While it's well-intentioned, I can't say I see a written story showing anyone the nature of text MUDs. I've never found that anyone understands the nature of text MUDs without sitting down and playing them. The idea of a real-time world being represented in text is so foreign to most people. Of course, the stories may get a few people interested enough to sit down and try out text MUDs, which would be good.

Couple of points:
-First I think many of us (myself included) are possibly a bit guilty of pushing off MUDs as too "foreign" or difficult for "normal" people, which means we need to pay special attention to advertising it in special ways to them. While I still haven't completely convinced myself of this NOT being true, I think it would be worthwhile to play devil's advocate with the notion.
The first computer game made was a text based game that, except for the multiplayer environment, bears a striking resemblance to the style of most text based MUDs out there (although I think we can agree that while they may LOOK like "Zork" or one if it's counterparts on the surface, it's better to equate "Zork," the 10mm Hydra viridissima, to it's current MUD brother, the 10m long fifty headed Hydra). The game of course had many single player variants. So many that, I'd be willing to bet that many people who spent their adolescence or teenager years during either the 80's or the 90's, and used one of many different computer types that were commercially active, can recall playing (and probably enjoying) either “Zork”, or a variant of it. True, I’m focusing in again on a smaller group of people (“…and used [a] … computer…”) which certainly was no where near the extent we have today, but I’ve personally been pretty darned surprised at the people I’ve found that used to play such games, and even those that used to play multiplayer text based games (not necessarily MUDs however) on the old acoustically coupled modems. I’m also (although less so as I’ve found more and more) surprised at the number of people (younger people then the afore-mentioned) who have in fact heard of and even played MUDs before in semi-recent times. The excuses for quitting are usually the same of course: “not enough time… I was too addicted… everything else in my life screeched to a halt…”
Really, from personal experience, the only large groups of people I’ve found that played or at least seen a MUD before, are those of the “new” generation (those that are teenagers now--you know, the ones that are most apt to become problem players for a while before they get bored). Interestingly enough, this generation is the most computer heavy generation of any so far, with strong focus on the Internet, and more importantly, games. The games they’re used to seeing ARE the flashy new games with huge intricate engines, massive attention to graphical detail and which tend to favor a short reaction time over an imaginative or quick thinking brain. These, although I’ve managed to pull a few in myself, tend not to be the most creative players. They also almost never have seen or heard of MUDs before. They might, in turn, not be the best people to focus on.
If the people we focus on are those that already are aware of MUDs, then what’s the point in advertising right? Well… I don’t think we can say that every person that has heard of a MUD is an ex-MUDder him or herself. A campaign for reintroduction of these people into the text-based genre may be advantageous. Starting with those who are most apt to jump ship in terms of time availability--college students.
But an overall reintroduction campaign I think might be worthwhile. It just needs to present to them both tasty morsels of MUDding that they now miss and can still get excited about, as well as presenting them with recent changes which take care of those problems they finally decided to bail out because of (as mentioned earlier by someone else, too much Rping, or too much H&S; not enough of a balanced fun, mix, or even alternate activities to both). It might also be worthwhile to tell them that they don’t NEED to spend every waking moment of their lives on the game anymore. With the mixed pay/free MUDs out there, money can be supplemented for time in terms of “getting somewhere” in the MUD world (although I understand and respect that some people here might not agree with that method of administration). Another option: with so many other styles of MUDs out there, I’m pretty sure (although I haven’t looked) that there exists MUDs that don’t require lots of time to play so much, as just a place to stop by when you have time and kick back for a few minutes or an hour, and yet STILL have fun, and maybe even still get somewhere because of quality playing during those few minutes.

-Second point (the first one started turning into a rant. I figured I probably should divide it up before I find myself with only one point). Spoke restates a great point; the best way of “advertising” is through word of mouth. Or at the very least, it’s been the mainstay of MUD advertising as I’ve seen it. It’s how I got into it probably closing in on 10 years ago now... I’ve honestly lost count… 10 doesn’t seem right, but I think only because it makes me seem older then I want to admit to myself. Either way, wherever I’ve been, the primary means of “advertising” the MUD was to get players to mention it to people they knew; friends, family members, online acquaintances, ect. I can’t say that they achieved earth-shattering results of course—there’s many reason for that I think—but I know it does work, as I’m a product of it working.

