Re: When is big too big?
One thing to realize is that movement in muds is very fast compared to, say, a graphical mud. You can build a 20 room road connecting two major cities, which might seem long, but I could probably run it in 30 seconds or so. So in a sense it's not a huge deal if you have a lot of space in your mud -- space is good, it's a major element of a mud, and I think it in a sense has got a bad rap in RP muds. Because things are really spread out the RP suffers, and people blame the space. But it's not really the space itself, it's how it's laid out and how it relates to the gameplay and the RP. When you remove the element of space from a mud you lose one of its essential qualities, and all the things you can do with that element, it's like handicapping your game.
As far as knowing what will work before playtesting, in a certain sense yes you need players. I think there are some rules of thumb but a lot of that is specific to your building style and the mud itself.
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