On Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:53:04 -0600 Patrick Dughi <dughi@IMAXX.NET> writes: [...] > While I thrill to the idea of a strict D&D system, I hardly > become excited towards the idea of enforced roleplaying. Truth to be told, > I cannot believe that anyone can successfully run a MUD; something > based primarily on the killing of monsters to gain equipment and increase > power (be it skills, levels, or what have you); and have it 'primarily' a > role playing environment. the enforced roleplaying is more along the lines of not being allowed to use public or talk channels to do in character things. Thus, if you want to get a band together to slay the dragon, you would have to walk around the mud, going to town squares and other meeting places, and ask people via say if they would like to join your quest...they couldn't just gossip Anyone who wants to kill the dragon with me come to recall! >[...] > The analogy to running a MUD as a roleplaying environment is > something like having videogames behind the theatre stage. Your > players came for the video games, but like to have a theatre environment. > They get pissed when you make them perform as actors. You get pissed > because all they want to do is sneak off and play video games. Also, roleplaying will not so much be enforced as encouraged...ie if you act for a while, you get free arcade tokens. On many muds, you would feel that you are wasting your time standing around the town square, having an in character conversation, but here that is encouraged, and RP imms will do things to accentuate your rp... such as echos of interesting things, switching into mobs and bringing them in, etc. During one of these sessions, an imm could generate a unique item and give it to a participant, or pass out experiance awards for good roleplaying...much like in AD&D. > Further, even the people who came to act are going to be > pissed off. They want to do their part, but there are no supporting cast > members. Also, if they want to play something other than the 'new > kid in town', they have to play the video games too; your theatre assigns > roles based on your standing on the video games in the back. The king, > simply, will not appear as a level 1, 18 year old warrior with 'Shiny Newbie > Armor'. > > Perhaps you can get around this if you have some massively indepth > and regulated system for object acquisition and customization. Perhaps > the value of the equipment he has is zero, but it _looks_ like he's a > king. Of course, it ruins the 'play' if the magic sword he hands out to > slay the (game-based) dragon is just fancy crap. Seems that you have two > choices; I could think of two solutions: 1) Eq is strictly OOC. To see what a character is actually dressed like, you must view their description via look. It will work until i find a better system. 2) Eq is not rampant like in many MUDs...there is not 20 different types of platemail with different stats, etc. All soldiers are going to wear the same kind of chainmail shirt...with different strings perhaps, but the same stats. Thus, character's will be encouraged to dress for rp as well as increased stats. A peasant character wearing a rough wool tunic would be just as good as a king character in his robes of state. If a peasant found a suit of armor, he would surely wear it, while a king who is going into battle (a usual state in most muds) would also wear armor. A king however, may use his resources (unless he is a poor king) to buy himself a gold plated suit of armor, from the best blacksmith in the country. The king goes to the blacksmith, and "orders" a suit of gold chainmail. There is a small fee attached to getting an object with a custom desc, but you may gain rp awards for good roleplaying. Again, the enforced roleplaying comes in. A character would not be allowed to go to the blacksmith and "order" kevlar body armor. Any abuse of a character's strings that are meant for roleplaying will result in a NO_STRINGS tag, that keeps the characters from modifying them. > Either fully integrate your roleplaying into your game world > (ie, make it primarily a game world, and allow your roleplaying to > develop as a natural course of things, and play a _small_ role) but not too small > Remove the things that will eventually detract from the > roleplaying (ie, items with stats, fighting, levels, stats > (str/dex/etc + hitpoints/etc). Definitly not! > Of course, I'd certainly play the first, I'd never > personally play the second. Neither would I. ^Blaize^ ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! 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