-Third point. This isn’t really a point I don’t think. In fact, I’m not sure any of these could be considered “points.” More like crappy advice. At any rate… posting “MUD Stories” is not a bad idea at all. But I’d suggest posting a mix of them. Most that I’ve heard mentioned are humorous ones. I’d suggest mixing those with tragic ones, violent ones, and all sorts of different kinds. Humor is an attractive device, but if you present nothing but humor, you might find people merely taking what you’re presenting as a joke. That and as great as the humor can be in MUDs (especially the ironies involved in some of your more run of the mill-MUDs, or those involved in H&S MUDs [the “good” aligned elf slaughtering eliminating whole populations of people just to gain a level]), the way we can spin some more tragic tales in can provide even more impact. The story that got me MUDing wasn’t necessarily a funny one (although I could find humor in it as I’m sure many others could) was one on a standard DIKU H&S variant: the protagonist was working with others in a clan. The antagonist stole something from him or some such. Either way it started a bit of a clan war. It wind down to him walking into the cathedral (I’m sure many of you know which I’m talking about) where the antagonist was sleeping, dragging him out by his collar, and hacking him apart there on the steps. In fact, this story is so generic that I’d be willing to bet half of us have been on both sides of that story multiple times. But it hooked me. The intrigue of being able to work WITH other people AGAINST other people in such an environment, even one with such loose RP as a H&S, was attractive, with no intended humor involved really.

I think I’m out of points but for those who think I write too much to get my point across (an acceptable opinion) here’s a condensed version:
1) Don’t necessarily bank on the idea that we’re an isolated group of gamers, surrounded by a larger group of generic gamers that haven’t ever heard of MUDs, and requires them to be explained. Many people KNOW MUDs are out there. Others that don’t, don’t necessarily need them explained, or need to understand them, in order to get them hooked.
2) “Networking,” although I find it personally abhorred when job searching, is effective in spreading the word of MUDs, as “proven” by most player’s histories.
3) Don’t focus on one aspect of MUDs. They’re too complex to stop there. Humor is great, but there’s a lot more then can be presented in a MUD-story format, just or maybe even more, effectively.

Yeah I remember it. I thought it was the funniest thing I read since The Bohemian Mud Rhapsody.

the_logos Dec. 04 2004,14:47
I think your entire post illustrates the difference in our 'personal values' better than anything I could say, so I am not going to dwell on that. Why don't you just stick to your advertising, and let the ones of us more interested in storytelling than counting numbers of hits develop this idea?

Now, if we are going to pursue this project any further, I think it needs some organizing to avoid unproductive work. Here are some thoughts:

1. As much as I'd like a separate section for storytelling to open on TMS, let's not lose track of the initial idea, which is to reach a target OUTSIDE the already establish Text Mud World. We need a paper magazine, or a Website directed mainly at a different audience, where we could get a chance to establish a 'column'. Brody mentioned RPG Times  already, are there any other potential targets we could approach?
(Still - one good thing with opening a new column here is that the efforts wouldn't be totally wasted if the entire idea turns out to be unfeasible).

2. A section for Mud stories on this site would be a great help in the task of collecting a large enough number of suitable stories before we approach the targets. I think we need a minimum number of 10 good stories to even start this out. I have suggested a few already, maybe somebody else could point us in some other direction? Some stories will also have to be written specifically for this venture, and perhaps a small reward for the authors would be in place? (It doesn't need to be any fancier than the already existing system of putting an icon next to the name of the author's home mud for a month).

3. The main problem with using already existing stories is probably the length. Although there are a number of very good stories to choose from, for instance in the earlier Storyteller competitions, most of them are way too longwinded. The stories we need for this venture would have to be comparatively short, or most people would never bother to read them through. We should probably settle on a max length right from the start. My initial suggestion would be a max of 1200 words, perhaps even 1000.

4. If we use already existing stories, we obviously need to seek out the authors of those and ask their permission to publish them again in another context. While this usually wouldn't be hard to get, it might present some difficulties in the cases where the authors have left the Mud world or even the internet, and old addresses are no longer valid. I am not sure of a solution to this one, maybe we'd just have to drop the stories in these cases, however good. Copyright should always be respected.

