I've been playing MUDs for a WHILE and I've always wondered this. Where is the originality in MUDs? I don't mean in concept, idea, and somesuch. I mean in the character races. I've always noticed that all MUDs seem to have the same people, elves, dwarves, and humans. Sure, they'll have some other races, but there's almost always the same ones. I think the problem lies in most MUDs basing themselves on already established ideas such as LOtR or other works of literature. I'm not saying these make bad MUDs, but I'm saying that at least with me, I want some more race ideas. Maybe basing MUDs on other peoples ideas removes your freedom in the design? Or tones down your creativity? Maybe a fewer amounts of races means that I don't have to familiarize myself with so many every time I pick up a game? Feel free to discuss how right or wrong I am, but please don't turn this into a flame thread. This is not a flaming thread! This is a discussion! Please treat it as such and be courteous to others opinions.

Like you said, it's less time familiarizing yourself with something new. Plug-and-play, as it were. Players are inherantly lazy, and often have favorites coming into a game (I play dwarves, etc). The same often goes for classes.

Personally, I work on games with original races, and that's often the second largest hurdle people have to get over, after learning our theme. But there's a small subset of players that also enjoy unique stuff.

Yeah, that's one reason that I wouldn't want original races is just so I didn't have to familiarize myself with new ones every game I played. Even some familiar race games aren't plug & play. Shadows of Isildur anyone? I'm currently submitting my third resum-I mean, character application, right now.

The problem is, plenty of these races are just modified versions of one another. And most of them are copied from D&D and Tolkien. (and Star Wars? Sullustan?)

Hmm. Odd. That like has several I thought might be unique to my mud, but spells Dunadan differently (if it is even the same one) and somehow missed Kitsune. Though, given the fact that the page you said they came from didn't load for me, I can't check the original list.

Scary to think there are that many We have had several talks about flaws in the existing system on the mud and the possibility that the staff will eliminate some and revamp the others at some point, and we only have 36 races. Of course part of the talk stems from lack of them being truely unique and some being virtually useless, save for a slight increase in the exp you can make initially while using them.

Frankly those are bigger issues than using the same race. Making sure they are not just cookie cutter versions, with nothing truely unique about them, so there is no real advantage or disadvantages picking one. RP places are a lot better at background data, but they also, by definition, are cookie cutter, since there is no 'in-game' trade offs, beyond playing the part, that really demands any care in making a choice. It usually won't have any effect on how, when and why you advance, if you even have such a thing as advancement in the normal sense. Sort of a catch-22. The RP muds emphasize difference, but give no tangible means to enforce it, H&S have very tangible effects, but often apply them in the simplest and most generic way, so that you end up with everyone being almost the same. Of the races where I play, there are maybe 3-4 that break that mold and provide a racial attack or unique bonus that others don't. And at least one of them are likely to be removed if a revamp happens, because it is no longer even 'in theme', given other changes that have been made.

The plan hinted at is to eventually make each race unique, with some ability of quirk and much better descriptions, but right now.. most people pick not based on the race they like, but what works best with a particular guild. An idea that imho, kind of misses the point of having races at all.

Perhaps part of the reason may be that people find it difficult to relate to races they know nothing about - the race becomes little more than a name and a few stat modifiers. For muds which focus on roleplaying this can be quite a large problem. On the other hand, the typical fantasy races are fairly well defined throughout literature and provide a point of reference for new players.

That's also a reason. People typically play fantasy muds because they enjoy that sort of genre - and for the same reason, they're likely to play muds based on a theme that they enjoy. Someone who's just watched LotR might fancy playing a LotR mud, while someone who's read Wheel of Time might want to play a mud based on that theme. But if I connect to a Lord of the Rings mud, the last thing I want to see is a cyborg squirrel-man race, no matter how original it might be.

Every theme will place restrictions on your design, unless you're creating a inconsistent hodgepodge of anything that comes to mind (which is a bad idea). The disadvantage of basing your theme on someone else's work (aside from legal implications) is that the thematic restrictions are defined by them rather than you. The advantage is that you have a well-known theme which is likely to be far more complete and better thought out than something you could put together yourself.

I don't think you can really define the creativity of a mud by its race selection.

An elf by any other name is still just an elf folks. You get these muds with lots of races and classes and no balance. It's bloody POINTLESS.

The only reason to give the race 'elf' a different name is if you're planning on actually making up a history and a culture and the mud has any degree of rp in which that history and culture will make any difference. 90% of muds do not. Therefore if you're looking for names other than elf you might as well program your client to replace the word elf with fingernsatch or any other random string of charectors.

So far as I can tell with massively multiplayer games getting so popular and the technology going the way it is, there are only two reasons for playing text based muds.

The lack of restirctions, words gives more freedom. But if you're only going to play a hack slash without any interest in story, description or rp, you might as well do a graphical one.

The other reason is freedom, text gives lots of freedom for skills, powers, abilities and updates. But if you're playing muds that have no concept of balance, or just call fireball acidflute and it does the exact, or near to exact same thing, once again you might as well just play a graphical one.

So many muds are clones of things that it's a wonder anyone cares what names they use for races and spells.

There's a reason that Tolkein used the races he did. They didn't just sprout from his mind. Tolkein was a mythographer, and the creatures he used were archetypes from European myths. The reason isn't so much familiarity as *resonance*.

On the other hand, most of the 'original' races I've seen just seem contrived. It's a bunch of attributes thrown together or some unusual feature that defines the race, but no thought has been given to where this creature fits in the ecology or why it might have developed. They also lack any kind of resonance or history unless the game creators have created reams of documents for each race.

I don't think there's any way of knowing that unless you had checked out the muds. After all it's just a list of names of races culled from muds who that happened to be listed on the Game Commandos site in 1999. In many cases I'm sure the race was just a hollow collection of stats with a name slapped on it. Perhaps borrowed from something else and maybe all fluff with no fizzle.

Then again go to your public library and start pulling fantasy or sci-fi books off the shelves, and try to separate the original from the borrowed. But even then beware as dwarves, elves, trolls, ogres, gnomes, giants and dragons have had many different and original interpretations in fantasy literatiure under the same name.

Another poster used the word "resonance" and I think they hit the mark. Not only did Tolkein use it, but R.E. Howard did too. He chose names that were so close to ancient historical names that readers immediately felt comfortable reading his books. Even recent authors like Jordan and Rowlings use historical and mythical archetypes heavily.

Rice's interpretation of vampires spawned an entire genre of gothic-fantasy gaming including muds. Borrowed yes, but original definately.

well, i personally play trolls whenever possible, so i like some non-original races. but a some are nice to have. I also think its not so much lack of creativity or fear of losing players, but more... eh... sticking with a classic. Not to say its a good thing to do, but im not saying it isnt.

BTW, i noticed on the race list there was smurf. whoever deicded to put that in a MUD... well... i cant say what i think of them on these forums.

TROLL POWER!

I understand what you're saying man, Tolkien drew much of his ideas from Mythology, Norse Mythology in particular.

Actually, I believe people say they want something different, but when facing new territory they run back to the elves and the dwarves. My theme isn't original (Hyboria, famous for Conan), but I am certain I am the only MUD using the theme online today, and I was surprised that most fantasy fans today seem unfamiliar with the races. What true fantasy fan wouldn't want to play a powerful Stygian Sorcerer, after all? Granted, I made many newbie mistakes with the races at first... not enough information about the races, not enough real depth in the races to keep the player interested (getting them interested is easy... keeping them interested is another matter). I am still working on this. Theres a fine line between boring and exciting in the first 5-15 minutes a player tries your game out. I believe it is probably a sad truth that a stock MUD with Sea-elves and Pixies probably has a better chance of attracting a player than a MUD using unfamiliar races. 20 unfamiliar races is fine for me, personally, as long as there is something interesting about them that catches my attention. As soon as I see Elf, Dwarf, Giant, Orc...I am instantly bored and move on.

What's a Zoog? I saw that on the race list and wondered what that was.

I always get a chuckle when places advertise how many races (or classes) they have. The key thing is really diversity of play experience, and of the games I've played, the ones with 30+ races are the ones where:

1) You can't find examples of that race anywhere. You're probably the only PC of that race on, and there's maybe one area heavily themed around it.

2) You're essentially a human in a funny suit, and not a truly different character.

In 10 years (as a biggish MUD) , we've expanded to only 17 PC races (2 of which are crossbreeds, so really 15 main cultures), and at this point I'm much happier that we've been putting a lot of work into developing the existing ones, instead of worrying about race #18.

So what kind of trolls do you like to play? Are they like Tolkein's cave trolls, D&D green rubbery trolls, Runequest trolls, Warhammer trolls, the enormous Scandanavian ones, the old German trolls often confused with dwarves, or those real small cute trolls with big noses and colorful hair? What's a classic troll?

Just trolling' :-P

Actually, Tolkien invented Orcs, creatures that were not in classic European mythology. He also thought of changing the names of elves in his works to remove the ideas commonly associated with elves from classic mythology(you know the little tiny creatures with pointy ears and boots). Elves as they appear in most muds are original to Tolkien. Hobbits are original to tolkien. Halflings are from D&D where they were originally called Hobbits but changed due to coppyright problems IIRC. Even the word halfling was used to refer to hobbits in Tolkien's works. Tolkien trolls didn't fit mythology completely either. Mythological trolls were supposed to have magical powers. Tolkien trolls were too dumb for that and much bigger. Although I think the turning to stone durring the day was takin from mythology. I think that Ents are new to Tolkien as well. So were barrow-wights (a term that basicly means graveman and now used in D&D as wight which just means man yet in D&D they are still dead), although wights were used in mythology they were not undead gravecreatures until Tolkien. Mythological wights were land spirits and elves(not Tolkien elves). The only races I can think of that Tolkien actually pulled from European Mythology and didn't twist around completely are Dwarves and Dragons.

Here is a nice troll: