Imaginary Realities 2000 October Edition

Summary of October 2000 issue of Imaginary Realities. Imaginary Realities was an ezine dedicated to MUDs.

Summary of "'Cruel Doubt' on the Net" by "The Crimefighter" Steven Lucas

Steven Lucas ran Promised Land MUD and maintained "The COMPLETE Abermud List" and the "Betterbox Mudlist".

The author discusses the pitfalls of telling people he runs a MUD, and how lot of bad press existed around the true story, "Cruel Doubt", where some gamers brought the D&D campaign into real life, including murder.

School shootings and other violence have been blamed on video games. This has gone as far as attempting to prevent teens from buying violent video games.

The author went through the effort of teaching his parents how to connect to the Promised Land MUD he runs, and the associated website. The father went ballistic, explaining the site was satanic and would corrupt already misguided youth. [Summarizer's Note: This actually was not an uncommon response to fantasy novels, Dungeon & Dragons style games, and similar video games and movies back in the second half of the 1900's.] The MUD did have a religion system with "gods" that would power up players that did what they said. But, nothing related to real mythology.

The author sought advise on handling the objections of his Christian father on the discussion forums at the Mud Connector, "and got a wide range of responses. Some were by other Christians, some were by people who thought it was a ticket to bash Christianity, and some were corny jokes. Eventually, it developed into a fight over Christaphobia and whether separation of church and state was actually in the Constitution."

MUD'ing isn't the worst thing to worry about in this world. Trying to get people focused on those actual bad issues, instead of MUDs, is easier said than done.

The author hosted their MUD at a university at the time, and the university received a fake letter claiming to be a mother of an impressionable teen who she no long let play the MUD due to bad language, sex, and other NSFW communication going on between players of the game. "She" also accused the MUD Connector of not listing the MUD with a warning about the adult nature of the MUD. The author new the letter was a fake, because it came from a ISP which never had logged into the MUD.

"As a result of the "parent mailing the university" incident, the Mud Connector has had posted its the front page a parental warning sheet informing everyone to keep their kids "mud-safe" ever since. The Mud Connector certainly did not get a letter accusing them of not listing any certain mud as "adult-oriented". In all reality, the Internet is a filthy place to be. There are thousands of people who may be adults but have the maturity of three year-old children online. If you think the kids should not be exposed to bad things on the Internet, they should not be on it at all. Course the kids think, I am old enough to deal with it, all my friends and rivals at school say this stuff too! And they are right. Kids at school are filled with S, V, & D (that’s sex, violence and drugs for those in Rio Linda) and want to teach it to other students, who are just as willing to learn it--cause they want to experience what adults do here and now."

Then a school shooting in April 20, 1999 in Colorado kicked the hysteria into high gear of blaming everything but the children and their parents for their horrible actions. Any mention of a gun or image of a gun started getting children expelled. "At this rate, sooner or later all kids entering the school system will be taught in buildings that look like, and have the security of, federal prisons--never mind we think we are serving a 13-year prison sentence anyway. What is WRONG with you people??? This makes school vouchers and home schooling VERY attractive compared to all this total nonsense going on."

Eventually, all the related laws and blame will point at blaming MUDs when some copycat shooter is found to have played MUDs. Luckily, MUDs aren't popular enough to become a target as of yet. Video games get all the ire.

Be prepared for misunderstandings from people who are poorly informed about playing MUDs. Remember, if one person is having fun, someone somewhere will try to punish them for it.

Summary of "Help Systems Suck" by Natalia

Natalia and her husband, Ilya, used to run Game Commando.

Most MUD help systems suck. Common problem include the following.

• bad design - Most fall into the hierarchical (organized like a tree of categories and subcategories that can be browsed) or shotgun (a random list of key words you find by typing 'help ') approach, but not both. Both hierarchical and shotgun together would be better.
• missing topics - Admins dedicate themselves to writing their MUD, often giving up real world opportunities to write their MUD, but then fail to write thorough help documentation for their MUD. Puzzling.
• not up-to-date - Often admins won't have even changed the name universally to match the actual name of the MUD. The help docs are just what was left over from when the started developing the game from someone else's source code.
• missing keywords aliases - "Is the help I am looking for going to be 'pk' or 'pkill' or 'playerkilling' or 'player_killing?' Is it 'help death' or 'help dying'? Even when the code for the help command will match partial words, 'death' will not bring up 'dying' unless the administrator has added both as keywords to the documentation."
• parsing - Help topics need to be findable even if an 's' is added onto the end, or just the first few letters are typed in. Expecting an exact match from players seeking help, is not good enough.
• "the evil one topic" - If the partial help topic name they user types could match multiple topics, list all the possible topics. DON'T just show the first topic.
• spelling and grammar issues - Use a spell checker.

If you run a publicly available Online Role-Playing Game (ORPG), you obviously care about it being seen by players. Otherwise, you wouldn't have made it public. Frustrating players with a poor help system is antithetical to your desire for people to play your MUD.

It is amazing that an admin will add races and classes as quick as possible; announce them everywhere conceivable, then not document them in their help system.

One solution is to assign one person to the task of updating the help system. Make that their only task.

