[nasredin]

Hi,

It's interesting how differently we approach the issue of building.

For me, almost all the questions mentioned in the list are irrelevant - I don't care what is the room length, whether NPCs are good or evil, whether they're orcs, elves or space mutants; which colours are available (if at all) etc.



First of all, when I do something, I usually have a goal in mind. In case of writing, the goal usually defines the audience that I'd like to reach and the impression that I'd like to produce. I see little interest in small talk with complete strangers.

On the other hand, I enjoy solving logical puzzles and the most interesting brain twister is composing a puzzle of your own. It's like scientific research; in fact, the scientific research IS defining the problems and solving them. However, too abstract research is void, the tight limitations is what makes the puzzle interesting. To illustrate what I mean, there is no big deal in checkmating the chess king once you already got a decisive advantage, but checkmating in 3 turns may be tricky. Composing a non-trivial chess problem where the checkmate in 3 turns is possible, but not immediately obvious (and better yet still not obvious even after some thought) is even more tricky. However, a chess problem only makes sense within a community of chess players - an outlander will miss the intricacy of the little masterpiece.

The same reasoning applies to MUD building - one can join a generic MUD and create a generic unheeded area for it, but what's the point? To appreciate the subtlety and imaginative touches of your creation, the players must belong to the same community as you. Thus, my answers:



9.) Established mud?
Of course, Arctic MUD to be precise.


10.) Anything else
As I already mentioned, a builder must have a goal in mind. Arctic is skill-based and every skill is useful, but some skills are less universal than the others and many players overlook and never practice them. I decided to make a zone that would urge the players to master and appreciate these skills. The brute force solution is still possible but would require incomparably more time and effort: to get into the castle, the player may kill a gatekeeper NPC or simply steal the key from it. The actual setting is different (and steal is not anywhere near an overlooked skill in Arctic), but you got what I mean.

After I had the zonelets dealing with the skills, the rest of the zone was built around them to merge everything in a seamless integral whole. Why would the adventurers enter the village? Why would they go from the village cemetry to a forest? When should they learn what actually happened in the mage tower and who tells them?

Next, there are lots of technical details to take care of. The strength of the NPCs, the powers of the objects they carry...

Finally, everything is aligned with various reference books and Dragonlance sources to make sure everything makes sense and creates a proper impression. If my scribe has a quill, I read an article about quills to make sure it's made from a correct feather. If there's an ant, it gets mandibles, not jaws. When I draw a celestial map on the ceiling, that's the sky of Krynn with the three Moons and the constellaion of the Dragonlance deities in their right places.

My zone is still not finished, but it's a great fun making it. And I learn a lot of new things (quills, ants etc., see above) in the process!




1.) Type?
2.) Style?
3.) Room length?
4.) NPCs?
5.) OLC?
6.) Mud setting?
7.) MUD rules?
8.) Color?

Whatever is available in Arctic MUD, otherwise I don't care.