein the sun rises and sets.

  - Vampires take damage from sunlight.  The only way around being
  damaged when the sun rises is to hide indoors or through darkness
  magic.

  - At any time, any PC (who has the ability to sleep, not all races
  can) can rest.  This increases regeneration.

  - At inns, PCs can regenerate faster by resting.

  - If a PC is idle for a prolonged period, his character falls
  asleep wherever he is.  Which discourages idlers in dangerous
  areas.

In short, we didn't restrict the vampire cycle so much as we dealt
with the sunlight issue.  With multiple worlds, a lot of the
concepts like the rotation of the sun and moon are de-emphasized.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev