Member Discussions

Just curious, what annoys the general role player most about certain mud features or what is a turn off when looking for a rp mud? rules/areas/commands/etc

1. Notes on the MUD's bulletin board system that are
   
   
   1. on the wrong board;
      
   2. carry a promising title but fail to deliver that content, asking others to come up with it instead.
      

E

                              Your MUD Name Here
                              lib/text/greetings

                            Based on CircleMUD 3.1,
                            Created by Jeremy Elson

                      A derivative of DikuMUD (GAMMA 0.0),
                created by Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt, Katja Nyboe,
               Tom Madsen, Michael Seifert, and Sebastian Hammer

By what name do you wish to be known? 

Now that's annoying. There are about 20 similar variations. The above is just an example.

Asuming your reply was aimed at this thread:

Regarding 1.a:

Roleplayer's Forum: Discussions about roleplaying within muds, or anything roleplay related.

I fail to see why this thread is on the wrong board, it's roleplay related. As in the information could be used to improve any rp environment if desired.

Regarding 1.b:

I wouldn't have started this thread if I had already decided what is annoying or not. I left the content open so everything could be addressed without already setting out the direction this thread would take by listing my own point of view.

Regarding Tyche:
Your diku hatred highly interests me, want to talk about it? Or give the addy of your mud so I can see how much better it really is from a user's point of view. (on a different board if possible)

It's not about hating Diku and its derives. It's about my personal opinion, or druthers if you will, that nonconsent-based automated combat systems have no place at all in a role-playing game. While many people consider avatarism, RPE, RPI, CRPGs, or hobbit adventure games to be role-playing games, I don't. Leastways, not a particular style of role-playing I find at all interesting. While I do acknowledge the outside possibility of someone specifically exorcising the offending game systems from a Diku or derive and implementing a story-telling, larpish, free-style, elfish game, I wouldn't bet on those odds. I also have enjoyed HnS adventure games but I don't associate role-playing with them.

2) Games that don't require a 500 word essay for character approval are annoying. Potentially annoying that is in that I'm likely to meet people less interested in role-playing and more interested in obtaining pink-ice rings.

I hate getting tons of tedious and pointless text dropped on me. It seems to be all the rage these days to color MUDS with reams of obtuse adjectives, and elephant stomping subtlety (based on a recent random sampling). However there is a good side, because rather than drudging through the Mississipi MUD for a few flecks of literary gold, I'd rather just read a book.

I hate having to make a million trillion minute character choices before I can start playing. What color are your eyes? Hair? Would you like to be left or right handed? How long is your schlong? etc. What the hell? Ask me in the game, I'm just a guest for now!

And I HATE having to jump through so many hoops to get anything done. One MUD (I forget what it's called) has 5 locations in each room. When you land in a room, you start in the middle slot. You can see everything in the room, but in order to interact with something, you have to be in the same space as it. So if there is some gold lying on the ground 10 paces in front of me and I want to get it, the game says, "It's too far away, ten paces in front of you. Neah!" Um, so what?! Go get it! I know what I mean, the game knows what I mean, the coders know what I mean. Don't make me type in this damn extra command that moves me forward 10 paces.

> It's about my personal opinion, or druthers if you will,
> that nonconsent-based automated combat systems have no
> place at all in a role-playing game.

GM: A band of goblins leap out the bushes! They want to attack you! Will you let them?

Player: No, they look a bit tough. I think I'll just carry on walking to the next city.

[Next session]

GM: Okay, you manage to creep up behind the fat merchant without him seeing you.

Player: Great! I'll draw my dagger, deftly invert it...and ask him if I can attempt to assassinate him.

GM: The merchant declines your request.

> 2) Games that don't require a 500 word essay for
> character approval are annoying.

500 word essay? What a paltry restriction! A real roleplaying mud doesn't let a player join unless that player has had at least a dozen fantasy or sci-fi novels published.

IMO, a good role-playing game will screen out those players who aren't able to come up with a halfway decent, literate and/or coherent character concept. It's not all that different in the way that many HnS muds screen potential builders. In a good role-playing game the players are the builders of the world.

(Comment added by Tyche on Thu May 15 16:59:12 2003)

Aside: Your notion is a good idea for a P2P game. If they were accomplished authors, I'd pay for a guest account to watch or for a subscription to read the logs. ;-)

There's an excellent set of webpages here which describes "consent-based" role-play. Your example is a good one of "twink" role-play.

> Aside: Your notion is a good idea for a P2P game. If they
> were accomplished authors, I'd pay for a guest account to
> watch or for a subscription to read the logs. ;-)

Then let me introduce the authors and their characters...

Raymond E. Feist, playing "Ashen-Shugar", last of the Valheru. He's given up his days of destroying worlds and killing gods, and now likes to spend his days trying to get into the pants of any elven queens he can find.

Michael Moorcock, playing Elric, the last emperor of Melnibone. Although he's possibly the most powerful sorcerer in the world, Elric prefers to use his sword Stormbringer instead. Particularly when he's killing gods and destroying worlds.

Terry Goodkind, playing Richard Rahl, the most powerful wizard to be born in the last three thousand years, gifted with both sides of magic. using his magical sword he has been known to simultaneously fight (and kill) 30 blademasters.

Robert Jordan's previous character went mad after destroying the world, so he's recently created a new character. He's now playing a buxom young girl who wears a low-cut dress. She sniffs at all the men, tugs her hair a lot, wears highly descriptive dresses, and spends most of her time chasing men, having baths, and drinking warm milk with honey. She also packs enough magical firepower to level a small continent.

David Eddings, playing Beldavideddings, a young boy who goes around killing gods with his big sword. He has a lot of trouble with women, but he makes up for that by flattening armies with his magic.

Steven Erikkson, playing Anomander Rake, aka "Lord of Moon's Spawn", aka "Son of Darkness", aka "Knight of Darkness". At over twenty thousand years old, Rake is one of the older characters. He's also an Ascendant (a god, basically), a Soletaken (he can transform into a HUGE dragon) and a mage of unparallelled power. And did I mention that he's got a big sword that he uses to kill gods?

George R. R. Martin, playing an 8-year old girl, who's also a master swordswoman and a deadly assassin. This is George's 43rd character so far this month.

Now....let the roleplaying commence!

>Now....let the roleplaying commence!

That was utterly hilarious, KaVir. Hats off to you :)

Lack of service. There better be a way I can file a request for admin help or e-mail a service request and it should be taken care of in a reasonably timely manner.

Admins who feel the players are there to entertain them rather than the other way around. (This covers admins on a power trip and any admin who doesn't treat his or her players as valued customers, whether they're paying money or not.)

--matt

That's pretty funny. ;-) I think you'd need a Harlan Ellison or Bob Asprin to run such a game and herd those cats, and of course impose a bit of thematic consistency. It also needs a bit of a mature female touch to broaden the audience beyond 14-year old boys. Hmmm... maybe Ann McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuinn or Mercedes Lackey might do the trick.

> It also needs a bit of a mature female touch to broaden the audience beyond 14-year old boys.

Anne Rice?

E

I do not often post here, but I feel fairly strongly on this subject. Thus, I respectfully disagree with your earlier assertion that consent-based roleplay is a key part of a good roleplaying game / MUD as well as the same assertion supported in the articles on the subject on the site which you referenced.

Several times on this page, the author mentions that the outcome of any given encounter or roleplaying situation should be predetermined so as to avoid the sticky issues of OOC desires that inevitably come up when two or more players are at odds with the result of any particular action.

In my opinion, this attitude is more fitting to an 'interactive novel' than a roleplaying game. One of the basic premises of roleplaying games (or perhaps fantasy rpg would be a better description for what I consider to be an rpg: an rpg that is fantastic in the imaginative and interactive sense) is the tenet of open-endedness; what goes on is limited only by the natural law of the world, however fantastic, or, as appropriate, the rules of the game. An encounter where the outcome is predetermined defeats this premise: there is a clear beginning, a clear end, and what goes on is restricted by the predetermined outcome. A game which is made up of many such encounters can not, in my opinion, be construed as a roleplaying game; it may indeed contain roleplaying, and may be quite fun, but does not constitute a fantasy roleplaying game. It would be just as well to be an actor in a play or pretend you and your friends are characters in a novel and play out the story.

So, to provide an answer of my own to the initial question posted: A roleplaying MUD wherein the role of the players includes the need to act as judges of natural law or the world's interaction / reaction rather than just being responsible for the actions of their own characters does not appeal to me. In my opinion the latter role belongs to game masters or as otherwise appropriate, such as with a coded game engine. Much of what makes an RPG exciting for me is not knowing what's going to happen next and being able to immerse myself in the role of my character as he or she deals with situations unknown and known; that is at the heart of any good roleplaying game.

-Josia

Too many races and too many classes both turn me off from looking at a particular MUD. I would rather depth than width in such things; it is difficult to truly appreciate what being a Dalamorf is all about when there are only a handful of other Dalamorves in the game or the amount of development thematically or within the world is pitifully small. There is only so much space for 'unique' races or classes before each new one seems to be simply a set of statistics or skills with only a cookie-cutter thematic backbone.

Of note is that I feel that many people use race and class as a crutch for their roleplay; they should be a starting point for defining a character at best, not a huge portion of the identity of the character.

-Josia

Of note is that I feel that many people use race and class as a crutch for their roleplay; they should be a starting point for defining a character at best, not a huge portion of the identity of the character.

I disagree. Your race should form a large bearing on who you are and how you regard the world and affect your roleplaying accordingly. However ... too many people leave it at "I'm an Elf! We live in trees! We hate dwarves!" That /is/ a crutch. You're relying on people's perceptions of an elf (and not necessarily your perceptions now) to fill in all sorts of RP you could be doing.

