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<H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Jon A. Lambert" <<A HREF="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 22:29:34 -5</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<PRE>
On 9 Jun 99,, Katrina McClelan wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
>
> Just a note. I alluded to an all female game being different, and it is.
Oh, my mistake. I thought you meant mixed, but female-dominated.
Obviously I don't have experience in an all female rpg game, but would
have loved to be a fly on the wall. :)
> But that isn't to say that an all-female group doesn't enjoy hunting down
> monsters and exploring dungeons. It is just handled quite differently.
> Instead of dwarven warriors, and invokers and brute strength in terms of
> numbers and game mechanics that you tend to find in the makeup of a male
> group, you'll find a lot of gnome illusionists, elven enchanters, bards,
> an priests and such in a female group. Generally the all female group
> will delight in solving puzzles, and creatively handling monsters, where
> as the male group will tend to have a makeup of at least some characters
> that will tend towards a berserker mentality.
This sounds like my mostly male, but mixed group. When just the men play
things are a bit more brutal and conversation is, well, cruder. We have
one member who always plays beserker/barbarian types, but the funny thing
is so does his wife. Anyway, I'm usually the gnome illusionist.
Aside: I've just purchased a scanner and have been scanning and
translating all my old campaign material. Anyways I DLed an OCR program
called FineReader which works great on old typewritten pages. Does
anyone know of a program that can recognize handwriting well? I've got
loads of notes written in very legible block printing, but I haven't
been able to train FineReader successfully.
> Bringing it back to a mud
> level, when is the last time you saw a mud let you use illusions, traps,
> and tactical combat for handling monsters instead of brute force? And by
> tactical, I mean making use of the terrain, as well as skills.
Aye. This tactical inner-room movement is something I want to do.
Not just for combat mind you. When a king holds a feast and dance, for
instance, both seating arrangments are important and allowing
participants to cluster into groups within rooms for conversation and
games.
This looks great (and easy?) on graphical games like UO and Furcadia, but
I'm trying to stick to a useable text representation.
> In one
> game we used a charmed enemy, and an illusion (both spells availible to
> new characters) to lure a pair of ogres into a castle courtyard, and then
> droped the portcullis, and picked them off with arrows and spells from our
> perches atop the towers. Very creative and tactical, but not something
> that you can accomplish with most mud engines (mine included). The room
> layout typical of most muds does not lend to this for starters (noting
> that the discussions in this circle present ways to improve this vastly),
> but even with a reasonable representation of terrain, handling such things
> is not a simple problem for a computer. I'd love to hear ideas on it from
> the gallery.
Nod. On another thread a few days ago, I posited a difficult scenario
that leads me to also believe that the room concept may be less than
suitable for this type of play.
> Another note is that a lot of muds, you go out and beat on monsters for
> the sake of beating on them. Gamers I've played with are all for hunting
> down the ogres that have been terrorizing the locals, but not for hunting
> down a pair of ogres that are minding their own business. I've been in
> groups where we've actually befriended some of the "random" encounters and
> built allies out of them.
I think, It's the built-in goal system. Even a lot of table-top FRPGs
suffer from this. Let the player make up their own goals.
> I think it's somewhat of a misconception that
> women are turned off by the element of violence in an RPG. It's the
> gratuitous(sp) violence that does it. However, again, building a
> user-influenced story engine into a mud that is both versitile, and
> reasonable to configure for "story tellers" is not a simple problem.
> Again ideas are welcome :)
I have another generalization. <gasp> From my own observations, it would
seem that women more enjoy observing such violent contests rather than
direct participation. One MUD I used to play, that had a fairly good
gender balance, had an arena with a observation gallery. The female
players were more often found in the gallery watching, betting, cheering
on and talking about a PK event than participating within the arena.
--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <<A HREF="http://pw1.netcom.com/~jlsysinc">http://pw1.netcom.com/~jlsysinc</A>> *--
--* To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. Whosoever *--
--* defeats part of the empire becomes the empire; it proliferates like a *--
--* a virus... thereby it becomes its enemies." -- P.K. Dick *--
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<UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>:
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<LI><STRONG><A NAME="00631" HREF="msg00631.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development</A></STRONG>
<UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com></LI></UL></LI>
<LI><STRONG><A NAME="00635" HREF="msg00635.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></STRONG>
<UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> Katrina McClelan <kitkat#marcus,pants.nu></LI></UL></LI>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00631" HREF="msg00631.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development</A></strong>,
Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Wed 09 Jun 1999, 17:02 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00635" HREF="msg00635.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></strong>,
Katrina McClelan <a href="mailto:kitkat#marcus,pants.nu">kitkat#marcus,pants.nu</a>, Wed 09 Jun 1999, 20:01 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00650" HREF="msg00650.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></strong>,
Greg Miller <a href="mailto:gmiller#classic-games,com">gmiller#classic-games,com</a>, Wed 09 Jun 1999, 23:28 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00660" HREF="msg00660.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></strong>,
J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#varesearch,com">claw#varesearch,com</a>, Thu 10 Jun 1999, 02:58 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00655" HREF="msg00655.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></strong>,
Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Thu 10 Jun 1999, 02:30 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00658" HREF="msg00658.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development (back on topic, some)</A></strong>,
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Thu 10 Jun 1999, 02:44 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00643" HREF="msg00643.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Wed 09 Jun 1999, 22:36 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00651" HREF="msg00651.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development</A></strong>,
Greg Miller <a href="mailto:gmiller#classic-games,com">gmiller#classic-games,com</a>, Wed 09 Jun 1999, 23:28 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00656" HREF="msg00656.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Game construction and a big mistake</A></strong>,
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Thu 10 Jun 1999, 02:43 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
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