Just wondering if anyone else (should of course be quite a few) have placed their MUD in a sub-tropical to tropical enviorment. Would be interesting to have a few discussion about how its working, and if it adds some interesting perspectives.

One part of our 4-faceted Mud, the Pre Historic Dimension, is set in the Mediterranean area around 2000 BC. It's heavily based on Greek and Egyptic history and mythology, and the topology and ecology are pretty accurate - for a mud.

Climate, plants, wildlife etc, is what you'd expect to find in the Mediterranean countries during that period - which is before all the large forests were cut down. Food and drink too are true to location. I just love eating a moussake, some marinated shrimp or fried squid to my glass of Ouzo or Retsina, instead of the traditional pot pies.

And the islands and mainland are inhabited by an assortment of realistic natives; peasant, fishers and shepherds as well as heroes from the old tales and mythical creatures, like centaurs, fauns, sphinxes and all the other paraphernalia in the myths. Naturally the Greek Gods walk the earth too, and behave just as irresponsibly, erratic, arrogant and capricious as in the old myths.

Travelling is mostly done by boat or ship, and currently I am adding a 1800 rooms big sea grid, that corresponds generally with the real Mediterranean map, to connect all the already existing 'real' zones.

We also have a pretty large desert in Upper Egypt, where the sun will damage you at daytime, unless you stay in the (very rare) shade, and where different animals inhabit the desert at daytime and nighttime.

I am not sure to what extent all this adds to the gameplay. But it sure as heck adds to my own pleasure of creating a feasible world, and is also a lot more original than the stuff you find in most muds.

On Dartmud, our wilderness is implemented as a grid of 'hexes' with varying terrains with various cities or other areas placed on the map as 'facades' . Each facade contains normal rooms, which can query the properties of the hex the facade is located in. One of the properties that a hex can have is climate zone and we have two, temperate and tropical which is determined by how far south the hex is.

The climate zone effects many things: what crops one can farm, what herbs one can gather, what one catches when one is fishing and what kind of random animals appear in the hexes.

This has added quite a bit to the culture of our mud as people will travel to the southern continent (a sometimes dangerous treck by boat or swimming) just to grow coffee, limes or sugarcane. Or to hunt the elephants on the southern continent which yield ivory.