I think you need to be careful here. You have to start somewhere. I would say that the vast majority of muds are combat oriented and I would therefore use that as your default. Someone who wants a non-combat oriented MUD should be ready to edit the code (unless you want to make a separate release for them). The reason I say this is that if you don't factor in some basic stats, then you are very limited into the amount of things you can code. For example, a lot of actions would depend on the physical ability of the player. If you don't design those into the base code, then that will be quite a bit of coding for anyone that picks up the source. Yes, there is a fine line between this and rulesets, but I believe you need to include some element of this. Basically, you can keep stats, etc. out of the code, but you end up significantly reducing your target market. Most MUDS use combat, design it that way. You'll never be right for 100%, but go for the 80%. That's my opinion anyway.