5. It would be a help if any people who wish to take part in this venture would announce their interest either in a reply to this thread, or in a E-mail/message to me or Brody. That would give us an idea of how many stories we might be able to get together, which in turn would be helpful to know, if and when we decide to contact some magazine. It would also be good if you gave a short synopsis or at least some idea of the type of subject you'd be choosing for your story. That could prevent several different people concentrating on similar subjects.

6. Apart from the stories themselves, I think we also need some light articles of more 'editorial' type, to explain some of the quaint features typical of text Muds to an audience that never played any. I was going to volunteer for the task of writing some of those myself, since that's the way my talents are leaning, but maybe some more people are interested in this type of writing?

As I said, you can have mine - though I'd like to go over it again and edit it (get rid of the typos and tighten it up a bit) first.

There is also another project I've suggested and Jaewyn might be interested in getting off the ground in - so if you want to give feedback or help brainstorm a name, stop by.

Medievia's in-game newspaper, The Mudslinger, has been going strong for at least 9 years and has been archiving the stories and poetry since 1999.

You can visit the current Mudslinger at .

Or, better yet, you can access a list of all Medievian stories at

If you would like Medievia to be a part of this story project, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Soleil
Medievia.com, Inc.

I'd rather not, thank you.

Wasn't Medthievia banned from the listings due to outright ignoring of the Diku license and worse?

Why are they still advertising here?

Perhaps you should read the title of this thread. "Text mud promotion to the outside world." It doesn't say, "Creative writing." Creative writing is great. But this thread is about promoting text MUDs, and promotion is about numbers. If you're honestly concerned with promoting text MUDs rather than simply putting stories out there for the sake of putting stories out there (not that there's anything wrong with that at all), then it's all about numbers and hits. There's not really any arguing with this. Tracking the results of your promotional activities is one of the first things a marketing class would teach you, as without tracking them, you have no idea if you're wasting your time or not.

Again, if you just want to put out stories, I think that's great. But if you're really concerned with promoting text muds (which is what this thread is about), then I suggest you look at it from a marketing perspective rather than a writing perspective. And from any perspective at all actually concerned with promoting text MUDs, ensuring you can track whether you're wasting your time or not is crucial. In fact, I'd challenge you to find me a single reputable marketing text that urges otherwise.

I mean, if it turns out there's just no feasible way to track it (for instance, perhaps Andrew and Adam don't want to help track how many visitors are coming from the fiction site) then so be it, but to dismiss the idea of tracking your marketing results is extremely naive.

--matt

Soleil; Dec. 05 2004,13:11
Honestly, Soleil, you sound like a nice person yourself, but you cannot really be unaware of what most Mudowners think about Medievia and the Diku code licence, can you?

I don't think we'd want to involve Medievia in any common cause for text muds. At least I wouldn't. I cannot of course speak for the rest of the community.

So thanks for the offer, but no thanks, at least as far as I am concerned. If Medievia is in on this project, I'm out.

Wow! Hypocrisy is on the march!

From Molly's mud's website: "Also there is another war going on in another Galaxy, far, far away. A group of the planets there, known as the Empire, are trying to subdue and enslave all other planets in the Galaxy. There are a few planets trying to resist the Empire and keep their freedom. The rebels fight a brave but losing battle against the overwhelming powers of the Empire, and a few Earthlings are involved in that battle too, although most of the contestants are alien races like Wookies, Twi'leks and Ewoks. Jedi Knights are leading the forces on both sides, some following the Dark Side, others the Power of Light."

But no doubt you have permission from Lucasarts right? In fact, obviously you don't, but you're not going to let that stop you from ostracizing Medievia. You don't have permission to use Lucasarts stuff, and, if the Medievia accusations are true, they're using IP without a license to do so. Seems exactly the same to me, except, of course, the IP you're using in a way you don't have permission to is worth billions of dollars more than the IP that Medievia is supposedly using without permission.

