My suggestion is both simple and complex: Skills. Yes, skills. I suggest that when a character is created, players may choose up to three skills -- or be given a certain number of skill points -- from a list of which their character may have, such as cooking, building, etc. The level of skill a player has in any given skill will indicate how well they should roleplay that skill. Naturally, everyone can do certain skills to some degree (anyone can skewer a radish on a stick and roast it over the fire), but it would take a true cook to create a magnificent feast worthy of the Abbey. Players will be able to ask to have some skills removed completely (some people are so bad at cooking that the radish would set the skewer on fire and then themselves and they'd end up rolling in the grass!) to make characters more interesting. Skill levels would rated 0 - 10. Certain skills would affect things that could be created; a metalsmith could create a wonderful blade... other creatures would end up with dented chunks of metal.

The ability to dispense further skills beyond the inital chosen ones, as well as the ability to see an exact list of a player's skills would be given to the staff, either the current staff or a new "Skills" staff could be created. A character with a skill such metalwork or cooking could teach another character their skill through -careful, well done roleplay-. They would have to log the teaching, show the log to the staffer and they could decide on the amount of skill the student would acquire. Jacks-of-All-Trades would be made, not born. Any player that notices that another character seems to have an unusual amount of abilities could report this to the staff, who would be able to check and see if the reported roleplay is, in fact, according to the character's skill list.

Before you all start shouting at how limiting to the RP this is, calm down! I know that similar suggestions have been given in the past and shot down. I know that a lot of you absolutely ABHOR the idea of having set skills for your characters and it would certainly be limiting, though worth it for those who can RP correctly. On top of that, it simply might be impossible with the type of code that this MUCK uses, or just be too complicated for the staffers to carry out at this time. That was only the first part of my suggestion, the second is much more reasonable: talents.

Talents, unlike skills, would be natural to certain species. For example, seals and otters can swim into deep waters, squirrels and cats can climb trees, sparrows and gulls can fly, etc. I know for a fact that this is doable within the MUCK's code and would not deter from roleplay. It would also add an entirely new dimension into building on the MUCK. Oceans could be expanded to have underwater rooms, forests could be expanded to have treetop rooms and the sky could be remade... as, I am under the impression, was the plan when it was taken down years ago.

Even better than that, these special rooms could have "layers". For example, in the ocean there would be a Shallow Layer. In the shallow layer, players swimming would be able to "see" characters entering surface rooms above them. There would also be a Deep Layer, where it's dark and players are not able to "see" into other rooms... and of course, a Floor Layer. Different spots could be different depths. For Treetops, there would be Lower branches, where creatures could easily see what's going on on the forest floor below and Higher branches, where they can't see around them because of all the branches and Top branches, from which a creature would be able to view into the sky area. The sky would have Low sky, sky directly over areas like the Abbey and Dirt Road, where they can watch the comings and goings of creatures and High sky, which they would not be able to see as much in, but would be able to travel faster in.

But how would this be possible? The MUCK has countless rooms which could be linked into this. Easily. Regions. There would be certain types of regions which would behave in certain ways. Ocean regions would be locked against non-swimmers and any rooms or links under those regions would, too. Sky rooms would be locked against non-fliers, and any rooms or links under those regions, etc. Certain rooms within Regions might be accessible to other creatures, e.g. a rope dangling from a tree could be climbed. However, the creature who climbed the rope, unless a natural climber, would not be able to climb any further in any direction unless that, too, is built in.

I doubt the frustration that comes with creating a system like this is the coding itself; the MUCK has excellent code that could probably be made to encompass this easily. The problem, rather, lies in the amount of describing and linking that would have to be done. Indeed, there would be a great number of new rooms for these areas to be linked and described. However, instead of dismissing it as impossible due to the limitations of staff, why not get help from the playerbase? There are a great number of players, I am sure, who would be delighted to write room descriptions for the oceans, skies, underground, treetops, etc. It could even be made into a sort of contest, which would be interesting and fun for players to participate in.

By having talents, players would be drawn out into new areas/old, under-used areas. This MUCK has a huge variety of areas which are never used simply because they are not interesting enough. Having areas that are locked against certain species would not only result in a more diverse number of played species, but would also spread roleplay into areas where there currently is none. There is a gigantic ocean which should be teeming with corsair ships, seals and otters, yet is rarely visited. The Mossflower woods should be full of squirrels, mice, rabbits, moles, rats, foxes, etc., yet everyone, even non-Abbey folk, simply congregate in the Abbey or other short-lived vermin oriented areas. People worked very hard to create all the wonderful areas on this MUCK and they should be used!

Now, if all of this is shot down, I have only two humble requests. First, please, please, remake the sky and get it working. It was terribly fun to play a bird character when there was the sky, but now players rarely choose to be birds at all. Second, could you create some sort of follow command? This would be a command where characters could easily 'follow' another to a location and 'stopfollowing' them when they arrive. It would be the IC version of jumping, basically, since IC you can't jump at all. I seem to recall a command similar to this idea where creatures could be enslaved? I can't remember what it was, though.

Thank you for reading over my suggestions.

- Mewinya