"The following help files and documentation should always be present on the game, hopefully with multiple keywords and obvious ways to get to the information:

• about the game owners (who are they, what are their game names)
• rules/policy/laws including specific notes on player killing, multiplaying, harassment, language, etc.
• about your character (for instance, how many levels are there)"

Log your help requests. Matched keyword logging is helpful, but help requests that failed is even more helpful. You will know what improvements you need to make to your help system. Let the player know in an automated message that the missing help request was logged for future creation.

Add an online help editing system, so admins can change the help information from in-game. Include keyword aliases. Also, add a 'see also' section at the end of the help entry.

Summary of "Days on the Disc" by Dogbolter/DcDhol

MUD fiction as told by Dogbolter, a creator on Discworld MUD.

This fiction is a short study of an unsavory character by the name of Mr. Tulip in Ankh-Morpork.

Summary of "From the Diary of DcDhol" by DcDhol

MUD fiction as told by DcDhol, a player on Discworld MUD

This fiction is a short and colorful travel log of visiting a nearby city, with some killing and stealing mixed in for good mesure.

Summary of "My Father is a Role Player... Sorta" by Kerry Jane

Kerry Jane used to play Ackadia, and games with stories.

This article is a touching look the author's father, and the alternate persona of "Goody Roberts" he would take on when playing racing simulators.

Summary of "Declaring the Rights of Players" by Raph Koster

Raph Koster was an Ultima Online lead designer.

Players claim to have rights. Admins mention they have every right to be angry. But, no one wants to give players a list of actual rights.

Some say people/players have intrinsic rights, but what are those rights?

"Now, it is pretty clear that there are some rights which leak over from the real world into the virtual. If your local pay-for-play mud operator is not providing adequate service, you can report them to the Better Business Bureau; there are probably sexual discrimination laws and harassment laws and slander laws that apply equally well in both kinds of space. But rights (and much less legislation) have not caught up to the notion of virtual spaces very well. Which makes for an interesting thought experiment.

What if we declared the rights of avatars?"

The author combines the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen", the "Bill of Rights", and the "United Nations Charter of Rights and Freedoms", changing the language to fit MUD avatars.

Some objections include:

• The server is private property, so these rights should not override the property rights of the server owner.
• Virtual space is just an extension of real life, so those rights are already covered by real world laws.
• Avatars are not real. They are just representations, like chess pieces.
• "What about Orcs storming in and oppressing the players? Or NPC thieves?"
• This all leaves the admin open to lawsuits.
• I'm the admin. I don't want to lose control.
• My MUD is NOT a virtual world. It is a game.

Rephrasing the rights in modern English gives admins a more positive view of the list of rights.

"Note that I am not suggesting that all the muds or commercial endeavors should run out and implement this list of "rights," nor am I suggesting that if they do not that they are run by power-hungry maniacs. This is too complex an issue to reduce to that level."

The idea of an Avatar Bill of Rights goes beyond just a game. As our whole life and world move to the virtual one of the Internet, there will come a point where all our banking, reputation, and information falls under an Avatar that we wish had the same rights our real life persona does.

Summary of "Returning to the Game" by Selina Kelley

Selina Kelley was an Imaginary Realities editor, and a player of ProphecyMUD.

The author is used to being the one that codes on MUDs, rather than playing. It has been hard to enjoy a MUD once you know all the internals of how it worlds.

Recently, the author started from scratch on a old MUD that they hadn't played in some time. The author brought a friend, and they started out from the beginning, leveling up new characters. It has been refreshing, and the author strongly recommends that the admins and coders play occasionally (and bring a friend for support) to renew their understanding of how a player experiences the MUD they are in.

Summary of "Working in a Group" by Patrick Dughi

In a joint project, everyone's responsibilities MUST be defined. The more granular the definitions, the better.

The author previously called coding, "mindless." However, programming is only mindless in the sense that the programmer shouldn't have to figure out what to program, only how to implement it.

Every game/MUD has its own needs as far as roles. The following are common roles, but need more definition based off your MUD's needs.

• MUD Owner - You made it. You own it.
• Administrator - "Administrator's often use the phrase 'I saw this great feature on this other mud I play, and I think we should put it in here.'"
• World Builder - If making tacky rainbow color descriptions, like 'An amazing sword', excites you, then you might be a builder.
• Player Helper - You don't get paid, but they feel too sorry for you to ask you to leave.
• Enforcer - "Generally, you feel good when others cry."
• Coder - You make things go, and know way too much about the inner workings of the MUD.
• Idea Mill/Development Team - You've got some new ideas for the MUD. Can they be built tomorrow? Before breakfast?

Seriously, ... Define the roles your MUD needs, and make the distinction clear. This clear separation of responsibilities will prevent conflicts among the team members.

An experience the author had involved two Admins in charge of puppeting NPC's to make roleplay more interesting. One admin started the process of talking through NPCs to make a party's experience more enjoyable. The other had more experience, so took over without regard to the other having started the roleplaying work. Hard feelings resulted. One admin was fired, the other quit, and many players (friends of the two admins) were angry.

This all resulted from no rule clearly telling the more experienced roleplaying admin not to forcibly take over a roleplaying task from another junior admin that was already handling it. Clearly defined roles (and rules for those roles) are essential.