> I'm trying to come a way to adequately have an "open-ended" system where
> not everyone look alike and yet balance the system. Take for example,
> let's say I code in GURPS system and allow profession templates. I had
> in mind where you take the knight profession but you still can learn
> thief skills, just at a higher cost. You could also learn magic,
> provided you customized and took magery advantage. Now, would that
> still be a class system as defined by the current systems? Or could
> that be considered class-less? Words can be vague and misleading. I
> guess one has to examine what do people mean when they say class-less or
> level-less.
Sounds like it'd be more accurate to say 'skill-based'.
There's alot of muds out there like this, I'd recommend looking at
godwars for one quick interpretation of this (though since players
eventually max out all their skills, it's usually more of a sort of
...player vs. player mud)
> As for being open-ended, I had in mind where you could increase your stats
> but it gets harder and harder to increase your stat or skill to the next
> point. I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good or bad idea. I am on a
> mud that has the remort system and stats that can go as high as 500.
> (really expensive but doable and time-consuming). I guess it's a system
> just like any other. One can only come up with a system and hope that the
> game is fun enough that people want to play. :)
>
Personally speaking, I like a system where you can increase any
skill, any stat, etc, but only up to a certain amount, and only
(collectively) a certain number of times. That is, the number of times
they can increase a skill will allow them to gain an adequate level of
usage of maybe 1/8 of the skills in the game, or mastery in 1/12'th (but
not both!)
I just like the idea of having a mud where characters are always
capable of being beaten by someone else, even if they are at the pinacle
of development, but not have it so simple as a rock-paper-scissors game.
This will also require grouping at later stages.
> As for coding in the GURPS system, I'd imagine that I wouldn't be able to
> put the mud up since it's a copyrighted system. I'm pretty sure that I'd
> have to request permission from Steve Jackson Games to do so. I can't
> imagine they'd deny it since I wouldn't make any money off it. :) Assuming
> that I get it off the ground, of course. :p
I pitched this idea to my girlfriend a while back when the mud-dev
list was talking about free licence role-playing rules (like, D&D is
prohibitively licenced, but D6 is free as in beer).
Btw, my girlfriend works for Steve Jackson Games.
Apparently, they have a pretty hard core anti-mud stance. They
don't want anyone using their system, or anything that even SEEMS like
their system, anywhere. They especially don't want anyone claiming that
it uses their system.
Looking for some discrete proof of this, I found the following
link: http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html. Contained
therein;
"<can I> Create my own MUD, MUSH or computer game based on a SJ Games
property?
In general, no. These conflict with our licensing program. If you are a
professional game developer and want to talk about licenses, write to the
Director of Licensing.
The exception to this rule has to do with the In Nomine background. You
can get permission to run a M*, IRC channel, or other Online Roleplaying
Community (ORC) for In Nomine."
Of course, the idea of a skill-based mud in and of itself isn't
trademarked. :)
PjD
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