A PROPOSAL FOR MUD WORLDS AND ROLE PLAYING Revision History First edition completed 7.February.1997, size: 12.6k Second edition completed 19.February.1997, size: 16.2k Third edition completed 23.February.1997, size: 44.6k Fourth edition completed 1.April.1997, size: 55.3k Fifth edition in progress 15.May.1997, size: 56.7k This file is intended to cover common questions and a proposal for role- playing on the DIKU/CircleMUD code base. Code examples included have been sparsely tested on the CircleMUD 3.0 beta patchlevel 11, primary author Jeremy Elson. DIKUMUD was written by Sebastion Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Staerfeldt, and Katja Nyboe. For more information concerning CircleMUD, visit the CircleMUD homepage at or the CircleMUD mailing list page at see Credits for other information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose 1.2 So why aren't there many DIKU role play MUDs? 1.3 Common Abbreviations 2. Code 2.1 Add "DemiLife" to most if not all mobs. 2.2 Artificial Players 2.3 Removal of Levels 2.4 Should I add languages to my MUD? 2.5 How realistic are global channels? 2.6 Permanent Death 2.6.1 Levels and Permanent Death 3. Immortals 3.1 Domains 3.1.1 Advance the Immortal to the position of "Elder" 3.1.2 Advance the Immortal to "Deity" 3.1.3 Other Positions 3.1.4 (gasp) Give them more land? 3.2 Apprenticeships 3.2.1 Responsibilities of the Elder 3.3 Incentives, Bribery, and the sort 3.4 Quality Control 3.5 Approval of Names 3.6 Giving Mobiles Personality (AI?) 3.7 Adventures 4. Players 4.1 Simply ROLE PLAY 4.1.1 The language you use 4.1.2 Character Backgrounds 4.1.3 Character Goals, In and Out of Character 4.1.4 The power of emote 4.1.5 Using emotions in role playing 4.2 Leave yourself out of the MUD 4.3 Don't bother the Implementors. 4.4 Make mistakes? 4.5 Don't tell what your character is 4.6 Don't play "cheaply" 4.7 Your name 5. Building Tips 5.1 Variety of Items 5.2 Good and Bad Useless items 5.3 What the player sees, descriptions 5.3.1 You think, I think, but what do they think? 5.3.2 Describing mobiles where mobiles should be 5.3.3 Less descriptions can be good 5.3.4 Describing player action 5.4 References to non theme-related items 6. World 6.1 Themes 6.1.1 Why shouldn't I have specific goals described in the world? 6.1.2 Interdependancy 6.1.3 Time periods, genre's, and you 6.2 Prices 6.3 Balance 6.3.1 Food 6.4 Environment 7. Non Player Characters 7.1 The Invisible Population 7.1.1 In gameplay 8. Realism 9. Ending/Credits 9.1 Submission information 9.2 Contributers to this FAQ 9.3 Other Informational Sources ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose To lay out the basic structure and guidelines for a role playing world using the CircleMUD (DIKU) base code and to provide hints and tips to both Mortals and Immortals to RP MUD gameplay. 1.2 So why aren't there many DIKU role playing MUDs? For quite awhile, this code base has been considered that of a "hack and slash" style. This meaning, that the sole purpose of the player was to move around about the world killing everything in sight. Obviously this brings forth many problems, and most lack the player support it takes to fulfill the needed contributions of life to the environment. 1.3 Common Abbreviations PC = Play(ing) Character, the thing that has a person behind a keyboard, opposite of MOB. MOB = Mobile, those things that move around the MUD and are usually killed by PC's (bad) MUD = Multi User Thingamagigger. (go look it up) RTFM = What you should do before asking a question, Read the friggin Manual. (censored) RTFC = See above, C = Code. RL = Real Life OOC = Out of Character, yourself IC = In Character, the thing you are in the MUD IMHO = In My Humble Opinion IMO = In My Opinion BTW = By The Way WTF = What the Fuck 2. Code There is only so much that can be done to the code that can "automate" an true role playing environment, its just practically impossible to make enough AI to run the world (notice I said practically, there are some instances in which this HAS been done). The following are my proposals for code addition: 2.1 Add "DemiLife" to most if not all mobiles. *DemiLife: Action without awareness. By this I mean add some sort of code behind the standard thing moving about the MUD and fighting. Add a specproc, or if you are not profficient enough in C, attempt to use MOBProgs. Example: The town watchman says, 'Lovely weather we are having today.' Nothing fancy, just have him randomly say that. Now of course that in itself may seem pretty lame, but if you add more statements, or maybe even a check to see what the weather is, the opportunities are limitless. Then of course you could code specials such as actions for non-sentient beings. Example: The bear cub rolls gleefully in the grass. Another stupid example, but it is the whole idea of adding life and motion to basically inanimate objects. A question you may want to ask yourself is in pen and paper RPG's, how many NPC's just moved around occasionally killing things? In most instances there are none. (most) DemiLife Example (special): SPECIAL(bearcub) { if(cmd) return 0; switch (number(0,30)) { case 0: case 1: act("$n tackles one of its siblings in