Note that I am not flaming your use of the Star Wars IP, incidentally. I decided awhile ago that if it's not worth it to the owner of the IP to do something about it, it's sure as heck not worth me caring about. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy inherent in your accusation.

--matt

The_logos; Dec. 05 2004,23:44
Oh yeah, you are not out to flame me, right?

Yes, we do have one zone (out of 187) that is based on Star Wars. How many other muds do?
We also have a small part of a zone very loosely based on LOTR. How many other muds do?
(There are entire muds based on LOTR or Wheel of Time and in almost every stock mud around you’ll find the Caves of Moria and the Hobbit Village, although it’s sometimes a smurf zone instead).

We probably have 2 or 3 other zones among the 187 inspired by other books or films. How many other muds do?

I like to use quotations and references to literature, myth and films in the zones myself, because that can create funny anachronisms along the lines of ‘A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court',  and because our theme is Time Travel. Since it has been such a widespread practice in all Muds right from the start, I never really saw anything wrong in doing it. I actually see it as paying reverence or 'fanzine' rather than IP theft. And since we never have been trying to hide it, I don't really see how the word 'hypocrisy' applies.

And I think only you could have got the idea of comparing this to abuse of the Diku licence. We all know your opinions about the Diku licence.

But since you weren’t out to flame me, I won’t delve into that.

Now, could we possibly go back to the topic of the thread?

I'm not out to flame you, no. Why would I bother looking to flame you in particular? I would have posted the same thing to anyone who criticized Medievia for using IP in a way that it doesn't have permission to use when said person is also using IP in a way he or she doesn't have permission to use.

I guess this really is where our worldviews differ. I don't see much strength in an argument based on the logic that "Other people do it too!" or "Well, we have lots of IP that's not infringing!" I wonder what your reaction would be if someone logged into 4 Dimensions and just took a bunch of area descriptions, en masse, and incorporated them into their own mud. You'd be ok with that I assume?

And no doubt if you assume that Medievia is DIKU-derived, they like using DIKU code. Just because you like to do something doesn't change whether it's right or wrong.

It's hypocritical to criticize them for doing something you do. Whether you hide the fact that you do it or not doesn't change whether it's hypocritical to criticize Medievia for it.

My opinion about the DIKU license is the same as about the Star Wars license: If the owners don't think it's worth enforcing, why should I care? It means the IP either isn't worth enough to bother protecting (DIKU) or the IP is so large that a few text MUDs using it without permission is relatively irrelevant (Star Wars).

Ahh right, it's ok for you to make a post shunning Medievia and implying they're horribly unethical, but can't have anyone pointing out that you do the same thing can we?

--matt

Well you're not using the Star Wars properties against their stated policies are you? Non-commercial, don't sully image.



OTOH, Mercthievia is violating the Diku license. Commercially too. Not even a prayer at a "fair use" defense. The other difference is they are dirty rotten liars.

No hyprocrisy involved.

Sorry Soliel you can't polish that turd here.

The Mercthievia staff are horribly unethical. Liars and thieves.. They ought to be shunned. They deserve a good shunning and a smack everytime they open their prevaricating gobs.

Just as an FYI, I googled over to the official Star Wars website, to see if I could find any actual policies. I found some.

Edited to add: Bold emphasis mine.

Seems pretty clear to me that anyone offering a Star Wars-themed game to the public (meaning, not for private use) without getting permission from Lucasfilms is violating the copyright of Lucasfilms' Star Wars.

Whether they choose to enforce the copyright is another matter entirely, but I kinda agree - if you are violating the rights to someone else's property, you really have little call to criticise someone else for doing the same thing.

Anyone know what Wizards of the Coast's policy is towards usage of their campaign settings, out of interest? Just curious, as Armageddon certainly borrows a lot from Dark Sun (certainly far more than just an area based on the theme, like 4 Dimensions does with Star Wars).

The game did start with a Dark Sun setting, which we've acknowleged, but over the past decade since I've come on staff, we've tried to move the game away from that for precisely that reason, going through and removing references where we can without tampering with the flavor of the game, and I think we've gotten much farther away from it than many of the MUDs who share D&Dish type origins.

