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And the Award Goes to…

© Dina Ely

All the tizzy over the upcoming Academy Awards got me thinking about the best characters I have known in my years playing MUDs. We've all played with some outstanding characters in our time. If there were an Oscar-equivalent for the online multiuser text RPG genre, I would nominate the following characters I have known, loved, hated, laughed at, cried with, and just about everything else.

For those of you who are looking for character inspiration, perhaps some of these ideas will spark your creativity!

1) The ghostly form of a little boy, always up to his eyeballs in mischief. Whilst his escapades have thrown stumbling blocks in my path many a time, there's something endearing about him at the basic level. Trapped eternally in the mindset and figure of a small child, one can't get too angry at him, regardless of what trouble he causes!

2) An Arabian man (as in your stereotypical magic-carpet-riding kind) with a penchant for bad puns. In fact, this character, which never did make it to full development, had me rolling on the floor with laughter after a few moments knowing him. He considered himself a philosopher, but the "philosophy" he spewed forth was absolutely ludicrous and extremely humourous.

3) A young, headstrong knight whose entire life revolved around upholding codes of "honour." In turn, he fell in love with-and stepping out of his chivalric role-attempted to seduce the wife of the most powerful evil warlord in the land. Needless to say, he got battered. Much. But I had to admire the guts it took to travel down that road!

4) An emphatic follower of Nature and rather mad druid, who only bathed once a year and had more than her share of odd nuances. She kept the identity of her true love secret her entire life, and with coupling such a popular phenomenon in MUDs, I liked the fact that this "wild woman" was willing to make the rare reference to the man she loved, but kept him secret rather than chasing him down. It was a refreshing change from the unfortunate tendency towards cyber seduction and cheap romance with which many MUDs are plagued.

5) A swashbuckling pirate who positively exuded adventure & intrigue with his buccaneer ways. Remember those Errol Flynn & Douglas Fairbanks movies where the pirates do things like swing on chandeliers and slide down sails on a cutlass blade? That was this character, all over. Wonderfully whimsical.