playful games.",FALSE,ch,0,0,TO_ROOM); break; case 2: act("$n looks at you curiously.",FALSE,ch, 0, 0, TO_ROOM); break; default: return(FALSE); break; return 1; } return 0; } This is a very basic example that does nothing but at random execute two unique actions. Notice: If you do not know how to declare specprocs in spec_assign.c, do not email the author of this FAQ, RTFC. 2.2 Artificial Players Now here is something that only once I have seen, but instantly took a liking to. In the contributed CircleMUD area known as "Sundhaven" there is a MOB specproc known as Stu. It is just a mob that has the long description of a normal character, "Stu the Recruit is standing here." In my month of running a MUD, I have had several questions directed toward me of people who wanted to know if he was real, people wanting me to even purge/mute/ban it. It is still the basic idea of DemiLife, just with a more humanistic flair to it. Most MOB's on MUDs don't have a social life, and as a result don't complain about it. The occasional complaint can always add an instance of doubt. Now at this point you might be wondering why you would want to do this. It seems fairly useless to try to fool the PC into thinking there is another living, breathing person controlling the character. But thats the whole point of role playing! It adds to the depth of the game. Say you don't give them the characteristics of a player, which I'm not telling you to do, but GIVE THE MOBS PERSONALITY! The world is as real as the creatures that inhabit it. If the player does not believe, then the game is as good as worthless. Concluding, the code, in what little and much it actually does, does not include for movement. If you just let a mob wander about just waiting to be killed, then thats all the players will do. Kill it. But say for example the mob contains a vital clue for a quest. In the past the clue would have been written on a note, or some item in which the MOB was carrying, and this was good. If in the game the mobile says a clue, or hints at it in some related way, players (may) become slower in their hasty kill,kill,kill-like actions. 2.3 Removal of Levels This is one of the more drastic measures that could be taken to increase the role playing atmosphere. I have found in past experience that extra stats are incentive to level, not play. So either the removal of knowledge of the levels, or the removal of levels may be helpful. (now that was a mouthful); As explained in later sections, players and immortals alike see the max level they can attain and set that as a goal to reach. So then its just kill, kill, kill, until they reach immortalship, and then its just work, work, work for the Implementors. Take note, removing levels totally from your MUD can pose several code related problems, and I mean A LOT. The CAN_SEE macro, and practically all invisibility related code, as with backstabbing, titles, etc. are all based upon levels. My reccomendation is to create more skills/stats to base success rate on instead of level. 2.4 Should I add languages to my MUD? It really depends on the type of language you wish to implement. The two types that I have encountered are scrambled, and not scrambled (go figure). Here's what they look like: Someone says something in a language you do not understand. Or it is scrambled like this: Someone says, 'xcorby easht qsgt' The first is not as annoying, though the second is what has caused several problems in the past. You'll soon find mortals gossiping things such as "Ha ha, you don't understand this," etc. Of course if you remove global channels you wouldn't have this problem. 2.5 How realistic are global channels? How's not really for an answer, unless you are so loud that you can be heard across the world. Channels like Holler and Yell are ok, because both are limited, and both take away MV as you use them. There shouldn't even be a tell for that matter if you want to be realistic, How can you send a message to someone across the world without anyone else hearing? Solution: Ye olde Telegraph, or even Mages. You may not be able to scream that loud, but maybe there is some magic device that could amplify your voice, or communicate with another player, the possibilities are limitless, and if there is not a way, just ask the PCs, they'll think of some way around the limits, trust me. Shout/holler aren't really all that realistic, just *more* realistic than gossip. A good realistic example would be your voice only carrying certain distances and only to people that could hear it. This requires rooms to have sizes, voices to have a particular loudness, and character's ability to hear to have a setting. The idea here is that a pixie screaming wouldn't be heard by a giant 4 feet away but would be heard by a dog sitting right next to her. Obviously, much of role-playing hinges on interacting with others, and so it is necessary to encourage such interaction. This is not best accomplished, I feel, by having such commands as tell/page and shout operative in the MU*; such abilities (unless the shout is ranged) are rarely justified in terms of the game world, and because of this detract more from the atmosphere than they add to the ability