[MUD-Dev] No bots allowed

[Roy Trubshaw]

On 22 March 2002 at 21:05 Travis Casey wrote:

>   2 - Initiative.  Not in the paper RPG sense of "who goes first",
>   but in the sense of "who's in control."  In a traditional RPG
>   scenario, the PCs are the active component -- they go to the
>   monsters, the monsters don't come to them.  In many games,
>   especially older text-based ones, monsters won't even give chase
>   when you flee.  The upshot is that while the game designer
>   chooses

I seem to remember that the damn dwarves followed you in 'Advent' on
the DECSystem 10. (The Pirate, who was also a dwarf under the skin,
actively sought you out!) My favourite monster from that era was
from the Cambridge version of Advent - the Gooseberry Goblins - who
would even follow you out of the game!!!

>   the place of the fight, the players choose the timing.  They can
>   freely take time to go get the most powerful weapons, the best
>   armor, and the best healing and magic they can.  The monsters,
>   in contrast, generally have to handle the players with whatever
>   the designer gave them.

It's always fun to give mobiles something to do in the time that
they have between combats, and scouring the local environment for
likely weapons seemed to me to be a fitting activity.

However the main advantage of 'big' monsters, (in the sense that
they require a lot of vanquishing) is that they provide an obvious
target that can best be handled by a group of players acting in
concert. MUD provided little enough reward for cooperative play and
this was one way to redress the balance.

Toodle pip, 
Roy Trubshaw
--
"... the fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by the
superficial design flaws."
Douglas Adams (1952-2001): So Long and Thanks For All The Fish.
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