I think you just agreed with me.

At least, such is how I intended my comment: Race (and class) is
a starting point and indeed should play a role, but should not be
overpowering compared to the subtlies one should find between
members of a particular race or class.

-Josia

The most annoying feature? The statement: RP enforced or RP encouraged. Both of those statements are bull*CENSORED*. Only an RPI mud, where folks are watched, snooped, and generally held in check by admin in subtle ways can actually be condusive to RP. In any other case, OOC actions and events and indeed unwelcome excursions with those said OOC players occur.

Perma death is another thing that turns me on, like a woman with large breasts and a nice behind.

A few things, actually.

P2P-- I see this, and immediately run the other way. Nothing against p2p MU*s, but I hate shelling out dough for something I can find elsewhere for free.

Mobs, Levels, Trains, and Practices-- All four of these things are counter to RP, as they promote mindless hack'n'slashing to try and max out your skills.

Rude appstaff-- I dislike apps in general, but I can see how they are good for weeding out the idiots who want to, say, have the Borg invade Middle Earth. However, the appstaff should be polite when rejecting apps, and give good, rational reasons for why the person was rejected. If the appstaff is rude, that makes me write the MU* off altogether.

PKing-- When the add says that it is a RP mud, but also says, "PKers come here!", I get sick to my stomach. Now, if PKing comes about in the course of a TP or RP scene, that's one thing, but it should be heavily discuraged, since the RP would tend to slide into hack'n'slashing other players instead of actual RP otherwise.

Strict permadeath-- Generally, permadeath is a good thing, and in a world where things like Necromancers and the like don't exist and Priests don't have the power to ressurect people, this doesn't really apply. But in a world where these things are possible, it just doesn't make sense, since you are robbing these two professions of one of their more interesting capabilities. Now, this is not to say that these things should be common. They should be quite rare, but not impossible.

Time-- I think that the time in a game that is supposed to be focused on RP should be slower than realtime, since it takes quite a bit of time to type in poses that are both descriptive, and well thought out.


--Mirikon

Several times on this page, the author mentions that the outcome of any given encounter or roleplaying situation should be predetermined as to avoid the sticky issues of OOC desires that inevitably come up when two or more players are at odds with the result of any particular action.


I haven't mentioned game-mastered RPGs and there is a good reason for that, but read the tinyplots pages as well for something similar.

In my opinion, this attitude is more fitting to an 'interactive novel' than a roleplaying game. One of the basic premises of roleplaying games (or perhaps fantasy rpg be a better description for what I consider to be an rpg: an rpg that is fantastic in the imaginative and interactive sense) is the tenet of open-endedness;

Exactly. I agree with that and it is precisely the reason I don't care for the role-playing in the types of games I mentioned. Because they are closed systems run by computer game masters which are inferior even to the most daft human game master. If I want to jump off the cliff, swing from a chandelier, fall prone, build a textile factory, hire a squire, raise an army of monks, I don't want Huh? or You can't do that? as the response from the brain dead stupid GM. I want to hear how I can make it or where to begin. Now I can do all that and more in a storytelling style or freestyle role-playing game. Anything I can imagine. I can't in a closed system where the implementers haven't thought of that yet, or the computer program running it can't handle it. And where access to building and programming props is restricted to a select few dark wizards who rule over the hobbits running around in their mazes. In a freestyle game the players and staff actually think on their own, adapt, create, decide, build and adjudicate events and situations in minutes that take months, years, maybe never, maybe impossible to implement in a machine GM.

As to real game-mastering in muds it is rare, I don't know of a single game that has a human GM running adventures 24/7. Now that's pretty much how the doctrine of player consent came about, in the absence of a human game master. They can only setup and run scheduled events (quests, tinyplots, etc.) only many times a week or month. Consent does have its basis though in the role between a good GameMaster and their players. Consent is given there by consenting to trust the judgment of the GM. In the absence of a GM, players follow an etiquette complete alien and unknown to competitive hobbit-runs, and without the time consuming and likely unproductive appeal to the authority of the coded system.

When I want surprise and excitement by dying an untimely death repeatedly, I play Quake.
Immersion is not role-play, it is merely titillation while wearing funny hats.

Anyway it's a position and view that I fully expect at least 10 to 1 disagreement with in this forum, yet there are several hundred games running freestyle/storytelling role-playing games. The OP did ask what was annoying though.

Heh. I boil it down just to the presence of a definable game with goals and objectives as attracting people not really interested in role-playing. Games are competitive contests. The keyword in role-play is play. Not as in playing a game, for that we have baseball, checkers, zork, and quake; but as in playing a role. The noted absence of any game and yet the existence of a lot of play is what I think are definitive to a good role-playing game. YMMV.

Anne Rice as a Vampire Queen, or Anne Rampling as Sleeping Beauty? (either way, I've already (hypothetically) opened a $5.00 a month account to read the logs.)