[MUD-Dev] Spoken Languages & Food [was RP thesis...]

[Adam Wiggins]

> [Marian:]
> > Anything that distracts players from the numbers (stats and experience) game
> > is definitely desirable in a mud (in my opinion of course).
[Matt:]
> A noble sentiment, and one that I share. It's another reason why, whilst i
> wish to keep the notions of numerative stats, hps, and levels (lets not
> launch that one again.. these are not levels as you might know them, call
> them guild-rankings, whatever), I wish to deal with them internally. The
> player would see "You are very strong, and sturdy, but slow to learn."
> Rather than "Strength: 50, Toughness: 50, Learning: 10", and "You are very
> badly hurt, and bleeding." rather than "HP: 50/200".

Yup.  And although there tends to be kick-back to this sort of thing in
the established mud community, I think it actually makes the game *easier*
to get into.  One of the first muds I logged on to had an output that
looked something like this:

<right hand>   10
<left hand>    10
<right arm>    25
<left arm>     25
<torso>        75

etc.  This was pretty useless to me - I quickly figured out that the list
of numbers was somehow related to the damage level of each limb, but the
numbers were meaningless for a while.  I would have understood immediately,
however, if the output had been something like:

You have a nasty cut on your right arm and a bruise on your left leg.