MUDs and Liar's Dice

MUD's
We were asked to read an article by Richard A. Bartle called Players Who Suit MUDs, this was an interesting article as it was written by Richard A. Bartle who created MUD's (Multi User Domain's, which are more commonly known now as MMORPG's)
Here are the notes that I took;
There are 4 different types of players who play MUD's
1. Achievers - point gathering, advancing in levels
2. Explorers - Expose the game by exploring, look for features and bugs in the game world
3. Socialisers - Interested in Socialising with players
4. Killers - Enjoy killing other players for their own benefit


As game designers we have to try and make a game that will fit all these different types of people.
The 4 categories aren't set as to each type of person, for example a Killer will need to do some Achieving so that they have a level and strength advantage, Explorers will probably need to Socialise to get information about locations.


There are 3 major factors which separate a MUD from an adventure game;
- A MUD is not goal-oriented; it has no beginning or

  end, no 'score', and no notion of 'winning' or 'success'.
  In short, even though users of MUDs are commonly called
  players, a MUD isn't really a game at all.

- A MUD is extensible from within; a user can add new objects

  to the database such as rooms, exits, 'things', and notes.

- A MUD generally has more than one user connected at a time.

  All of the connected users are browsing and manipulating
  the same database and can encounter the new objects created
  by others. The multiple users on a MUD can communicate with
  each other in real time."

The different types of players will also see a MUD from a different view

1. Achievers - Games

2. Explorers - Pastimes

3. Killers - Sports

4. Socialisers - Entertainment

Liar's Dice

Today we played a game called Liar's Dice

We played with 6 people but it can be played with less

Each player starts off with 5 dice (standard 6 sided) Every player rolls their Dice but doesn't show them to each other, players then take it in turns to "bid" with how many Dice they think there are of a certain number on the table, 1's count as a wild card and are used as any number so for example if person A has 2 3's a 1 and a 5, they could call "7 3's" the next person then has to either raise on that or call a "challenge", if challenged all players reveal their Dice and see how many of the called number they have, so in this example all the 3's and 1's (1's being a wild card) are added up, if there are 7 or more the person that calls the challenge loses 1 Dice, if there are under 7 then the person that said "7 3's" loses 1 Dice, so you can bluff to try and trick people. If a player doesn't challenge they must Raise, this means that they must increase the called number some how, so for example is "7 3's" is the current call, then the next person can either go "8 3's" or "x 4's/5's/6's". The game continues until there is only 1 player with Dice left, as the number of Dice gets lower the more tactics become involved as there are less overall Dice so a lower chance for high numbers.

We added a small implementation that if someone made a perfectly accurate call, so for example they call "4 4's" and on a challenge there are exactly 4 4's. they are rewarded with an additional Dice but only if they don't already have 5.

It was fairly enjoyable, the game had a positive feedback loop as once you were ahead you always had an advantage (you controlled most of the Dice so you could calculate the probability easier) We added our iteration to try and make a negative feedback loop (so a player that is behind can catch up again)

I learnt something very valuable from this, never try and read Garry's poker face