to communicate. They also concentrate only on speech, which is only one aspect of interaction and communication. (jn) 2.6 Permanent death Death on many CircleMUDs (including stock) is only a minor setback on the part of the player. You're sent to the main menu, you hit '1,' and whala, you're back playing with just a minor loss in experience. Well thats not like the real world, nor should that happen in RP worlds. The main reason for this is it encourages carelessness. If a player knows that when his character dies it will be dead, he or she will be more carefull not to die, group with others, etc. 2.6.1 Levels and Permanent death Permanent death is not a fun thing for players, but as you can imagine, it will most likely happen often with newbie players, and will discourage them, assuming you are using a level based system (which I discourage), you may want to consider lowering max levels. After all, the progress will be much slower than if the player had a chance to come back from the dead. 3. Immortals Ahh, so those people that have raised all X amount of levels finally have something more to do. In my experience, I have seen Imm's range in production from contributing to the MUD, to just sitting around and toying with the mortals. 3.1 Domains First I must attribute some of this idea to the Heaven7 LP mudlib, but it is quite a structure. It works something like this. You have your main city/township/village in your world, and maybe a few zones here and there, you can imagine an expanse of unsettled land stretching for endless miles afar. So what do you do? You give land to the Higher level Immortals. The idea works on the existing (yet very old) idea of the Feudal system where the King would grant land to the Nobles, which then in turn commissioned knights in their service, and so on down the chain. The main city (or whatever you choose to be the central body in the world) is where the capital would reside, a sort of no mans land that no Immortal can modify. Assuming there are paths leading from the city, the Implementor would assign X zones to a person which he could develop over his time playing as an immortal. He could then build within the allotted amount of space. Q. Why the heck would you want to limit the amount a builder can build? A. Simply put, Quality. If someone has only so much land as a quota, then once it is filled, there is not much else to do but go back and refine what already exists! This would over time allow for much higher quality work (in theory). Once the builder has refined and added to his zone to where every possible item position, description, etc is filled, then what? Well, there are several options that came to mind: 3.1.1 Advance the Immortal to a position of an Elder This position is that of a Teacher to the new(er) Immortals. He or she would be the one who would be responsible for the tips of domain structures, descriptive suggestions, etc. It would be in hope of passing on good information. *Notice: I know that many people prefer to get away from being pestered by newbies, but one on one is much better than an Imp being pestered by everyone. 3.1.2 Advance the Immortal to a position of a Deity This position is that of one who would control the flow of the game quietly. THIS DOES NOT MEAN USE THE FORCE COMMAND EVERY THREE SECONDS. The idealology behind it is basically hold a carrot in front of the horse to make it go. In basic, it is most important for this class to ensure the smooth running of the game. 3.1.3 Give the Immortal another position If there isn't something listed in this FAQ, or if there is something else you can think of, DO IT! The worse thing is to have powerful people doing nothing. Only bad things happen from that. 3.1.4 Give them more land I'd hate to tread on this subject, but it is a popularly used alternative. Many Immortals are driven by statistics. In their eyes they see this: "The more zones I build, the higher level I get." In that single sentence you can expect to lose all quality in a zone. From that, 99% of the time, speed is what is most important. They have beaten the game, rising above all the rest. And now they must stop 'playing' and turn to contributing to the world in other ways. 3.2 Apprenticeships Apprenticeships are in all purpose to diffuse the amount of newbie questions asked to the Implementor(s) or other higher ranking Immortals. In theory an Elder would sponser a new Immortal, and teach him/her the ropes of building and the Immortal policy. 3.2.1 Responsibilities of the Elder In short, the Elder would make use of his zone as a teaching aid to the new-found builder. The Apprentice should NOT be given a zone of his/her own until s/he has proven that s/he is able of fulfilling the task of building within the descretion of the Implementor(s). 