Hello,

Been thinking of ways MUDs can forge new paths. Then it dawned on me: most MUDs, the player is very much the aggressor and actively goes out hunting for levels, and is pretty much guaranteed safety (in, say, the main town) if they so wish.
Why not do it the other way around? Make the player the underdog, and rather than gaining exp by killing monsters, you gain exp merely by staying alive-- your exp constantly increases, but staying alive is quite difficult (at least until you make the max level).
Could set it up so the stats you gain depend where you dwell/travel, and if you manage to survive in, say, a harder area, you get better stats.
Any thoughts? Let's generate some discussion rather than more senseless flaming =P

Interesting idea.

I can see people complaining about it being beneficial for people who log in all the time, but all muds are beneficial in this way. You'd want to make it difficult for people who use scripts/triggers though.

I thought the player was the prey.   Food for imms.   Maybe that's why we had trouble keeping them.  
I'm going to have to review this.  It's possible we were playing the game wrong all along.  ;-)

wow, that sounds like an awesome idea. The MUD i code for has invasions from time to time where diffrent kinds of monsters storm the island heading for the main city, and the players must defend their wonderful island. But i see a couple of problem with the idea of constant invasions

It sounds like it would be VERY hard for newbies. i mean, from what it sounds like, they would be fighting the same things as everyone else. So i, perosnally, would make it so newbies would be protected from most of the big monsters, and maybe low and mid level would be protected from the really huge ones.

Also, i think exp just for surviving wouldnt be a bad idea, but i think you should still get exp for killing monsters. otherwise you could just level up by running around dogding all the monsters. So maybe you could also get exp for combat? and maybe a bit for acutally dealing the killing blow.

But yeah, sounds really awesome. follow your ideas!

          -Gemini, the two headed troll.

Some good points you bring up, Gemini. As far as the newbie issue...

The way I envisioned the survival MUD, time would work in an unusual way.  Every new player would begin in the same portion of the timeline.  IE, there is one moment when all players awake, but this is relived over and over every time someone starts a new char.  Events of history would be retraced over and over with each character-- and would branch out according to the player's choices.  All the while, a universal foe would throw greater and greater forces at the player.  Eventually (at "max level") all the players would merge into a final time period and have to fight this foe together (although, ideally, it would be a hopeless fight).

I would point out that there are quite a lot of examples in literature where those who decide to wage warfare openly get temporary gains but ultimately are doomed.  The way I envision this, rather than the "start as a nobody and build yourself" concept which most MUDs embrace, this would follow the concept "start about average and survive while the world around you decays".  Literature is full of examples of "warriors of the ancient world", although typically when these legendary folks were in the days of their youth, they weren't anything special, and often the people they once looked up to are long since dead, pursuing open combat.

You are quite right though: the road to eventual greatness would be a calculated balance of fighting and fleeing. Ideally, anyone who strives to simply fight each foe to the death, is utterly doomed. For the situation would be hopeless. But by the same token, someone who spends the entire time fleeing ought not to be as big a legend as someone who won fame for their performance in some legendary mythical battle.

All I can say is that's a really neat idea with tonnes of possibilites.

For the newbie issue:

Why not simply have the larger monsters ignore newbies? I mean, assume for a moment that the players are, em, dragons, just as an example. Do all the kingdom's best knights go hunt down the little dragon hatchlings? Or do they leave those to peasant militia and local bounty hunters, while going after the big game themselves?

Aside from thinking of it as a direct correlative with regards to level/strength/uber-l33t-ness, you could imagine it as a bounty system ala GTA (as the most famous example I can think of), if you want... Basically, if the player lays low, they can buy themselves time, but if they cause trouble (perhaps while looking for food, or maybe even loot?), or reveal their true power, they get more and more knights on them. This would further emphasize the evade/assault dichotomy.

Starting to sound more like muds, I like the original idea better.  What I propose is this:

If the idea is survival, why not give the players a huge starting boost.  And make it more for the long haul?  Like take video game survival, it's not the zombie that kills you in RE, it's the 10th zombie and running out of ammo.  Twould give the newbies a little more of a chance too, where as the truely skilled players would be the one who last to like the 500th zombie.

zombies and RE for example purposes only.

PS: I love this idea.

An interesting idea - my only concern would be that each player is effectively playing alone at the beginning, which would perhaps put a lot of new players off (not that that's a reason not to do it, just that it's something to keep in mind).

One possible variation would be to have a "flashback" option. Players would start in the past until they had reached "max level", but could also choose to flashback back to the past even once they had started play. So supposing you were in the present and you saw me connect, you could choose to flashback to the past and meet up with me. This would also allow players in the present to have histories together, even if they started playing at different times. To get around potential paradoxes I would suggest that both the past and present timelines are constantly moving along (ie the "flashback" moves you a fixed amount of time backwards - say 10 years - so that you can never go as far back as last time). If you wanted to be a bit flashy, you could even change the tense of text to reflect which timeline you're in - eg "KaVir grins and draws his sword" would be in the present, while in the flashback timeline you'd see "KaVir grinned and drew his sword".