When designing races for a new MUD, what are some thoughts and opinions on having too many races? I’m considering 21 races but it was pointed out that this may overwhelm new players during character creation. I’ve seen some MUDs with many more races and some MUDs with just a few races. I’m wondering what experience others may have had, good and bad, with extended race selection versus limited race selection.

Also, I notice a lot of MUDs have stereotypical D&D races like elf, dwarf, drow, gnome, hobbit, giant, etc. Do you think players expect/prefer/look for these standardized fantasy races or are more excited with original new races (or a mix of the two)?

Thanks for your thoughts!
Estarra

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when deciding how many races to have is that the more you create, the less time you'll have to spend on each.  If you were to have (for example) 7 races instead of 21, that would allow you to put three times as much effort into each - and IMO it's much better to have a small number of highly detailed and individualised races than a large number of generic ones.

What you might consider doing is allowing players to first choose a species (eg elf) and then a specific race (eg sea elf).  That way you can focus on making each species very distinctive from the others, while still having a large variety of races with individual advantages and disadvantages. I actually use a very similar approach for classes, and find it really works quite well.

Excellent point! However, assume for the moment that I can (pathetically) spend enough time to fully develop 21 races.  Soooo....assuming there are 21 equally well-developed races (different stats, benefits, weaknesses, histories, etc.), is this a feature that would engage players or would it be overwhelming and/or annoying?

BTW, funny you should mention races that have sub-species, because I was playing with that idea too (thus, I guess there'd be over 21 races). The sub-species wouldn't be available until certain skills are acquired. Is this called remort? Totally off subject, but where exactly did the term remort come from?

IMO the concept of a "fully developed race" is along the same lines as that of a "fully developed mud". There is always something else that can be refined, improved or updated, it's just a matter of where you wish to draw the line. Is there some special significance to having 21 races? Because otherwise, logic dictates that you could instead have 7, each of which has 3 times as many special features/powers, and 3 times as much background story.

It really depends on a lot of different factors (in particular, how you present it to the players); there is no universal "correct" number of races to have.

I believe "remort" (re-mortal) is the concept of a character reaching top/hero/immortal level, then starting again from scratch, often with some sort of benefit. I first saw this approach used in a regular pen&paper roleplaying game (D&D Immortals Rules boxed set from 1986), but I've no idea which mud first used it (although the usenet archives show evidence that it was in use by 1993).

There have been numerous variations of remort over the years, although I would say your suggestion wouldn't be considered one (people don't restart in any way, they just change). In fact, what you describe sounds more like a tier-system, which is one of the more recent (although equally popular) mud features.

I do find it rather strange that people would be able to specialise their race (or more accurately "species") later on though. For some supernatural races it might make sense, but I cannot logically see how (for example) an "elf" would suddenly turn into a "wood elf" (for starters, what was he beforehand?).

Right. In this case, not all races would "tier" up at a certain level, rather just two of the races. As a simplified example, upon gaining a dark mystic combat skill, if a player is one of a race of demon-like creatures, they become large hulk-like demons, gaining strength but losing intelligence. If, on the other hand, a member of this demon-like race takes a magic using path and specializes in dark mystic spellcraft, he likewise changes and transforms, gaining intelligence but losing constitution and strength. In either case, the name of their race changes (Brood Demon or Imperial Demon). The object here is to have a demonic race that are not all geared to be just fighters or just magic-users but are encouraged to become either.

Anyway, I'm not married to this idea but just playing around with it. Obviously, as you described re-mort, it's not re-mort. I guess its a tier system.

This is mainly my oppinion, but if I see a MUD that even mentions 'halfling' or 'elf' I don't give it anymore of my time and go on. This goes double if you have more than one type of elf. Originality is what I mainly go for.

Armegeddon is one I'd have to make an exception of of course. It has most of the annoyingly standard races, but they are so different in general from the norm, and the world is nicely original, that I can tolerate it.

Now, as for how many races... on my home MUD (which is not Armegeddon) there are 12. Or, actually, there will eventually be 12. So far only 5 have been introduced as a playable race. It has taken since the start, around 1996 I think it is, to develop these and wright enough background, history, quirks, behaviors, etc etc to make each one original. So pretty much, it depends on how in depth-you want your races to be and how much work your willing to put into them. Each race fills a niche in the world, from an aquatic eel-like people of utterly erratic, err, well, ok, insane, thought processes, to deep dwelling arachnid-like species that thinks in fractal chaos logic, to an angry aerial species peeved because they can't really find a niche not already being utilized by others and desperately craving something to call their own.

