class Thumbnail

class

  1. noun A collection of objects sharing similar permanent traits, in particular their common properties and uses. Classes are arranged in an hierarchical fashion (a directed, acyclic graph, rather than a tree) and objects are therefore almost always members of more than one class. The main classes are objects, features, players, mobiles, containers, rooms and treasure. As an example of how classes are arranged, consider an object like the music box (box4); its place in MUD2's hierarchy can be represented something like this:

    			object
    		 	|
    	+---------------+---------------+
    	|				|
    	undamageable			solid
    	|				|
    	|		+---------------+-------+---------------+
    	|		|			|		|
    	|		container		portable	sound-effect
    	|		|			|		solid
    	|	+-------+-------+		|		|
    	|	|		|		|		|
    	|	water-tight	openable	|		metal
    	|	container	container	|		|
    	|	|		|		|		|
    	|	box		lockable	treasure	brass
    	|	|		container	|		|
    	|	|		|		|		|
    	+-------+---------------+-------+-------+---------------+
    					|
    					box4
    

    Bleah!

    Note that in MUD1, objects are members of exactly one class, so for example brands are of class 'torch' but nothing else is, and they're not of class 'wood'; artificial classes have to be invented for some objects, eg. 'access' is the class for 'door'. Even worse bleah!

  2. noun (Incorrectly), either muser or fighter. Sometimes, people brought up in a role-playing environment assume that these two distinctions are what D&D-style games call 'character classes', however they're not. Fighters are simply musers who can't use magic, and any advantages they have over musers can be counted on the fingers of one hand (and that's without the thumb!). The correct terminology is stream rather than class.

  3. noun (Incorrectly) either PP or non-PP. Having found out that the previous definition is wrong, role-players will pick on the distinction between PPs and non-PPs as a place to hang their definition of class. Unfortunately, there is no agreed way to refer to these two groupings yet (although class in the D&D sense is definitely unacceptable), and it is therefore a little harder to prevail upon role-players that they are still wrong.

Copyright © Multi-User Entertainment Ltd. (muse@mud.co.uk)
23rd September 1999: class.htm