I'm not sure how this has turned into a "let's get ****y about Armageddon's origins because one of its players said something about Star Wars" thread, but I've pretty much given up on trying to steer it back into something useful. Molly, if you want, I'm sure we've got some good fiction to contribute - most of them are listed at . Perhaps we could set up some sort of collaborative group for this - I'm hoping Brody might be interested as well. If people interested in that sort of collaboration to promote mudding through essays, fiction, etc, want to email me at , I'd be glad to set something up. I work with a couple of online writers' groups and this would be pretty similar.

Apologies for the double, but in going back to look at the thread, my offer's redundant since Molly's made it already. I'll email her.

It says "private, non-commercial."

That means it has to be both PRIVATE *and* non-commercial.

4 Dimensions is *not* private.

Which would fall under private, non-commercial. As Threshold pointed out, 4 Dimensions is public, not private. What you're doing is the same as screening a Star Wars movie for the public, but just not charging them for entry, which is patently a violation of Lucas's IP rights to his movies.

But hey, don't let that stop you from slamming Medievia for supposedly doing exactly the same thing (I say supposedly because they don't actually openly advertise that they're doing it, unlike you.)

--matt

It's also important to bear in mind, KaVir, that I am not an administrator, owner, or even an IMM on Armageddon. I have no control over their policies and procedures, and the only input I am granted is that of a player.

I'd never even HEARD of Dark Sun until I started playing Armageddon, and even then had no idea it was the name of a WoC campaign - since I've never played any tabletop RPGs in my life and don't know anyone outside of the internet that has, or does.

I wouldn't know a Dark Sun reference in Arm if it slammed me in the face. So - quoting the link from -my- post, as though you are singling me out for daring to do so - is meaningless. I'm not a hypocrite because I have nothing to do with Armageddon, other than the fact that I play it.

Oh and it also supposedly shares a common theme, or similar somethings, with Dune, a book which I have never had any interest in reading. You can't really claim, imply, or even suggest that I am responsible for that, and therefore am a hypocrite - since I'm not on staff of Arm, never have been, and likely never will be.

Sure he can. If you think the Armeggedon property is copyright infringement then you're a hypocrite for continuing to play on it. I personally don't think it is, lest anyone misundertand the finer point. I don't play the mud because it's simply not my preferred style of roleplaying game, though if it were it would be one of three or four I'd play.

OTOH, Mercthievia is pirated warez. No if's, and's, or but's about it. The difference between Mercthievia and a Star Wars mud is the same difference between premeditated murder and an accidental shooting. Mercthievia has no legitimate defense. The latter does frankly because Lucas actively encouraged it.

Luckily, I can spread the love around freely on this issue without being charged with hypocrisy. *ROFL*

Good advice and I'd think that would go without saying. One definately doesn't want accept any "Luke Skywalker is a homo" stories. Though I'm suprised LucasFilms got the take down on that one. I'd have thought it would have been protected under parody. Then again, I can undertand why Star Wars would see that as tarnishing their image and a really gay thing to do to with their characters.

No, not the same thing. The little bastard Vryce stripped the copyright notices right out of the Diku code. Frankly I'm tired of the endless moral equivocation crapola between people doing non-commercial fan fiction and premeditated and blatant knavery.

Ah nevermind. There's enough red herrings around here to choke a seal colony.

[red herring]

Whoa - that has to be one of the coolest phrases I've ever seen the word "premeditated" used in. I think I'm going to bust this one out on my crimlaw exam tomorrow. Mua!

[/red herring]

Without casting judgements about it, to me they're both just using someone else's IP in a way they do not have permission to do so. There are legitimate moral systems that don't recognize any property rights, intellectual or otherwise. Happily for those of us creating our own IP, a lot of men in uniforms with guns and batons ultimately ensure we control our IP to some extent.

--matt

The derailed issue here..

Is that one administrator of a game that supposedly never got permission, or even asked for it, to use the property rights to someone else's product, is criticizing the administrator of another game, which supposedly never got permission, or even asked for it, to use the property rights to someone else's product.

I am neither the administrator of a game, nor the owner of a product being used by someone else.

In the issue at hand, I can in no possible way be construed as a hypocrite, because I have nothing at stake on either side of the arguement. I was merely pointing out an irony I noticed.

