[MUD-Dev] Secondary characters as a mechanic

[John Buehler]

Damion Schubert writes:
> From: Brian Hook

>> These characters can be played simultaneously, but the game would
>> focus on the "party as character" and "primary as character".
>> For example, faction would be carried at the party level.

> I've considered this idea before.  Where I end up getting stuck is
> why anyone would join a group with another person if they could be
> this self-sufficient.  It does have the possibility of working in
> a more war-oriented game (like Shadowbane), but then again, one
> could argue that it already exists in the form of Nexon's MMORTS
> Shattered Galaxies.

If you give players the ability to do (A, B, C) or (B, C, D) and you
then create tasks that require (A, B, C, D) you end up with a
requirement/encouragement that players work together.  It doesn't
matter if you do this by glomming your ability subsets into classes
that a single character can possess, or permit a subset to be
alloted to multiple characters that a single player can operate.  In
the end, you have a player that has control over a subset of all
abilities in the game world needed to accomplish certain tasks.  For
those tasks, players will have to cooperate.

With the multiple characters approach, the abilities available to a
player can be altered by disabling one of the multiple characters.
With the single character approach, the means of altering a player's
available abilities usually comes in the form of spells and counters
such as 'disarm' (to take away their martial ability) or 'root' (to
take away their ability to move).

JB


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