3.3 Incentives, Bribery, etc, etc. BAD. (Assuming you care anything about Quality.) see also 3.1.4 3.4 Quality Control So you have your old builders building, confident that they know what they are doing, but what about the Newbie Immortals? My suggestion is to have a board of Elders who decide this in a democratic manner of majority vote. A deliberation by experienced builders is much less stressful and annoying than an Implementor deciding. To those who are new at Implementing, you will quickly find that there are much more important things to worry about than if an Immortal passed his tests. DELEGATE YOUR AUTHORITY! The circle of Elders would evaluate the playability, descriptiveness, and creativity of the Immortal's first area. This does not nescessarily mean that the Newbie has to design a 100 room zone with 100 objects and mobs fully described. On the contrary, it is a waste of time to do that. Maybe a 10 room sample area, enough to demonstrate to their best ability how good they (the Newbies) are. This by no means is a complete plan of action, just a basic idea. The Domain system is meant to go downwards by level in the amount of land you control. allotting X amount of zones beforehand is to show the immortal that there is no reason to rush, because if he does, he/she will just have to refine it anyway. 3.5 Approval of Names Much is defined in a player's name, well, in RP player's names. Whats the difference? Oh, just something like the name "Killer" and "Tromaq." One brings a thought to mind in RL, the other is like a definitionless word that means nothing. Only the player can define it. Immortals should somehow approve names before they are allowed to play. 3.6 Giving Mobiles Personality (AI?) A good idea here is to have an immortal play a mobile for a little while with player's online and interacting. Have the immortal pretend they are truly that mobile, as if that mobile was their character (or grab a good role-playing player of your mud to do it) and keep a log of what happens. Then you design your scripts/spec-procs around what was done. You end up giving the mobile a personality because someone else truly did give it emotions, feelings, intelligence, etc. for a short while. You then don't have to ever have the mobile played again by someone, but can perhaps extend the scripts/spec-procs dependant upon what happens during the game. This perhaps requires DL's (DomainLords) to monitor what is going on in each section of the world, a DM (Dungeon Master) that looks over the entire world and either changes the scripts or passes on select information in a nice way to the coder so that spec-procs can be extended. If you have the right people, it works! 3.7 Adventures Quests and adventuring have been common enough in many LP and Diku MUDs for some time. More recently TinyPlots have spread this idea to the role-playing TinyMU*s. However, there is still plenty of room for growth in the area of organised adventures, and it is one such possibility that I am outlining in this article. More particularly, my emphasis is on adventures with multiple participants. MU*s, whilst being undeniably multi-player, suffer from a lack of concerted playing by many characters. Since a player can theoretically log in at any time while the MU* is running (and in most cases this is all day), and given that players have outside committments at varying hours, it is difficult to ensure that any set of characters will be logged on at any one time. Admittedly there are peak times, but even then there is no guarantee that a particular character will be present. This leads to problems, particularly with respect to "quests" which require multiple characters. One obvious solution is for players interested in co-ordinating their playing times with others to contact those others and arrange a time in advance. While this is fine from the players' point of view, from the administrator's perspective it is not so helpful. Since most administrators wish to cater to as many of their players as possible, it is not a good idea to make many activities require more than one player; despite its multi-player nature, the solo player is usually not overlooked. This naturally limits what can be specifically designed only for groups of characters. Another negative aspect of MU*s that stems from the multi-player aspect of the games is that there cannot be individual attention from administrators. Although the game mechanics and database are something of a substitute for the "game master" of traditional role-playing games, administrators should also fulfill a large part of the functions of that person, not only by creating new areas and objects for later use, but also by running NPCs and creating and changing the database in immediate reaction to events. Even with the best set of mechanics and laws of physics in a game, it is impossible to model the world of the MU* adequately without some outside `tweaking' at opportune moments. No computer yet can react to events so as to help a story or adventure along - it is a rare enough skill in people. Unfortunately, given that administrators are usually present in much smaller numbers than characters, this is not possible in the normal course of events. Most administrators, in any case, have too much else to do to bother with such functions without some definite purpose to them. On the one hand, then, MU*s are a multi-player, interactive game, and on the other they are limited in the extent to which the environment can be adjusted to suit the story. There are, however, a number of approaches that can be taken in organising