>Nearly all D&D style MUDs use creatures/races from western mythology.
>What about myhts from other parts of the world (american Indian,
>Fijian , Australia ... Russian???) , or even from history (Norse
>legends , Aztec gods....)
Well, seeing that D&D, AD&D, Rolemaster, and so forth are all built upon
the basis of the original concept of Gary Gygax, the man who first
created D&D and then got sacked by TSR :) It is only natural to see so
many muds incorporate the truly interesting races, elves, dwarves,
halflings, etc. (some of these based all the way back to J.R.R.
Tolkien). Anyway, all these races are based on things in history or upon
the history of fiction. Elves date back, as far as I recollect, to the
Norse mythology, where elves danced on the mounds at night, misleading
young men on their way to their weddings. These fantasy stories telling
about strange trolls living beneath the bridges, elven maids living
under the mounds, are based on the troubles of the puberty, but that's a
whole other story :)
Anyway, since most mud-creators, according to my experience anyway, are
people who have played the arch-rpgs, d&d, ad&d, etc., they will
automatically create something that reminds them of this, and as it is
now, there are a very few people who actually know a lot about other
culture's mythology, etc.
If you look deeper into different religions and mythologies all around
the world, you can find striking similarities indeed.
I will concentrate mainly on norse, greek and aztec mythology and
religions as they are the ones I know most about :)
In the norse mythology we have the elven maids (or in the folkstories if
ye want it that way), in greek mythology/stories we have the sirens.
Thinking about it, most pre-christianity religions were nature (or
primitive as some might know them) religions. There are still a lot of
cultures that have nature religions, including the eskimos and a lot of
african tribes. Anyway, one of the most noteworthy of the ancient
religions/mythologies are the Aztecs and the Greeks. Both had advanced
gods of natural phenomenons. The greeks had gods whom they could
interact with, the aztecs lived in eternal fear for their wicked gods,
waiting for the return of Quetzalcoatl who would come back to destroy
their fifth sun.
A lot of variety can be brought into your mud with different cultures
alone. I am currently working out a rather large system of interacting
religions/deities, races and cultures all mixed up and made beautiful :)
that will make everything come to its own full right. Elves, dwarves,
halflings, etc. are just the names I've given them in the code, but
their actual names will depend on where in the world they are. If they
are in the greek-stylish world, they would become sirens, etc., and in
other places of the world, other races :)
Just my "short" version of this :)
-Henrik
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