Shattered Kingdoms

No.

Then stop ragging on me for not spending X hours what would take one of you <X hours, please and thank you. Aren't there historical records? E-mails? Text files? That describe this stuff? I find it hard to believe people don't have to write manuals for these big contraptions called areas at least internally.

I've built for four other muds and the most that I have had to do for an area is to outline the theme of the area. One mud had to have a design plan submitted for approval ahead of time to get a general idea of vnums needed, but that wasn't overly difficult, otherwise I would ask for 1000 rooms, and I would get 1000 rooms to work with. Other than that, minimal requirements were kept on my end and most of it went into the editors and saved for future imms to mutilate when I left. This history of the area was often built into the area itself through descriptions, extended descriptions, items and programs.

These are your priorities for the game, grep. I'd rather spend my <X hours running a Bonanza event or creating some new items to go along with a code update.

HINT: There are things called players that are experienced who could write manuals. Truth is, some have, and at least one approached Gailehn to get something put into the game. It was an entry back at the time of the Press opening up, but I am willing to help edit any work like this and help staff get it put into the game through Press RP.

This does not need to be on the staff, alone. If this is something the community wants to add, the community can work toward it.

If you don't want to contribute that's fine, but if this is something you want to see added, even if you're not the player who knows a place well, RP with those that do, go on those trips with them, keep a log, and happy writing.

I don't mean to discredit all that work you did getting that room built, but there's a world of difference between a book written by some player and a help file written by the actual designer of the area.

One of these is naturally canon.

Go explore and discover.

You're asking for knowledge handouts. Pook just handed you knowledge and you just bit the hand he was feeding you with. Why don't you just find somewhere else to waste everyone's time?

I don't think a brief overview or a few bread crumbs about an area in the form of a help file would qualify as a knowledge handout. It would be similar to the one or two paragraphs of lore about a dungeon or instance that you can find on fan sites for online games.

The information could be chalked up to rumor, gossip and/or common knowledge - similar to how we have knowledge of other characters on the who list without having met them. Granted, this would be a hefty undertaking given the number of areas on SK.

Normally your vitriol is accompanied by something making sense. If you cannot see the value of canonizing at least the most-general information about areas, then you're probably just way too attached to the status quo. Perhaps you're just confronting me and not, really, the point I'm trying to make. I can learn to live with that.

I suppose you do have a point in terms of not making strategy guides. It seems reasonable that the last player of the game should be able to find an area, anticipate its quest line, and be able to make a few general assumptions about the kind of activities to be found there in a clean, fast, and canon way. Reading through even more IC books is not any of those things.