and running adventures for more than one player. To begin with the familiar, those few LP style quests which require multiple characters in order to be completed are coded into the rooms, objects and NPCs involved. The wizard, aside from the initial input coding the quest, does not become involved in the quest, particularly not during the course of characters performing it. This makes the quest inflexible, since all of the important parts are coded, and the wizard does not interact with the characters (through the objects, NPCs and rooms of the quest area) in order to react to the characters' actions. By contrast TinyPlots are far more dynamic and interactive. The participants decide some details of the adventure ahead of time, while judges resolve conflicts between different groups and individuals. Much of the adventure is left to the players themselves to role-play. While this is a good thing, there is still not the interactivity between those involved in the adventure and those who can arbitrarily change the database. A more radical solution, and one which presents a number of problems, is to make the MU* a specific adventure setting. This involves, for varying lengths of time, the `closure' of the MU* to all but certain predetermined characters. These characters then participate in an adventure previously designed and prepared for by the administrators. Such preparation may involve changes to any existing database in order to facilitate the running of the adventure. When the characters actually play the adventure, the administrators are always close at hand; they change the database in response to those actions of the characters which are not resolved by the game mechanics, role-play any non-player characters, and generally ensure that the adventure works. As an extension of this idea, the entire MU* could be turned over simply to these customised adventures. The administrators, after designing the adventure, prepare the database, and then open to MU* up to the selected players. After the adventure has been run, the database is scrapped, until a new adventure is designed, with its own database. This would naturally result in a lot of downtime for the MU*, and it would be limited in the number of players it could cater for at any one time. An additional problem is that there might (depending on the characters used and the settings used) little continuity between adventures. This loss of the `campaign feel' is the greatest drawback to this type of MU*ing, I feel. However, even this can be avoided, if the MU* is used by a consistent set of players; in this case, the administrators can run linked adventures, much like as in traditional role-playing games. The first and most obvious problem with this solution is its closed nature; only the selected few may play during the adventure, and no one may be added during the adventure (unless this is also arranged outside of the game). Where an adventure involves a proportionally small number of characters, this is a nuisance to those not involved. It could also be seen as something of a waste of the resources of the MU*; as I stated above, most administrators would prefer to see many players on their MU*, rather than giving `special' treatment to a select few. Of course, it is possible to run such a scheme without shutting other characters out of the MU*. This allows for perhaps more realism, although it does introduce many unaccountable elements into what would otherwise be a strictly controlled environment. This is far less of a departure from normal MU*ing than closing the MU*, although because of the additional unknown factors, it is perhaps harder on the administrators running the adventure. (jn) 4. Players The most important piece of a Role Playing Environment is the Players. They are not the dirt you step on while designing a MUD. Without players, the MUD is ABSOLUTLY NOTHING. Besides, what fun is it to multiplay 100 times just to look like someone cares. 4.1 Simply ROLE PLAY Its not that hard, really! Its all in your speech. Here is an example of what I'm talking about. H&S mud example: Annoying player gossips, 'Where's the Knight's Guild?!' RP mud example: The knight asks, 'Kind sir, could you please direct me to the Knight's guild?' There are two major differences between these two examples. First, the h&s example made use of a global channel, which is BAD. 40+ people really don't want to hear a player asking that, especially the Implementor(s). And besides, can you really yell across a world? Second and most important is the dialog used. The first example uses common, everyday language and rudely interrupts gameplay for something that is meant to be a quest to find (hints scattered about). The second example on the other hand sounds like a humble, modest traveller seeking to find the local knight's guild. It adds flavor, and a sense of reality to the game that h&s does not offer. 4.1.1 The language you use The language you use should be greatly based on your character. For example, Giant's won't be speaking the same way a Harvard grad. would, nor would they have cunning ideas. 