[bloviate]

Experience as a builder is not that important to me. What is important is a demonstratable ability to work with me to flesh out a fantasy world which all parties would be interested in. And I don't mean flesh out in the building sense, but rather developing it through discussion in a forum, over IRC, email and compiling the results in a wiki. This high level information would when ready, be used to write the game code and help generate a base game world. Given that this type of abstract development will be done first, I do not have a need for anyone who cannot provide the ability I described at this time.

The code would be only accessible to me (at least until the point a partner had proved their worth). There would be no opportunity to discover the inner workings of a MUD because of this. And even if there were, the code would be somewhat more complex than existing MUDs and would not helpfully demonstrate the aspects which are straightforwardly implemented within them. If you have an interest in learning how to implement a MUD, then I recommend you become a creator on a reasonably popular one and dig into its code base.

If you want to see if your imagination and sense of believability in the context of a fantasy work (as I outlined roughly in my first post) fit with mine, then you might try your hand at mocking up an original fantasy world. Nothing too extensive, just a concise brainstormed train of thought type thing. I'll give an outline of the sorts of things which I hope will demonstrate your personal vision, choices and taste below. Anyone else who is interested is welcome to do it as well, even if you have no interest in partnering up with me. I will only use what is provided for the sake of evaluating potential partners, in case there is any worry about that.

Describe a world of your own design, and give it a name. Describe the nations found within it, and the societies found within each nation. Describe the races found within the world, what makes them different, how they relate to each other and the societies. Sketch a map of the world, even if you have to do it with a paint program on your computer, and mark in the nations. Describe some locations of interest within the world and mark them on the map. Take it a little bit further in a direction that interests you, once you get into the flow of it. Put the map up on a free image hosting site, I recommend - if you can't scan it, just take a picture with your camera or phone.