Now, if you have 10 different kinds of elves, one with wings, one with fins, and one with big bunny ears from Happy Land, no, I'd say 21 is too much. It all depends on their quality and how they are fitted into the world.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Elves don't bother me as much as hobbits (unless it's specifically a Middle Earth setting) and drows (not sure why they bother me). For some reason, dwarves I have no problem with. That being said, I do have friends that *always* play a dwarf warrior or an elven mage, etc. So I'd like a happy medium where a few races are at least similar to the stock races that some players crave.

I don't think it's the name so much as the niche the race is supposed to fill. Elves just tend to be annoying in most MUDs because of the source material being drawn upon to define them as a race.

In Tolkien, for example, Elves are the ultimate warriors, archers, mages, artificers, rangers, are all geniuses, can control forces on par with those of the "gods" (e.g., Feanor and the Silmarils), are practically immortal, the most aesthetically pleasing, etc., etc. In fantasy literature, the only disadvantages Elves typically have are racial (such as slow rate of reproduction). Such disadvantages, however, do not affect individuals, and therefore never affect an individual character in a MUD.

Races are made interesting by their weaknesses as much as their strengths. Elves based on Tolkien are boring because they often have too much of the former and none (of consequence) of the latter--or, if the stat system is zero sum, end up being long-lived humans with pointy ears.

Differentiation should be about far more than just stats - different wear locations (eg for centaur, mermaid, dragon, etc), bonuses for typical racial weapons (eg bows for elves, axes for dwarves, klaives for werewolves, etc), different size requirements for equipment, natural racial powers and permanent affects (eg racial spells or skills (or modifiers to such), infravision, flight, shapechanging between specific forms, etc), resistances and vulnerabilities (eg vampires burned by sunlight, faeries taking longer to heal from damage caused by iron, werewolves finding it harder to control shapechanging during a full moon, dryads taking extra damage from fire but less damage from water, etc), special modifiers within certain environments (eg wood elves gaining stealth modifiers and improved speed while in forests), racial languages, cosmetic adjustments (eg modified speech, ranges of eye/hair colour, etc), modifiers to natural capabilities (eg holding your breath under water, jumping long distances, etc), restrictions on class choices (or skill/spell choices for classless muds), standing with other races (automated for use by mob AI), etc, etc, etc...

There are many, many ways to make a race unique.

When I ran a local gaming store there were a couple of us who would throw together a basic codebase and have LAN gaming session with each base until people grew tired of it.  The first one I put together was an expansion of Gladiator Pits that featured a "create-your-own-race" customization.  Each player could choose from several dozen perks and flaws (with a simple point system to attempt balance) and a name generator for the race.  One of the traits people had the most fun/debate about deciding on was the homeworld enviornment (extremely hot planet, high gravity planet, acidic atmosphere, etc)  which altered stats, resists and vulns.
 I think towards the end someone said there was upwards of 50K available races, many extremely similar and some vastly different.  While of course this is no attempt to prove you should throw as many races as you can think of into a game, under some settings (an intergalatic Street Fighter clone or many other basic pk games I've played) the background of the races don't really mean much.  What most players care about is what the race allows you to do and that the races are balanced.

Good point KaVir, however I just don't tend to think that way because that's not how it works on my mud. Our races are differentiated by size (which is also a stat), number of grasping limbs, wearable items (a braman has to wear 2 pairs of pants to be fully covered, only catfolk can wear a weapon known as claw covers, etc), appearance, and language, in addition to stats, and that's about it. We don't have a full blown damage type system, and it's very rare that anyone would wanna sneak through the woods, so I just tend not to think about that stuff.

Going back to the original post and the context, I would recommend starting out with a few, maybe 6-8 well crafted, well thought out races and expand on that slowly to fill in the roleplay or combatant types deemed necessary.

You can have 50+ NPC type races but carefully choose and develop those you allow PCs to become. By development I mean establish a value, a unique function in the world, a unique spell/skill tree etc and modify the world to accomodate the unique aspects of those new races. IMHO it's much better to make what exists rewarding and playworthy THEN expand it to make it a superlative of the original.

The same tenets apply to classes, make the first few awesome and expand slowly making the new ones fit into the world before you actually enable them.

I view it all as an empiricle process and I've been well served by that view. If you jump in over your head from the start, it's really hard to ever get ahead of the issues created.

Anyone know anything about Retromud? I've been browsing how others handle races and it appears to me Retromud is hands down the leader in quantity (dunno about quality) with 60 races. They seem pretty successful in terms of having a high player base.

Suprisingly, from what I've seen, Retromud seems to have good, well-developed, and interesting races. Most races have skills that make sense for them, there aren't twelve kinds of elves, and they seem pretty balanced, along with a bit of history. The same with the guilds. A lot of unique skills, even for sub-guilds, are available, and most have their own agenda suggested by the help files. The problem is that not everyone pays attention to it all. It's pretty chaotic for a newbie having that many guilds and races. You don't know what to expect, since you have only looked at a few other races besides the one you chose (For example, "WTF is a <race>? Should I be scared that it's glaring at me balefully, or amused?"). Eventually, though, I think that people get used to it. They're not as deeply developed as they would be had they made 6 races, but how far can you plot a race's history before you have a book a player needs to read before playing the game? It's impressive what they've done.

I never really got in to Retromud, though, because their equipment doesn't save. It bugs me to play MUDs that don't save equipment.

Don't make tons of races just for the sole sake of having tons of races. Alot of people who make MUDs have this mentality that they have to have tons and tons of everything and as soon as some half-baked idea for a race or class pops into their head it's "BLAAARGH! Must code new race/class!" and you end up with some kind of "mindflayer" race or "viking" class which is basically completely identical to some prior race or class. I know of a MUD which has, among tons and tons of other classes, "Dragonslayer", "Demonslayer", and "Undeadslayer"... and guess what, theyre all just about identical. God, it's no wonder muds are going to sh!t these days. I pretty much gave up coding when I realized that it was embarrassing and dorky to show my real life friends "what i did" as a hobby. It's kind of like walking around speaking Klingon or carrying a huge pile of AD&D manuals, except increase the nerdiness factor by 10000. The innovative people in this field have all moved on to MMORPGs, because they've realized that these days if you want to show your friends the game you've been working on, it better at least have some #### graphics/titties. What's left is a bunch of whiny lamers who download other peoples' codebases and see how many races and classes they can churn out before that initial "free AV to all new players" burst of players dies away leaving the MUD a ghosttown.

Actually, differentiation should be about whatever is appropriate to the genre, game, and target audience. To many, if not most, players of muds, a race is a collection of stats and possibly a graphic and that's about it. Go watch how most people talk about their races on Everquest for instance, if they even bother acknowledging they even HAVE a race.
--matt

Its not my intention to start a debate about what defines a mud, but I would say that most people who frequent these forums use it to refer to text based muds specifically, as opposed to the 3d graphics games pitched at mass audiences.

In terms of the average text-based mud player, I tend to think they do care about more than a pair of stats. Many use it for cues about how to act, and how to imagine their characters.

To chime in on the other questions, my personal preference is for a range of 5-10 races. In those, I would suggest making about half of them familiar, and about half of them original and weird to accomodate a range of tastes.

Ryan

Well, not everyone has what it takes to produce a quality mud. Looking at the majority of muds out there, I can understand why many people would be embarrassed to show their work to others.

Actually I've seen far more innovation in text muds than I have in graphical ones.

Yes, but it should still be about more than just stats.

Well I never claimed that everyone did a good job of differentiating between races!

Then obviously they've done a poor job of differentation.

I would guess that the reason for this phenomenon on EQ has less to do with proper differentiation of races than the general lack of RP in the game. If somehow a fully worked out race with loads of background and unique features happened to make its way into the game, everyone would probably treat it pretty much like they treat all the other races. They wouldn't CARE if it came from another planet or lived in caves and ate slugs or something, they'd just go ok whatever, when can I kill stuff?

In a non-RP mud you'd most likely want to focus more on the mechanics and less on things like background history - but even so, well-implemented races should be about much more than just stats. Like all mud features, races can be well implemented, or poorly implemented. The popularity of a mud is never based purely on the quality of a single feature, however.

Actually, I've never seen a text mud w here I was immediately hit with the differences between races more than in a graphical mud. If I walk up to you in SW:G and you're a wookie, man, do I know it. You're big, you're hairy, and you can't be missed.

On the other hand, why do more than that for the most part? Roleplayers are a fairly insigifnicat part of muds as a whole and the big games are going after the lowest common denominator. Phat L3wt anyone?

--matt

The same could be said about the descriptions of players in a text-based mud. The difference is really due to the medium.

Because diversity is what makes one mud stand out from the masses of stock.

Not really. The impact isn't the same nor is it as immediate in text. Same reason why pornographic pictures are regulated far more strongly than pornographic writing is.



But you just said that Everquest and company are not doing a good job of diversifying their races. Yet they stand out quite well.
--matt

As I said, the difference is due to the medium. It's like the age-old analogy of TV vs books - both appeal to different audiences in different ways.

I also said "The popularity of a mud is never based purely on the quality of a single feature, however".

There is a good reason why graphics based systems don't innovate much. Atually, two. The first involves graphics design. Even the new game that lets you DM a campaign for AD&D is limited to 'its' graphics, 'its' colors and 'its' skeleton designs for mobs. Until a more proctical and universal means to do these things, that doesn't require hundreds of hours of development to impliment, becomes available, you are not going to see someone making an online game with 10000 types of monsters and 60 unique player races. The other issue is how much the players machine can/must store to make it work and how to get it to them. Add-on packs are nice, but you end up paying extra from them and then they can't and won't extend things in the game in quite the way that you can in a text system. Though a text based game is also limited in what is possible by its mechanics (like trying to do real time room description changes, without coding 90 different versions to show depending on situation). There are serious weaknesses in both types which will only disappear when the graphical versions support the level of customization needed to match what a text based game can do. Maybe when Internet 2 is finally available and you can download the needed patches as needed in a few milliseconds, but not now. lol

But I have to agree with comment made here about races. Ages of Despair has around 32. They where never well balanced, with a few being at the top of the food chain and over used, while other are rarely used at all and literally at the bottom of the food chain. Only a hand full have special abilities, and a few of those are useless since they only give a bonus to certain skills (and then only if 'in' that guild). The admin are last I heard doing a complete reworking of the system and I would not be surprised to find 1/4 to 1/2 of them removed completely. The rest it seems are going to get unique abilities added to them. However, such takes time...

One thing for certain, you have to make sure to consider such things and make them each unique from the start. It is probably far less complex than fixing other things more closely tied to complex game mechanics, but still a royal pain in the rear to have to go back and redo if you goof.

The large graphical games are innovative, just not in gameplay.  They have been very innovative when it comes to the online game business model and many of the technical aspects of handling such a large number of players.

Why have they not been as innovative in the gameplay department?  Why should they?  The EQ layout generates tremendous revenue and players often fight tooth and nail against major changes,  as long as people are happy to pay the monthly fee to play a retread of the same game then why should they innovate?  Each new game will slowly add features that have been present in the text-based industry for years and allow players to adapt to the new game model but until they see a mechanic that is proven to be a success, why should they risk millions of dollars?

Innovative in business model? I don't see how, at least in the West. A subscription fee is not innovative. Not to blow my own horn, but our business model is considered far more innovative than the subscription models. And even though Simutronics' has a subscription fee, I'd consider all its addons quite innovative as well: Paying for quests, paying for character portraits, etc. Of course, with the # of players the big games have, they don't really need to innovate with their business model. They're raking it in already.

Having said that, there are numerous games in the East with different business models, ranging from site licenses for net cafes to a couple Korean games that that looked at our business model and decided to use it, etc.

I don't think anyone is suggesting they should take greater risks. I know from first-hand experience that publishers and investors are concerned, more than anything else, with reducing risk. On the other hand, that really only applies to AAA titles. Smaller graphical muds, like A Tale In The Desert, do innovate and take risks in ways that are not financial.

--matt

You are selling the business model of the MMOG short I think.  A $50 price tag to install the game is a #### good hook to get people to stay past that initial "free" trial period.  If money is already commited to the game it seems players will give a game a much more thorough look than iif they were playing it out of curiosity*.  Along with player guides, expansion packs and now "booster" packs these games find plenty of ways to keep the interest of the player while growing the profit margin.
I as well was not suggesting what companies should do with their money, as I said if players continue to pay for retreads then more power to SOE and others.  What my statement was refering to was idea that the lack of innovatition was due to the graphical nature of the games, the amount of programming  time and computing power needed to innovate.   IMO that is, if not completely false, then extremely misleading.  ATITD is decent evidence of that.