4.1.2 Character Backgrounds Before you start role playing, you may want to know who exactly you will be playing. What is your views on life, you attitude. What do you love, hate, or like, etc? You should try to establish a firm background including information such as your family, childhood experiences, your relationships with others, your personality, and lastly your goals. 4.1.3 Character Goals, In and Out of Character Most Goals in DIKU (h&s) MUDs are Out of Character Goals, meaning your goal is to become the most powerful, have the most gold, eq, blah, blah, etc. This is not what your character would want, rather it is what you want (see 4.2). You character should have its own goals, because in the RP world, not everyone will be champions towering above the rest, it just won't happen. Your character background should guide you in your lifelong goals. Say you were a magick user, and the people of your town had a natural hatred of mages, or they forbade spellcasting. Your goal could be to rebel against this, or persuade the people that your kind was not evil. Goals in role-playing should be all but non-existant. The only goal should really be development of your character. If that requires you to go on a quest, etc. then let it be done, but don't make questing or combat a personal goal, keep those as goals and incentives from your character. It's of vast import in role-playing to pretend that your character really is another person, not you. In other words, you have to pretend that while you are playing Nefaris that Nefaris is acting in this fantasy world, that Nefaris exists in that world, and that world to him, is reality. Thus, Nefaris plays out his life in the world, you don't make Nefaris act. Hence, you should try to avoid going OOC, especially when there's a lot of heavy role-playing going on. Also, when not playing Nefaris, to further your illusion that Nefaris is truly a different person, refer to him as if he were his own person (as in truth, he isn't really you). 4.1.4 The power of emote Emote is action. It can be used to "do" things that the MUD does not specifically have a command for. Some people use socials or aliases to demonstrate action, but how many people do the same thing the same way every time? Of course there are things such as habits that aliases would come in handy with, such as constantly sniffling, or biting your nails, but emote, as said by Armageddon player Nathaniel, is "the color in vision." 4.1.5 Using emotions in role playing Ever see a woman crying over a romance novel or watching a soap opera intently? Maybe even saying, "Damn that John! He crushed Tina's heart again!" or sobbing even slightly? Have you ever done that? Ever see a guy jump up and down during a football game or call the coach an idiot? Why do these people do these things when they can't really influence or change what is going on? When their emotions are caused by something artificial (a movie) or trivial (football)? For people getting excited during sports, it might be money riding on the game, but more likely it's because they've stopped thinking that the coach can't logically hear them. The adreneline pumping through his veins, he's sitting on the edge of his seat, and staring at the scream until his eyes are burning. He says something like, "Hey, fvcker! Die!" or screams, "Get him, get him, you idiots! Tackle the son of a bitch!". He's believing now that he can change things, because his emotions are ruling his logic. Same with a movie/book and crying or perhaps excitement. When someone gets involved with the plotline and what's going on, they are very succeptable to your commands. Think about it. You have a movie in which you show this kid just playing and being happy, being a lovable kid for 30 minutes, maybe an hour. Then as the kid is having a great deal of fun, maybe it's his birthday, he gets killed by some guy. The watchers insantly feel sorrow for the kid and rage towards the murderer. With this stuff from movies and books, you can make your role-playing world so deep that you can take control, for perhaps just a moment, of someone, make them believe that Delindra truly died and they'll never see her again. She's gone, their friend is gone. But in order to control these kind of responses, you have to give a player something to do. Now, I'm not saying they *must* do anything. They could sit still for their entire gaming life, doing nothing, but if there's something risky or dangerous to do, chances are someone will accept, and if there's a price to pay, then they'll still risk it, and when it comes time to pay that price, will they do so? Will they rebel against it and try to escape with everything they had before? Will they have second-thoughts or regrets? If you *program them to do so*, they will. I don't mean coding, wise, either, I mean with your world, by suspension of disbelief, to where the player can grow attached to things, and then have them ripped out from underneathe. 