Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
From: rossw@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Ross Williamson)
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 21:42:18 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

jamie@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jamieson Norrish) writes:

>In article <TRSNYDER.92Nov12185045@queen.mcs.Drexel.edu> trsnyder@mcs.Drexel.edu (Bob Snyder) writes:

>   Dragon's Den does this.  There are no experience points, only skill
>   points, which increase with use.  Levels are determined by your skills
>   proficency.  The more you use a weapon or spell, the better you get at
>   it. 

>This is certainly a step in the right direction. However, why have
>levels at all? As far as I am aware, their only use is to increase
>hit-points, so that the player can take on tougher monsters. This
>really has no justification in reality, and is simply a hang-over from
>*D&D, which certainly has a lot to answer for.

	D&D seems to affected most of the muds around esp. at the start.
We need to break away from the old style muds and take skill systems
by the horns.

>IMHO, combat should be deadly. That is, characters should have few hit
>points, which don't increase (unless something changes the character
>physically), and damage is debilitating. That is, the fewer hp you
>have, the greater the penalties on your skill rolls. And after two or
>three good blows, any human should be dead.

	We are going to employ a different system where the player has a 
number of lives (that can be regenerated) and once you run out of lives 
thats it the games over.  ie player file effectively deleted in RL 
probably moved to another directory :)

>Obviously this would require a radical change in the whole set up of
>MUDs, but I believe that the idea is worth exploring, especially in
>conjunction with a skill system which has a large number of
>non-martial skills, and the opportunity to use them.

	What we are trying to approach on the mud I run is a system 
where there is no real fighter players as such.  Essentailly what we
are hoping to have is players with a range of skills that when they
combine as a group are quite powerful but alone they stand more of a chance
of being breakfast.  In this way we also have to provide for these different
skills it's not just a matter of saying right you have a skill of climbing
unless the player has some reason to learn it.  What wizards ( when
they are coding ) are going to need to supply uses for these specific skills.

>   This is what we have in mind for guilds, once we get a chance to
	[ Stuff deleted ]
>   members be parts of different guilds....

>Quite; and the people who did the training, and who decided who could
>join would be none other than the players themselves. Anyone with a
>high enough level in a skill should be able to teach someone who isn't
>as good in that particular skill. There is nothing which says there
>must only be one guild of each type. Of course, chances are the
>players involved in one guild will not appreciate their profits being
>diverted into someone else's pockets.

	There is nothing to say that the trainer has to be a NPC/mobile
or a real life player... it's all relative :)


>Guilds, when composed entirely of players, would no longer be faceless
>organizations; they would be dynamic, with power struggles for the top
>job, financial troubles, feuds with rival guilds and so on. And the
>most wonderful part is that it is all down to the players.

>Thus player interaction is born....

	So whens the first election, assinations, coups, etc :)

Can't wait ( I'm all for it actually )

Ross