[MUD-Dev] History, background and religion

[Richard Ross]

Joachim wrote:
> I know that most existing MUDs don't have either a history, background
> or religion. What I'm wondering is how many of you do have a (more or
> less) well thought-out history for your MUD? Are you borrowing stuff from
> our own history? How do you handle names (of people and places) in case
> you dont? Religion and gods? Do the implemtation of it all differ from
what
> you first planned it to be, and why?

I started designing my Mud (Yhared, roughly named after my third son
Jared... children are a great source of inspiration) a few months before
Christmas, and one of the first things I decided on was to create a
prehistory of the mud (i.e. what happened before now).  I also decided that
I could keep a log of major events and write them up periodically into an
ongoing history.  Doing this would also let me write the players actions
into the history, giving them more of a sense of immersion.
I've been writing the prehistory as I go along, adding bits here and there
as I add things to the mud code, and incorporating new things as new ideas
come up (for example, the recent addition of an Orcish player race west of
the High Elves realm meant a rewrite of a period of High Elf history to
include the initial border wars between the two races, and the uneasy peace
that now exists).  I'm not naive enough to assume that the history will be a
part-time thing - as the player base grows (that's the plan anyway!) I hope
that we'll get a few immortals on staff who have a creative writing flare
and -want- to write up the histories.  Since we're trying to keep things
very dynamic, they should be busy :).

As to background, we've decided to give players the chance to make a few
"past decisions" from a catalog of questions - their answers added to a few
random "past events" will alter their character in subtle ways (nothing  too
earthshattering).  I feel that if every single character had their home
burned by race x, or their wife stolen by bad_guy y, they'd all be
revenge-ridden emotional burnouts.

Finally, Religion - we've decided to start with three basic religions (the
obvious God of Good, God of Neutrality/Nature, God of Evil), but we're also
allowing players to develop their own religions (starting off as a cult,
developing into a faith, finally into a religion as the number of followers
grow).  It's meant a bit more work at the start, but nothing like creating a
dozen individual religions would.  Mind you, it's not been tested yet
either, so it might all fall over.

Richard Ross (Head Ruler, Yhared MUD)
*** if it ain't dynamic, it's dead ***




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