[MUD-Dev] Morphable worlds, Reset based systems revisited

[Michael Tresca]

shren Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 3:50 PM

>   First off.  My objective is to keep someone from winning
>   (conquering the whole world), not to keep someone from losing
>   (losing all provinces).  I don't mind Omega getting it's ass
>   kicked right off the map, out of it's home, chased across the
>   map, whatever.  I mind Alpha killing everyone and ruling the map
>   for the rest of eternity.  If Alpha wants to take Omega's land,
>   absorb his empire, and crush Omega's capital under his heel,
>   that's fine with me.  I just see it as important to prevent
>   Alpha from doing that to everyone, thus, the limitation on the
>   productiveness of territory.

>   Second.  I like interesting tectical situations.  If Alpha has
>   an unbeatable, stable home, and Omega has an unbeatable, stable
>   home, then in the long run the 'story' has all of the dynamicism
>   of a TV sitcom.  Nothing ever really changes.

Anyone remember Ivory Towers?  One of my first MUDs.  Ivory Towers
had a city of law and a city of chaos.  Players picked their
allegiance when they started.  Certain guilds were only in certain
cities.

Between the two cities were passes.  The two groups were perpetually
at war.  The citizens of law couldn't attack each other, while the
citizens of chaos could kill anyone at any time for any reason.
Ironically, the "lawbies" were more dangerous because you couldn't
PK in the city -- thus serious PKers chose law because that excluded
half the MUD from killing them.

Occasionally, either side would set off a raid and slaughter the
other side.  Usually, the lawbies initiated it.

Ivory Towers was a PK-MUD.  If you died, you lost a level (with a
maximum of 20 levels).  Ironically, there was incredible guild
loyalty and in-game rules -- many of them crafted by the players,
not the code.  To give you an idea of just how brutal the place
could be, Genocide players went there "on vacation" while Genocide
was rebooting.

Ivory Towers seems to have disappeared again -- it's been blinking
in and out of existence for a bit now.  But it was definitely an
interesting experiment.  From my limited perspective as a player (as
both a lawbie and a chaosbie), it seemed quite full and neither side
perpetually gained an upper hand.

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





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