Re: [Circle] Role Playing in CircleMud

From: Charles Canning (charles@engr.mun.ca)
Date: 08/19/96


Hi, 

Our development group has put a lot of consideration into the development 
of a RP'ing mud. Here are ome suggestions that I will give to you.

1) remove the current combat system from circle. There is no way to have 
a truly role-playing mud with a hack'n'slash combat engine. Real battle 
is not automatic without thought. People will realy reconsider just 
killing if the have to think/perform/ and put some real effort into it.

2) get a really good set of builders. have a purpose/goal to each area. 
Have a purpose for mobs and give them personalities and make them, more 
real. (here, I suggest a lot of spec-procs or something new and totaly 
ingenious. 

3) strip out a lot of the informational commands because it takes away 
from the game. Just be very qualitative and not quantitative. be very 
descriptive about PC's and NPC's. 

Well, these are just a few suggestions off the top of my head. To take on 
such an endeavor will take a fair amount of time and considerable work, 
but I think it will be worth it in the end. Also, don't place any bounds 
on the development cycle. Let your builders use their imagination to 
their full potiental and use it to force your coders to test their 
ingenuity. You will be surprised what can be accomplished then.

Later..
...Chuck

Crom of Dragon'Spire



On Sun, 18 Aug 1996, Lost Empire wrote:

> If you have no interest in seeing some real role playing in circlemud,
> then the this message is probably of no interest to you....
> 
> 
> Every once in a while i used to goto the mud connector and say to myself
> "I want to find a new, fun, circlemud today." To my distress, i found
> that over 50% of the circlemuds are the same as they came out of the
> box, with some new zones, sometimes chessy classes and races with no
> real point to them, and no inteligent coding done to them. The rest of
> the circlemuds that obviously have someone intelligent at the wheel have
> some nice coding examples, but when it comes down to it, it is still
> 
> kill mob
> get all corpse
> wear all
> 
> again and again, that is basically all most circlemuds require of you,
> with occasionally an immortal droping down saying he has hide items, and
> if you find them, you win a prize. 
> 
> When i decided i wanted to run my own circlemud, i sat down with almost
> no plan, just as most people do. I sat down, and in the first couple
> days added races, clans, clan commands, about 10 new spells, and all of
> that other "generic stuff". Then, i used my small brain to think. I was
> creating exactly what i had hated...i was making a circlemud, the
> exactly the same as everyone elses with some new features. SO, i have
> decided to write to you here at the circlemud mailing list, to do a few
> things.
> 
> 1) I would like to know if anyone has ever addressed added more   
> role-playing into your muds, and make this role-playing something   
> that is just there, so the players don't have me saying "go   
> role-play!". I am looking for some inteligent ways to add these   
> features. My first thought is to restructure/remove the current level   
> system, with just getting XP from killing monsters and such, maybe   
> even make it so my mud has no levels, but that creates many problems   
> such as a players insentive to want to log on. If levels were totally   
> removed, there would have to be different 'goals' for players to   
> reach along the lines of role-playing.
> 
> 2) Is there anyone out there interested in undergoing this project
> with    me? I am not scouting for coders here, but if anyone out there
> has    the same ambitions as i do i would love to have you. Of course,
> you    would need to be pretty good with c. We have enough muds filled
> with 
>    snippets out there, and this would envolve some serious coding.
> 
> 3) How about starting an intelligent discussion without flames and   
> insults to discuse role-playing in circlemuds, if you think it is a   
> good idea or not, some ways to go about running and coding a   
> role-playing mud and such.
> 
> 
> If you are interested, i would love to hear what you think about the
> subject.
> 
> -----------------------------------------
> |Greg Kelly        THE LOST EMPIRES     |
> |		 Broke			|
> |		  and			|
> |		SiteLess		|
> |					|
> |         gkelly1@ix.netcom.com		|
> |					|
> -----------------------------------------
> +-----------------------------------------------------------+
> | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
> |   http://cspo.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list_faq.html   |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------+
> 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
|   http://cspo.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list_faq.html   |
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