[cratylus]

Dead Souls is a mud and a codebase.

What I am asking for is help creating areas
on the mud, to be later included in the codebase.

Please hear me out.

Why do people write/run muds? If they just did it
for the technical pleasure, they'd just never open. The
majority of mud admins out there do what they do because
it's fun to run a game (or at least, they thought it would
be) and a game without players is, well, not much of a
game.

A mud's success is most often measured in its
playerbase. Therefore, I have to consider this in my
LP Renaissance project. If people decide on an LP codebase,
or specifically DS2 as a lib, it's not usually because they
like me personally, or because the box it came in has a
cool dragon on it. My personality is insufferable, and there is
no box. The reason people would adopt is that they think they can
make a successful mud with it, and this most often means
lots of players.

My job, then, is to convince potential adopters that
players will come. So, what do players want? Good gameplay,
fun challenges, interesting areas. In short, players are
here to be entertained.

However, the stock Dead Souls 2.1 mud doesn't have
much in the way of areas. There are a few sample domains,
sure, and this is enough to demonstrate the basics of what
Dead Souls can do. But to really sell Dead Souls as a viable
option, it needs knock-em-dead areas. Areas that, when a
curious potential adopter installs and logs into their
test DS mud, makes them go "WOW!".

*That* is what sells a codebase. *That* is what can
make or break a lib. I am deeply proud of the work I've
done under the hood, but I do not fool myself about my
level of creativity or imagination. I'm smart enough to
know that I am great at lib work, but mediocre at content
creation.

And I've worked too hard on Dead Souls to resign
myself to mediocrity in one of its most vital aspects: gameplay.

To move forward, DS2 needs fun, exciting, *thrilling*,
stock areas. The current defaults are "just fine". They show
you how to do things, and things work properly. But that isn't
enough. When someone tries out DS2, I don't want them to say
"gee that was easy to install, and everything works properly."

I want them to say "This is GREAT!".

I therefore ask for your help. If you are a good
builder, please join my effort. It's your contribution of an
inspiring, exciting area for Dead Souls that will greatly
enhance its appeal and adoption.

In contributing to a Dead Souls area, you will be
ensuring that your work will live on, beyond just one mud.
Rather than have your work locked away in a single mud, and
hoping that mud doesn't fail, you can be sure that thousands
of people enjoy how you've expressed your creativity.

Please see the link below for the
full version of this article.

-Crat