Ideas and Conversation

hello everyone. i hope you're all having a fine winter.

i've been thinking a lot lately about what the setting of this new mud should be. the canvas is empty. it could be anything. we could make use of the setting of DR, our first mud. we could create our own mythology and create a world which is completely new. we could move away from fantasy and create a post-apocalyptic mud or a space-themed mud. we could move away from a fictional setting altogether and build a history-themed mud, or a present-day type mud.

more and more, i am beginning to think that it would be interesting if in-game events in DR determine what the new mud will be like in terms of setting. DR has a wonderful villain in Lilith, the queen of vampires, who wants to rule a dark, broken word of chaos. what if she got her wish?

(imagine playing in a world which has been ruled by an insane, brutal vampire goddess for a thousand years. areas could be ruined, blasphemed, twisted versions of areas currently in dr – it might be interesting to be able to play both games at once and have secrets from the past appear in the future... maybe allow some sort of chronomancy which somehow allows characters to exist in both games or travel between times...)

(or imagine playing in another dimension identical to the DR world in all respects except one significant event a thousand years before the current time of DR. Lilith was never defeated in the past, and for the last thousand years has ruled with an iron fist. The new game and the old game exist in the same time, but in different dimensions and with different qualities...)

(or imagine a world which has been terrorized by vampires but in which all vampires have been destroyed... or so everyone believes... a world which seems to embrace reality and shun magic, but where real magic sits beneath the surface waiting to be rediscovered and used...)

what should it be?

that's definitely what's on my mind right now.

i also thought it might interest people to hear a little more about how other options for the game are shaping up. the following conversation was sparked when gaming came up, and my friend 'void' asked me how the game design was coming. void and i used to collude all the time when he was running DR; he is the one who passed the mud on to me and who taught me how to run a mud. this is the rundown i gave him, and the ideas resulting from it. published with his permission.

