[MUD-Dev] Whereabouts of 'Evil MUD Admin' Handbook

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 10 January 2003, Raph Koster wrote:

> Well, my assumption had always been that it was ironic, actually.

It has its ironies and it has its truth. When you read it and
suddenly think, "ye gods, could he actually be SERIOUS about this?",
that's the point of balance.

> But among the items we ended up discussing in our correspondence
> was the rivalry that existed at the time between MUD1 and MIST.

This was a one-way rivalry; MIST may have looked on MUD1 with
rivalry, but I don't recall MUD1's looking at MIST that way. After
all, I could have had MIST wiped from the DEC-10 at any moment;
Lorry may have had his finger on the privileges button for MIST, but
I had mine on the power switch.  As far as I was concerned, what
happened in MIST was the business of the players. If people wanted
to play it, fair enough. I've always seen virtual worlds as a force
for good, and was pleased to see different interpretations of them
arise. Lorry knew what he was doing, it worked, why should I
complain?

> My favorite particular bit was a cartoon of him about to take a
> chainsaw to you.

That's supposed to be me in that picture, is it?

> As he described it, his goal was to make being a wizard
> effectively part of the game, essentially making it into a
> political PvP game.

Yes, he was. MIST was an easy game from a play-it-as-written point
of view. People got to the end without undergoing any of the
wishy-washy identity journey stuff <plug> that I describe at great
length in the book I'm still writing</plug> . Consequently, in order
to make it worthwhile, Lorry developed a meta-game of
please-the-despot.  Interestingly, similar games have been developed
for MOOs and other social worlds, albeit perhaps not quite so
explicitly as with MIST.

> He outright stated that he made fun of them in "Confessions" in
> part to make it clear to the Wizards that they were players, like
> mortal players were.

Like he was, too.

Richard


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