[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Freeman]

> From: SavantKnowsAll at cs.com [mailto:SavantKnowsAll at cs.com]

> That brings up a good question: How do we offer a game, with an
> associated montly fee of course, where advancement does not tie
> solely to the character?

As an example: Give every starting character an "estate" from which
all their characters originate, and tie most of the advancement to
the estate.  While you're at it, make the game community-centric
rather than character-centric - so the "object of the game" is to
build a community (by locating your estate near other players
estates, for example, and calling it a village) rather than the
object of the game being to build a character.  Because, IMO, MUDs
are about communities in the first place, not characters.

> The biggest draw to a persistant world is that your character
> advances and remains - persistant.

The appeal is in that *advancement* is persisted, not necessarily
characters.

> And when/if we do come up with this solution, isn't the true
> meaning of permadeath that you lose absolutely everything and have
> to start over? --thus bringing us back to the original point?

No, the true meaning of permadeath is that when a character dies it
is deleted, and that's all it means.  The problems that permadeath
is supposed to solve are solved by deleting the character even when
advancement isn't tied to the characterer.  Therefore, IMO,
permadeath need not include a complete wipe of the players entire
investment.

I suspect that the character-centric nature of muds is one of those
things that's done just because that's the way it has always been
done, since that's the way it's done in PnP RPGs.

I also suspect it's not the best way to do a MUD, since MUDs aren't
PnP RPGs, even if they are big and graphical.
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