-Indi- well
-Indi- we plan to write a mud which has few or no people-enforced rules
-Void- My only advice is do NOT give access to IP numbers to staff.
-Indi- we are not going to have any staff
-Void- Even better :)
-Indi- except us
-Indi- we won't need a staff bc there won't be a need to enforce rules
-Indi- and bc we are changing how guilds work
-Void- And you'll basically never have to do rule enforcement?
-Void- That's awesome
-Void- That's the holy grail
-Indi- we will have to do some by hand
-Indi- like multiplay
-Indi- but who cares, that's an easy one on a small mud, and i want a small mud
-Indi- we're going to make mobs more aware of player actions and be able to communicate them to other mobs
-Void- Sweet
-Indi- so for instance, if a player commits murder in an area with police or guards or whatever
-Void- Oh yeah I love law enforcement mprog-run mobs
-Void- I've seen it very successfully implemented
-Indi- they will figure out who committed the murder and they could also alert all other police in different cities
-Indi- maybe send out tracker mobs
-Void- Yeah the cops tracked.
-Indi- which would work nicely with the ninja class we want to put in
-Indi- because they could have the power to evade detection
-Indi- and thus avoid trackers
-Void- The cop would walk into the room and say:
-Void- "Mr. XXXX you have been accused of the crime of MURDER. You have 15 seconds to submit to my authority by saying "I submit".
-Void- "You now have 10 seconds to submit to my authority."
-Indi- hehehe
-Void- "You now have 5 seconds to submit to my authority."
-Void- Dude the first time I saw that I was like....
-Void- "WHAT THE FUCK!"
-Indi- hehehe
-Indi- yeah
-Void- I didn't submit, he dropped me in 2 hits.
-Void- I woke up in jail
-Indi- nice
-Void- I had a timer.
-Void- Like 30 minutes
-Void- And then was automatically released.
-Void- After paying a fine.
-Void- It was awesome
-Indi- yeah :)
-Indi- i want there to be gossip mobs too
-Void- Neat
-Indi- so that like, suppose a thief char is stealing a lot
-Indi- if he does it in front of the gossip, it will change how shopkeepers view him
-Indi- because the gossip told them he steals
-Indi- or if the gossip sees someone healing a lot
-Indi- the shopkeepers might give a discount
-Indi- something like that
-Void- Oh that's cool
-Indi- whereas with the thieves they might not even deal at all
-Indi- bc they don't want stolen goods
-Indi- so the thief would have to find a fence
-Void- Heh
-Void- Who takes a cut
-Indi- naturally
-Void- That's cool.
-Void- I wonder if I'm zen enough to just play it.
-Indi- i think the rules i want are like...
-Indi- don't multiplay
-Indi- and don't spoil the game for other players
-Indi- and if i decide you have broken either of those rules
-Indi- your char goes back to level 1
-Void- That's really ambiguous
-Void- For some people getting PK'd "ruins the game" for them
-Indi- yeah, but i am the one who decides
-Void- So you're like... a dictator :P
-Indi- it's my game
-Void- Heehee
-Indi- don't like it, leave :)
-Void- It always boils down to that
-Void- Good.
-Indi- besides
-Indi- i am really going to change the consequences of pk
-Indi- a one item loot only, but you get to search all containers before deciding
-Indi- so anyone who thinks getting pk'd "ruined" the game for them is a moron, and shouldn't be playing my game
-Void- Maybe if you loot anything shopkeepers just stop doing business with you for like 3 hours.
-Indi- maybe if a gossip saw you loot anything
-Void- "As you approach, the shopkeeper closes the door and you hear a beam lowered on the other side."
-Indi- hehehe
-Indi- yeah
-Void- I think it would provide a nice crippling effect and force people to find natural potions etc.
-Indi- well potions are also changing considerably
-Indi- no buying potions
-Void- Ooo good
-Indi- unless you buy them from players who have made them
-Void- Even better
-Indi- you make them by picking ingredients and then distilling them
-Indi- the ingredients are all coded by what kind of climate they can grow in
-Void- Neat :)
-Indi- the climate is embedded in every area
-Indi- and the climate changes with four seasons
-Void- Neat!
-Indi- so some very powerful ingredients will only be available at certain times of year
-Void- That's really cool
-Indi- :)
-Indi- i want to make it so that some potions are extremely powerful and can only be used by the person who made them
-Indi- so powerful that they would give enough of an advantage to someone who didn't know how to pk the way it's done on DR, that he would be able to protect himself from the pker, and possibly, if very lucky, even beat him
-Indi- so that people who most love to explore and find things and make things don't just get beaten up constantly by pkers
-Void- I think characters who PK should slowly lose some sort of karma points and the lower your karma, the harder it is to land spells on chars with good karma.
-Void- harder to hit, land spells
-Void- Stealing or PKing
-Indi- we have a lot of ideas about karma
-Indi- like
-Indi- we figure pretty much everything a char does should affect his karma in some way
-Indi- but the way we want it to be is, you start with neutral karma, and it's hard to gain good karma
-Indi- but it's easy to gain bad karma
-Void- I think looting should really fuck up your karma and that bad karma should really fuck you up as a PKer against anyone without equally bad karma.
-Indi- that
-Indi- is a great idea :)

once we start thinking outside the box of karma being attacked to alignment, we can make karma itself be the enforcement of whatever rules we want to embed in the game.

for example, if we want there to be an embedded rule about people not killing characters far below their own level, we could make it so that people who do so gain very bad karma, (which diminishes, as void suggested, how well they fight against people who are playing the game 'by the rules') so that they attack so badly that the lower level player might have a fighting chance to defend himself or flee.

karma could be used to determine what kind of buildings people could enter. for example, a character who commits murder often might take damage when entering a holy area like a temple. it might be impossible for them even to come in, making it a safe haven for the virtuous who shelter inside.

so many options!

<3
sido

PS i keep a notepad file open all the time to jot down ideas i have while doing other things. here's a peek at what's on it right now.

the idea of notes as objects
delivered to whomever via messenger
could be stolen, forged, planted, kept, etc

class that gives power to other chars... like a patriarch class, a spy master class (guild?)

spell to show the caster any sentence used in a say which contains his name or certain words, if it is said anywhere in the world

scrying pools, scrying a player, overhearing a player. players should be able to watch each other (and of course have ways to prevent being watched... magic ward on a room... deafen... hmm)