No matter what they say about what you did after the War, Jazuela, I'll always be your fan. I know that Papa Joe was just too...####...sexy to resist. Hypocrite? Definitely not. Lover of mustachioed Russian men? Absolutely.

Wow, that went right over my head. I'm sure it's some kind of reference to something, but I have no idea what.

But just for the record: I was only 6 during the Viet Nam war, which the government insisted (at the time) wasn't a war - it was a "military action" (would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Would a war by any other name smell as bad?)

As for Papa Joe, he's not Russian, nor is he anyone's Papa that I'm aware of. Certainly no whelp of mine, that much I can be sure of, since I eat my young.

Do I have to come right out and say that you and Stalin (Papa Joe) were something more than friends in the years after WWII? There's nothing to be ashamed of. I'm still your fan. His animal magnetism was obvious.

Uh, maybe you have me confused with someone else? Or is this one of those "When did you stop beating your wife" kinds of things?

WWII is way before my time, Grandpa.

You better start being judgemental otherwise you'll end up with a circle of low class cretins around you. If you can't make a distinction between the guy who littered in your yard and the guy who burned down your house then you have a moral problem. I mean hey they're both vandalism of property right?

Now the Mercthievia code stealing thing would be like me starting a Star Wars mud and claiming I created a muppet named Yoda and Luke and an asthmatic evil fellow...forget his name...and the force ...and well it's NOT Star Wars... oh no nothing at all like Star Wars 'cause I wrote it from scratch and it's just a happy cooincidence that the Lucas fellow used the same names and world. Maybe just inspired from Star Wars if you please. Yeah that's the ticket.

That doesn't appear to fit the mold of "all copyright infringement is the same". But the above describes Mercthievia pretty well and not "fan fiction". I guess stealing 600K of copied code was one heck of an inspiration from the Diku and Merc groups. And it's a swell perversion of inspiration too. You see then all the really really stupid kiddies say well that's okay 'cause the Diku group say theirs was "inspired" from Aber. And being that suddenly "inspired" is a filthy word, a psuedonym for thievery. And that's where moral equivocating gets you, nothing left but meaningless euphemisms in a totally gray world.

*Sob* My attempts at humour seem to be meeting with a brick wall! Good thing I haven't quit my day job with IRE. My dreams of being the next Richard Pryor have been dashed, by YOU, on the jagged rocks of hopelessness! I hope you're happy with yourself.

This is a very long thread, and I don't have the energy to try to read it all. Are you looking for MU* based fiction? I'm happy to give some of mine providing this doesn't cause any conflict on the mud I play (one is being used in a clan doc.)

If you're not soliciting fiction, just ignore please. If you are please point me toward the contact person.

Thanks for trying to set the thread back on track, Fifi.
I gave up that long ago, it's beyond salvation. We are taking the serious discussion to an e-mail group instead, and leaving this thread to the trolls.

Sanvean is setting up a Yahoo mail group to discuss how to proceed with this idea, and we'll be happy to add your name to it. And of course anyone else, who is seriously interested in the idea of promoting text muds by publishing good fiction, and who would like to help out.

Just message me or him with your e-mail and we'll forward the application form to join.

One administrator of a game where approximately 0.5% of the world is non-commercial credited fan fiction is criticising the administrator of another game which took around twenty six thousand lines of source code, stripped out the credits, and used it to earn a huge amount of cash.

But you're promoting it, and therefore supporting it, despite the fact that it does the same thing you're accusing Molly of but on a larger scale - and you're still promoting it, even after having it pointed out to you.

As I've said in the past, I don't generally have a problem with fan fiction as I consider it to be a completely different kettle of fish.  However I do have a problem with your hypocracy on this issue, particularly when you're accusing other people of doing exactly what you're supporting.

I'm also rather amused by your current trend of playing as , a role in which you've become so predictable in recent months that I can literally count the posts on one hand from the time he posts one of his "I'm great" flames to the time that you jump in to back him up and polish his boots.

Honestly I think the best promotion you could possibly do would be creating actual novels printed for the regular public a la Warcraft, Halo, etc... The model would be similar in that it uses the games history to create a story that can be read by the general public, but linking it back to the game so people can "experience" the same events. Much like the Magic: The Gathering CCG spawning several novels, the difference would lie in the fact that MUDs' similarities towards novels is much greater than that of a card based game.