4.2 Leave yourself out of the MUD. Once entering an RP environment, you are NOT yourself. You have entered a game where for a short (or in some cases long) period of time, you are not who you really are. You are escaping to a fantasy world, where you are someone totally different. You may have been rejected by a girl you wanted to go with to the Prom, but your character did not. Keep it that way. 4.3 Don't bother the Implementors! Try to solve the problem yourself. Think about the social structure. The Immortal+ are gods, and gods really don't go around taking a KNOWN active role in society, thus you really shouldn't approach them because you hit a deathtrap. Just consider yourself lucky you just lost your EQ and not your life. 4.4 Make mistakes This is a rare thing, but no character is perfect. The main key to RP in MUDs is getting into your character. Maybe he/she's delusional, maybe he sees blood whenever he looks at a fountain and draws his sword as if there is an enemy approaching... have flaws! 4.5 Don't tell what your character is The thing that comes to mind is thieves. How many people go around saying, "Hi, I'm John the Thief, and I have 100% lock picking skill!" Not many. If you are a thief, you may lie about your profession to others, con people into helping you, etc, etc. This is a game, play it. 4.6 Don't play "cheaply" This is what really burns a lot of people. Things like using the kick skill a hundred times during a battle, or the backstab/flee combo. Especially when gaining skills through usage is implemented. This ruins the fun of the game. 4.7 Your name Any name in role-playing is very poor (especially "Killer" and things like that, IMO) unless it fits your character or intentionally decieves about the true nature of your character. Some good examples of names well chosen are from books. Consider Dracula. That name in itself is dark and ominous. Now, think if Dracula had been named Bill or Humperdink. I doubt that Dracula would have been remembered as well as it is today. Other examples being Terry Goodkind's "Darken Rahl". Darken is evil and his name just resonates of that darkness. If someone came to you and said, "There's this guy over there who says he wants to talk to you, his name's Darken Rahl," would you not be a little afraid? Now, you may not think it from the name, but from the fact a complete stranger has sent for you specifically. But think again. "There's this guy over there who says he wants to talk to you, his name's Ernest Carmichael." Not nearly so threatening. Sounds more like an accountant (although that in itself is quite threatening) than some evil magicician. A name, while it should (usually) represent the character in some way, should not be really basic. Like "Killer". I mean, really, it sounds more like a dog's name. Also, it's highly unrealistic that the person's parents would have named him "Killer", further unrealistic in the themed world. No-one is really named Killer, so while it might conjure an image of someone that's dangerous, it's only a programmed response to an English word. Good names translate throughout all languages to being evil. Point in case, again, being Dracula. I'd suspect that Darken Rahl would even translate quite well, even given "Darken". Now, naming your evil character, "Antago Nist," is silly as well (antagonist) or your good character, "Prota Gonist." So keep away from using real words (or provide a twist on them) and make sure they convey something about the character, unless... You want to purposely deceive. A good example being Stephen King's The Shining, with Jack Torrance. Sounds like a fine and cheery person, a fairly average name, nothing special. We later find out that this is far from true, and it brings an element to the story. The same can be true for muds. Any emotion, when invoked properly, can override logic and make someone truly believe in something for quite some time... 5. Building Tips 5.1 Variety of Items The key to the types of items in a Role playing world is BALANCE. Think realistic. How many magic-gems-that-transport-you-to-another-plane are there in your world? Now compare that number to the amount of steel and wooden weapons and armour are there? Remember, power items mean easier advancement, which leads to the problems of too many idle hands. (see previous sections). 5.2 Good and Bad Useless Items Along with weapons, armour, and food, many MUDs have a large variety of useless items just added for flavor. This in some cases is good, but also be realistic. If there is a weapon attached to the wall, there should be a way to remove it and use it as one. If there is a small pot on the ground, you should be able to lift it. If you create something, the PC must be able to use the object (no matter how deranged their thoughts are). 5.3 What the player sees, descriptions! Descriptions are a major key to your MUD. The include practically everything the PC sees, they are the content. The following is some of the most annoying things to see in your descriptions (and examples!) 