quick bit of background:
In the past couple of months, there's been a bit of an ongoing
debate on my mud about hack and slash vs. role play. Our mud has been
advertised as primarily hack and slash but rp friendly. Currently, what
that means is people can h & s any time they want, and if there's enough
on at one time that are like-minded, they do role-playing sessions. These
sessions usually take place in one room, no mobs allowed, everything from
skills,spells,combat, etc is done in emotes, etc.
We've been revamping though, and alot of the proposed changes are
ones that don't sit too well with me. In short, they demand RP ability
should be increased at the expense of h&s - not only give all new things
over to RP, have certain powers/eq/etc only gainable through rp sessions.
Then, remove from h&s and give directly to rp alot of other things -
basically making h&s less enjoyable so people will be more inclined to RP.
I think it can go without saying I think this is a silly idea.
Muds are for hack and slash. People already role play when they choose
"paladin" or "thief". Sure, you get the fans of big numbers - power
levelers who aren't happy without every piece of top eq, highest level,
etc, but the majority just want to do something dungeons and dragons like.
I think hhthat anything more (like simulated combat through emotes and the
sort) is probably best done on a MUSH - or IRC for that matter. MUD's are
simply not a good basis for RP-only worlds, MUSHes are.
So, to answer your question about player skills, i have two
suggstions:
1) Restart your MUD on a MUSH and go from there. There are alot of sci-fi
based mushes out there, and I'm sure a decent number of em are Star Trek.
2) If you're going to add anything, you have to (as was stated) consider
everything from the ground up. You shouldn't worry about how the players
are going to get thier money, until you've figured out if a player will be
happy sitting in one room, typing short commands for 5-10 minutes at a
stretch, or would they say "screw it" and run out to kill monsters and
make 20x as much in the first couple of kills. I think that if you want
to keep players, you have to realize that muds are hack and slash first,
everything else is tertiary. If you ignore that, you may be left with a
small number of rp-ers who are so focused on rp that they forget to
interact with anything but their environment.
To me, that doesn't sound like a desirable endpoint.
Figure out how to make it useful, and then how to integrate it with your
world so it's used, but not required and THEN whether it's rp-based or not
should be irrelevant. It doesn't hurt to throw a bit of 'how to make it
fun' in there either.
PjD
p.s. in my case, i'm giving into their demands - sort of. I'm writing up
a flag that if someone wants to be doing their version of RP, they simply
toggle it. They will still have full access to all their
skills/spells/etc, but nothing will cause any real effect. Two players
with this on can simulate adventuring, fighting, whathave you (simulating
on a simulation..sheesh.. these people need help). God help them if they
hit a real mob, cause they'll do no damage, but hey - that's the breaks.
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