I ultimately thought that was the end-result of many MUDs contests for short stories and such. Take such short stories, combine them into an anthology of <insert name here> MUD and you have a ready made book.

I think we have lots of stories and short novels in our forums. They are stories people have written to attain special titles or lastnames for their characters.

I'm sure they would be happy to contribute (at least some of them are i know).

So if you decide to put something together with stories and similar let me know and il scrounge up some of the better ones we have.

Maybe we should make some kind of united attempt to create a "compendium" sort of thing, printed in rl paper, or atleast some good pdf files that CAN be printed on paper, and together start spreading it out to RPG groups and game stores etc in our local towns.

(This is something we have planned to do ourselves anyways, but might as well make it as a united attempt and maybe raise the quality of it).

One extremely important thing for the success of something like that is ART. Any type of material used for advertising and promotion should have good art, wether it is a webpage, pdf or paper printed document. Simple text without good graphics to lift it up won't catch anyones attention.

I read a book, and for the life of me can't remember what it's called, about Doug Adams' attempt at a new Infocom game. It was more about him, than the game. I -believe- it might have been Neil Gaiman's "Don't Panic" but I'd have to re-read that to be sure (I've read all of the works written by or about Doug Adams).

The point is, it was a book -about- a game, and all the joys and heartaches that go with it.

I can see a compendium of snippets written by mud owners/admins, that tells a collective story about muds as a genre.

the_logos Dec. 06 2004,04:58
Tyche;
Dec. 06 2004,22:22
That is a great explanation, Tyche, the best one I have seen so far.

I think you are wasting your breath trying to explain this to the_logos though. To understand the distinction - (and also to use the word ‘hypocricy’ in its right sense) - you need to be able to distinguish between ‘right and wrong’ or ‘ethical and unethical’ rather than just ‘legal and illegal’.

Judging from what I have seen of the_logos postings over the years, he lacks that ability.

For those that have it, and since the integrity of my mud has been questioned; here are the policies of my Mud, and my own line of thinking about the matter:

1. I don’t really see fan-fiction as very wrong, although we don’t exactly encourage our builders to do it. The Starwars zone that the_logos and Jazuela keep bringing up is one of the oldest in our game; it was written before I joined the staff even. But I really don’t have any problem keeping it, as long as the Lucas Company don’t approach us with a formal request. Then I would of course remove it immediately.

Comment: We did actually try to contact them about it several years ago, but never got any reply. I think many muds in a similar situation have done the same, and like us settled with the thought that the company in question probably doesn't mind very much, but won't formally give their consent, out of fear of setting an unwanted precedence.

2. If someone got 'inspired' by one of my zones, and even used small parts of it as the foundation for a 'spin off', I might be slightly annoyed if they did it without asking my permission. But I would also be a bit flattered, since it meant my work was good enough to get inspired by.
With my consent I'd be totally ok with it of course.

Comment: This happens pretty often in my mud. Builders get inspired by the work of each other, and make frequent allusions to alreday existing zones, sometimes reusing the mobs.
Since this helps us to create a coherent world, we encourage it.

3. If someone stole one of my zones - (or anybody's zone for that matter) - and ripped out the credits to pass it off as their own work, I would be furious of course, what builder wouldn't?

Comment: This has happened twice in our mud. In the first case a builder downloaded a zone from the net, replaced the credit with his own name and claimed it to be his own. In the other case a builder copied large parts of a zone in another mud he played from the screen and used them in a zone he was building. Luckily another of our builders played the same mud and caught on to the scam.

Both zones were imediately deleted, and both builders were kicked out.

4. If someone stole the entire mud, code and all, ripped off the credits, changed the name, and then claimed thait it was their work, I would most likely go ballistic, especially if they were also making money from the theft.

Comment: This is what Medievia did. And there is no 'maybe' about it, it is a very well documented case of code theft, even if they have been trying to cover their tracks ever since.

-------

For those who want to join in the MudFiction venture, here's the address to the webpage that has just been set up for the development: