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Risk

Part of the challenge in role-playing games is placing the characters at risk commensurate with their ability to confront that risk. Risk usually takes the form of combat. The Dungeons & Dragons–style hit point system handles damage abstractly; characters can fight effectively even at death’s door. There is no wear-and-tear on a character over time. In fact, as the character advances in power he only becomes stronger.

In a tabletop game, this power arc acts as a means of propelling narrative. The characters grow in power, facing greater and greater threats, and eventually retire or die, removed from play. On MUDs, where multiple characters increase in level without a binding narrative structure, there is no real conclusion for a high level character. Players work hard to keep their hard-earned power and will stick around even upon achieving the maximum level allowable in the game. In short, the leveling arc of Dungeons & Dragons creates an aberration when applied to a persistent virtual world, where supremely powerful characters don’t ride off into the sunset but instead stick around forever, undermining the future narratives of novice adventurers by their mere presence.

Part of the appeal of MUDs is the power that comes with leveling. Players earn their levels through careful planning and time investment, minimizing risk while maximizing returns. Whereas a typical tabletop game is restricted by the time investment of all the players involved, a solitary player can adventure by himself with the MUD as virtual Dungeon Master at any time of the day or night.

As a result, the time constraints that limit a typical Dungeons & Dragons tabletop campaign become irrelevant in a MUD. Players can use “bots” to automate boring tasks and use downtime in real life at their jobs to purse the most daunting in-game challenge. Killing weak monsters that pose no threat to a higher-level character is a common means of advancement.

Even though many MUDs minimize the gains from such unequal conflicts, it’s possible to accumulate rewards through sheer quantity. Killing a thousand rats worth 1 experience point each over the course of a week is advantageous due to the flexibility of the activity (no long-term time commitment) and low risk involved. In comparison, killing one giant rat worth 1,000 experience points demands a time investment (getting a party together) and significant risk (the character could die and lose experience points). In the long-term view, high-level player predation of low-level monsters can be profitable for a player willing to put in the effort. This is known as farming.

Farming is often a solitary activity. Soloers are players who advance their characters without a party, or with a very small party. Sometimes this is a necessity, especially in virtual games where players who are on at odd times or on small MUDs have few companions to play with. Other players prefer to move quickly through their kill/loot/sell/repeat cycle and find that party members hamper their advancement.

At heart, players are accustomed to the solitary CRPG experience, which was in turn derived from gamebooks; a jack-of-all-trades character with a decent chance of overcoming every obstacle. This is in direct opposition to a standard Dungeons & Dragons party, which encourages specialization and vulnerability. In early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, wizards were the most obvious example of this specialization; of limited use at low levels and extremely powerful at higher levels. The solo character is a manifestation of CRPG sensibilities applied to a social game.

In theory, anything can be “soloed”—it’s all a matter of the proportionate level of the soloer. A sufficiently powerful high-level player can defeat even a horde of low-level monsters. MUD programmers have a love/hate relationship with soloers. As evidenced by the eventual inclusion of a “solo” difficulty in Dungeons & Dragons Online, soloing is an activity every game designer