*This of course is logic conclusion on my part. I would actually be very interested to see any type of study that compared the number of EQ game units sold and the number of accounts and compare that with the number of free trials a game such as Gemstone III gave out compared to the number of paying accounts they have. I would wager to guess the EQ percentage is a good deal higher.

The $50 price tag to purchase the game serves the same purpose as a big download does (Note that you can download the earlier Everquest stuff for free now I believe): It pre-qualifies the customer as someone willing to jump through a hoop in order to play your game. A box is arguably better, of course, as it indicates a willingness to pay for the game as well. I agree they are branching out a bit more, but the only high-profile Western mud that has done much interesting business-model-wise was Project Entropia, which had the misfortune to be developed by people who are either incredibly naive about their model or who are smoking so much crack they can't tell the difference between "risky' and 'stupid.'

That comparison alone wouldn't tell us all that much. EQ has been around for less time, and since people who do subscribe eventually stop subscribing, Gemstone's ratio of existing paying players to total free trialers will be MUCH lower. They've also, I believe, suffered a significant net loss in players over the last 5-7 years which would distort the figures more.

If you were just looking at the conversion aspect of the two business models, you'd want to compare the ratio of people who purchased EQ or tried free Gemstone trial vs the # of those people who subscribed for at least one month.

In any case, it's pretty tough to meaningfully compare those as there are so many different factors at work. Text is an inherently unfriendly medium to newbies, for one, as compared to graphics, so there's that additional hoop for people to jump over.

--matt

Yes, my statement should have said "comparing the percentage of new accounts generated from the Gemstone-style free trail vs the new accounts generated from buying the in-store EQ game box."  And you are right about the differing factors of the mediums, and since you brought up that the older EQ version may be freely downloaded what would serve as a feasible comparison is the percentage of people who sign up after downloading the game for free and those who sign up after purchasing the game.

Well, the problem with measuring based purely on downloads is that what you're most likely measuring is the subset of players who have high-speed connections (a minority). That download is large enough to provide a significant barrier to entry, same as purchasing the box does.
--matt

The main reason these differences between MUDs and MMOGs is that they're targeted towards escaping life in different ways. While the average player of a MUD, say, Achaea, escapes life by running another, hopefully better, life, the average player of a game like Planetside or Everquest escapes life by blasting monsters or opposing grunts, grabbing treasure, and blasting more monsters for more treasure. While there is some of the other in each, MMOGs focus on bashing, and MUDs generally focus on roleplay or world. This doesn't mean that there are no basher MUDs or more relaxed MMOGs, though.

I would probably disagree with this. DIKU seems to be the most popular codebase in text muds and Everquest, for instance, is little more than a DIKU with graphics. Most mud players do a LOT of monster-bashing/phat-lewt collecting.

--matt

It should be worth noting that in the areas of bashing and hoarding, graphics have a huge edge over text, and so if text MUDs are to remain a viable medium, I think they're going to have to start adapting to meet higher standards of gameplay. Or to put it a bit less biased: They're going to have to cater to different playing styles.

Fortunately, we in the text world can easily stay years ahead of the graphics guys cos of our development differences.

-Ryan

     MUDs that focus on bashing and treasure hunting aren't much more then the poor man's Everquest.  The strengths of MUDs over MMOGs (apart from the *substantially* reduced price) are things that would be almost impossible in MMOGs, like emotes, and things that are much simpler in MUDs, such as politics (not that they're ever simple), family, and romance.

wow... haven't we ever gotten off topic, or what! It began with a question about races within muds, and now it's a full blown discussion about MMORPGs vs. Muds. I just thought i'd point this out, since no one else seems to be paying attention to the slow move to the off-topic-ness of this thread.

Thanks, Grey! That puts my mind at rest somewhat.

BTW, I looked at your website to see what races you have but the "Races" button took me to an ikonboard (where races weren't discussed). I found races on the "Features" page which had a hyperlink to the "Races scroll" for detailed information, but that just took me to the top of the Features page. Then, when I tried to log in, I couldn't connect. (Just thought you might want to know.)