05 Oct, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Whats your guys thoughts on this….

I have scouted some of the more popular muds for quite some time now. What I noticed is that some of them have a lot of scheduled events for players. I know, I know you have to have players before you have events right. Or right? We do have players, but I can't guarantee they are some of them on at all times for these kind of things. I think if you build it they will come sorta philosophy. Thus I went out, and posted for a new position of events corridnator that I want for the mud to schedule daily events to take place.

I am only hearing crickets chirping in response though right now. I'm thinking though, if I can get people to see
my vision on this, that word of mouth will spread, and players will try us for the events. By events I mean like running the arena, hunts, trivia, and that type of stuff. What do you guys think?

I believe player relations should be a whole lot more involved then just rule enforcing, and chatting. In my opinon player relations will make or break your mud. Getting people who do player relations to see that is another story all together.

Vladaar
05 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
At one point I wanted to create a form of coordinator for such events. I didn't think of it as an event coordinator per se, but rather a puppet master of sorts who could do things like switch into mobs to bring the world to life in interesting ways. Events would thereby be created by switching into some mob that had a role in the game's story, and the dialog (and sometimes fights) with players would be the 'event'. Nothing really came of all this, even though were I to start actually running a MUD (as opposed to coding) it would be high on my list of things to set up.

I acted as the 'puppet master' on several occasions myself, and there was always very positive player feedback, with many participating in the (friendly) conflicts I provoked. It was more interesting than the standard "good is good, evil sucks" debates – those who said that would have to back it up by fighting off me as a "bad guy mob" with a small army. (In parallel, I coded a runtime flag that would temporarily disable looting, so that people could engage in these conflicts on either side without having to worry about losing all their stuff. I'm not a huge fan of looting to begin with, but that's a whole other story.)
08 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't know, overall, it sounds like a good idea, and it certainly can't hurt to have regularly scheduled events even if no one attends because it might help encourage folks to start attending.. but daily events and a dedicated staff member to run them? *shrug* Maybe if you could find someone who'd be able/willing and who 'fit' the role well enough it could work out. I know I couldn't pull it off with my current staff, none of us have the time to handle it.
08 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Conner said:
I know I couldn't pull it off with my current staff, none of us have the time to handle it.

That's kind of the idea, though. The point is that you'd have a dedicated staff member: it might even mean "hiring" somebody new. I'm not sure if events need to be daily, though, but of course that's just my bias through the lens of a rather small player base.
08 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Unfortunately, I share that lens.. my playerbase isn't really that small, but we don't see many of them on at a time usually, so far this month we've topped out at 12 online at a time, and that included two staff members. *shrug*

As for "hiring" someone for the job, our job applications have been pretty sparse lately.. but we've never advertised for staff anywhere beyond leaving the check box checked that we are hiring at a few listing sites that have them. We used to get applications pretty regularly anyway though. Guess times are getting busier for folks in real life or something.
09 Oct, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Well I was lucky enough to find someone to do it.

We now have scheduled daily events. The key is to arrange with other staff to help that person on days, when they can't do it.
Kinda like a sign up sheet. Let everyone pitch in, instead of one or two people trying to maintain that coverage.

Vladaar
10 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Wow, gratz Vlad, that's not an easy find, though it does sound like a good arrangement, as long as everyone does their part.
16 Oct, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 8th comment:
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At the time we had specific roles for each and every person inside of the game. They rarely varied, unless you were an upper level Immortal.

The programmers and builders were not considered Immortal staff. They had special abilities, but did not have the commands to deal with players (invoke objects, scatter players, deal with discipline, etc). Obviously certain people had an overlapping authority, which in this case, were considered "Administrative staff." For the most part, anyone that was a programmer tended to be an Administrative staff. The builders tended to also handle player relations. But we were able to delegate to either and each.

Now as for events. The storytellers had the ability to access the questing system.

Here's a few things that could not be done.

Equipment could not be invoked. There were special commands for invoking food, potions and scrolls. The only people that could invoke equipment were builders, and players could never be given items that were flagged with prototype.

The questing system did not allow for dynamic quests to have anything other than relic or static item to be given (e.g. a dynamic quest could not be created on the fly and have the best weapon in the game given out). You had to be a certain level to promote a quest to a static quest that would reset after so many ticks.

Immortals could not give anything to players. We treated immortals as basically a figment of your imagination. They could not speak to a room. They could "whisper" to individual players or speak through an NPC. If an immortal was not wizinivis in a room you saw them, but again, it was merely there for aesthetic purposes.

There could be no money given out by anyone that was an immortal. There was no reason to. The builders could set the amount of money that would be the maximum drop on a particular NPC and then there was a simple dice roll and that money would drop. NPCs did not carry money. When a player stole the money was then deducted from the maximum amount based upon the chance.
16 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I really like your distinction of admin-staff vs. creation-staff. I always had that in principle but put it into practice, although that is partly because it wasn't really my role to do so. :wink: Also the idea that immortals aren't really there. I don't like having to tie the notion of an admin to an in-game immortal.

It seems to be that I "exist" in two forms as an "imm": one, the me in the real-world who's an admin on the system, so in terms of the system I suppose I am the rules of physics or something. But then there is the character of "me" in the game, which might or might not be an in-game immortal. And that character might or might not be an imm that people can devote to.

For instance, I'm not sure I like the idea of devoting to in-game deities who are the characters of real-world people – it seems that creates too many kinds of ambiguity in how you interact with people. I want people to interact with me (the real-world me) as a player to an admin, or more generally as one human to another, but people should interact with my character completely independently of the real-world role I have.

Perhaps in some ways I'm a hard-core role player about some of this stuff, but still, I don't think players should conflate the idea of god characters with admin staff.

Well, I'm rambling somewhat and might have gone off-topic, so I'll stop now. :smile:
16 Oct, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, immortals in the game were considered nothing but deities. You didn't roleplay your deity. You were there to be worshiped. Most of our immortals had characters as well that they regularly roleplayed with. Both tells and chat channels were the only forms of OOC communication. An immortal, if they really wanted to, could echo their voice into an area, but not a single room.

The upper level immortals had the ability to freeze the room (nobody could leave, fighting stopped, and nothing could be done except talking). Then they were able to talk.
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