From: boserj@netcom.com (Jeffrey Boser)
Subject: Re: Hack'n'slash not for me
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 92 19:42:27 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

Boy, this is funny, really.  Who would think that the following
scenerio could possible be boring:
 Wait for a monster in its usual spot.
 Kill the monster.
 Gets its stuff.
 Go sell its stuff.
 Wait for monster...

sheesh.  youd think the guys who write these muds know nothing
about game design, balance, and implementation.  And they
dont.  Most seem to get their ideas from neat coding ideas
and other muds..  There is so little originality and depth
in muds, that when it pops up, its amazing.

Ive been playing roleplaying games, as player and master, for
many years, and have found that only a small percentage
know what the hell they are doing.  Only a tenth of the
games do things click and as master or player the participants
begin to work together, and weave a tale worth telling.

I love laughing at idiots who start talking about +5 swords,
all these high levels, and powerful monsters or gods they
killed.  Its a joke.  The best games I have ever been in
were as 1st level, in over my head, and running like hell
from the authorities/guild/monsters.  And my friends were
in exactly the same spot.

Fact is, even the quests are the same in muds.  They just regenerate,
and all they are are is guessing games or special monsters
or rooms or stuff.  No life, no depth.

When I played, and the bunch of us players finally, after all
that mess and damn near dead ourselves, killed that evil priest
who had been tormenting the city..  he was *dead*.  The city
was different.

And you know, all this shallow work is pretty predictable.  Hell,
most of the mud designers think that adding a few new races or
guilds will make it more interesting, when the ad&d ideas were
never really meant for text adventure in the first place..  of
course things are gonna be simple and fake..  of course things
never change.

As a master and player, we worked with the world, it changed,
and we changed along with it.  Muds dont have that..  the
worlds are fixed, and you folks just wander in and see the
sights and leave.  You dont even get to keep that broadsword
when you go to sleep for gods sake.  Every day you have to 
sneak to the those damn generation areas to get new equipment
and money..  over and over.  beat the same monsters.

And even if the monsters are different, they are still the
same, they still generate, you still have to sell their stuff,
you have to worry about alignment, and everything is just
numbers.

And yes, I do have solutions to these problems.  Not that
I have any machine to run a mud on.

What I find so funny here is that you make the people who
sit for hours figuring out the silly quests, and beating
monster after monster the ones to build the damn things.
So why would you expect anything but repetition?

I know of only one mud that even tries to do its own thing.
And I dont mean stupid story ideas.  I mean a whole depth,
game rules, environment, etiquette, and world..  but even
that has limitations.

cummon folks.  go pick up a copy of ShadowRun or RuneQuest
or Gurps, and play it.  Find out how the story works, and
how the players work with it.   Work out ways to work together,
to make the story more interesting.  Make the goal to be
a bigger part of the world, instead of levels and experience.
(my story teller Gilthe in DragonGate was more known and loved
than characters with 3 times my levels and money, and all I did
was sit and tell stories about the world).


.....jeff