[MUD-Dev] Striving for originality

[shren]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Matt Mihaly wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, John Buehler wrote:
 
>> If you want to do damage, get a sword.
 
> Ugh. This illustrates what is, to me, the singlest ugliest trend
> in MUDs (whether graphical or text), which is the idea that thing
> <X> -should- work like Y. To me, saying that something like magic,
> which doesn't exist in the physical world, should have properties
> Z and effects A, B, and C screams box-thinking. Surely magic can
> be whatever a designer designs it to be. There's nothing
> inherently good nor bad about magic doing damage, or not doing
> damage. It's all dependent on your specific design. We have enough
> people who can't or won't think beyond D&D as it is. Let's not
> create new boxes.

I think you're growling a little loud at us for just having an
innocent discussion.  For all fantasy computer games I've played,
all of them, the "magic users" have always had a way to blast the
enemy, and this method was either used most of the time or not used
at all because it was either more or less powerful than using
weapons.  Generations of RPGs have had "balance issues" between
magic and weapons, and usually balance them in the traditional way,
some kind of meter on magic, despite the fact that fantasy mages
from various sources seldom spend thier time counting mana and
reagents like beans.

If you want to talk about boxes, you might measure the one you're
in.  We haven't even got a working case of our box yet.


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