Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

01-18-2004, 11:19 PM

Ahh, now I understand, we are at a disagreement on what I meant by "subtle". I apologize for the confusion, I suppose I ought to have been more explicit. I am unclear what your definition is, because I have difficulty imagining one where it would be possible to "subtly" invade a kingdom. This would be like Germany "subtly" invading France :P just doesn't work...

Yes, I agree, the only reason you would want an "unwinnable" scenario where the players are on the _defense_ would be if the MUD were closing its doors and you wanted to give it a dramatic finish. What I'm talking about is more a scenario where the players are on the offense: for example, a dragon *in a remote land far, far away from the main town* that noone can kill. works especially well if, at one point, the dragon WAS killable, and dropped incredible artifacts, but has since been "upped" to an impossible level of difficulty.

Enter subtlety. This won't work if you just make the dragon do 30000 damage room-wide, nor will it work if you have imms on standby to come control the dragon when it's attacked. The dragon should be killable in theory, just incredibly difficult.

What I'm trying to get at here is that if everything is attainable with anything less than superhuman efforts, then sooner or later someone will attain it all, and then the mud is a hollow shell.

Allow me to quote the Silmarillion:

01-18-2004, 11:19 PM	#10
erdos Posts: n/a	Ahh, now I understand, we are at a disagreement on what I meant by "subtle". I apologize for the confusion, I suppose I ought to have been more explicit. I am unclear what your definition is, because I have difficulty imagining one where it would be possible to "subtly" invade a kingdom. This would be like Germany "subtly" invading France :P just doesn't work... Yes, I agree, the only reason you would want an "unwinnable" scenario where the players are on the _defense_ would be if the MUD were closing its doors and you wanted to give it a dramatic finish. What I'm talking about is more a scenario where the players are on the offense: for example, a dragon in a remote land far, far away from the main town that noone can kill. works especially well if, at one point, the dragon WAS killable, and dropped incredible artifacts, but has since been "upped" to an impossible level of difficulty. Enter subtlety. This won't work if you just make the dragon do 30000 damage room-wide, nor will it work if you have imms on standby to come control the dragon when it's attacked. The dragon should be killable in theory, just incredibly difficult. What I'm trying to get at here is that if everything is attainable with anything less than superhuman efforts, then sooner or later someone will attain it all, and then the mud is a hollow shell. Allow me to quote the Silmarillion: