[Circle] Role Playing in CircleMud

From: Lost Empire (Gkelly1@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 08/18/96


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		|
|					|
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