5.3.1 You think, I think, but what do they think? In all of my experience in both Imp'ing and playing, the most annoying description flaw I have seen is when you enter a room and it says something like this: You have entered a dimly lighted room, all around you are little pygmies with heads on their spears. You think you really shouldn't be here quite at this time. Now this is what a QC person would have a field day on. First it uses "You" at the beginning of the description, which is not bad, but gets real repetative. The second major problem, and the topic of this section is the second sentence beginning with "You think." I pulled this description from an area rated for levels 1 through 5. If I am a level 67 mage, and walk into a hut with some midgits with toothpicks for spears, I don't think I'd be to scared, and you can guarentee the PC won't be. 5.3.2 Describing mobs where mobs should be This topic was mentioned in the CircleMUD building.doc, and probably several other places, but it is quite important. DO NOT DESCRIBE MOBS IN ROOM DESCRIPTIONS. This is imperitive because what if the MOB is dead? I don't think a King will shout attack if there is no King there, nor will it squirm in his seat as his guards are slowly killed. Notice: An exception may be made with the invisible population, see section 7.1 5.3.3 Less descriptions can be good See also DemiLife. Instead of putting something within a description, try making a special procedure that does the same thing, players will appreciate it more. 5.3.4 Describing player action (The "You" rule) Player action is often too dictated and restricted in hack and slash mud's. An example of a very bad description follows. You walk into the elevator. You activate the switch and the elevator begins to move up. The elevator lurches to a stop and the doors open. For a minute forget the serious grammatical problems with this description and focus on what it says. It tells the player that he pressed a button, and that the elevator moved up as a result of the action. What if the player didn't want to push the button? This method of describing player action has been used in other ways like "You think X," and "You feel X." Where X is something. As a general rule (on Morgaelin), using "You" in this way is not allowed. Now there is exceptions to the rule, telling something they already did. "As you enter the large room," for instance. If the player just exited into a large room, you can write that. Note that it does not say from where, or the position they are in. Only the fact that they entered a large room is displayed. Phrases such as "You are in X," are ok, but fairly redundant if you have a title for each room. 5.4 References to non theme related items Items is too specific, this is important in all aspects of the MUD in which your players see. There are two ways that builders refer to non theme-related items, that is directly and indirectly. Direct references can be spotted with little to no effort. An example of an object that is not theme related would be something like seeing the following object in a fantasy themed mud: A purple and gold speckled A71 multi-phase blaster has been left here. Naturally, there *normally* aren't many multi-phase blaster's in the past, of course there are some people who could justify it, but that's QC's problem. The problem that this causes is lack of believability in the game play. The other way is the biggie, because indirect references to events can only be stopped by thorough descriptions. But before there is a solution, it might help knowing what the heck it is. Indirect references to other times is when you are given a description such as this: Hallway You are standing in a hallway. That doesn't tell me much, so I assume, yes it is a gray hallway like in my house, it has white trim and a speckled ceiling, even though the builder saw a grand oaken hallway, wide and spacious with gold trim where Kings were crowned. You see there are two totally different descriptions seen when the same sentence was given. As said earlier, the only real solution to this problem is not to assume! You may see something, but what you see doesn't matter, you're a builder, not a player, you don't count =). Now even if I am given a description such as below, it still explains the hallway better. A grand hallway Aged, hand carved oaken boards selected from the finest of trees adorn the walls of this age old crowning place of the Kings. Depicted on these walls are the visages of the famous rulers of this land from times long ago. All around, servants scatter about preparing the hall for one of the many occasions, one of which always seems to be taking place. No grand work, doesn't even describe all that was mentioned in the previous paragraph, but it is more than "You are standing in a hallway." In any sense, you get the picture.. literally. 6. World 6.1 Themes The most important thing you can have in your world is a "believable" theme, but what is a theme? A theme IS NOT WHAT THE PERSON'S GOALS ARE. A theme is more the genre of the world you are in. Fantasy, Future, Present Day, or time periods can be considered themes. "Slay the Dragon" is NOT a theme. 6.1.1 Why shouldn't I have specific goals described in the world? History changes everything. Respawning is not a really good thing, because say a powerful character slayed a dragon, it doesn't make much sense that five minutes later everything is back to normal. On that note, if the dragon is dead, why would the world have notes of how the peasants are running in fear as the dragon flies near? 6.1.2 Interdependancy Another reason that most characters don't interact in a MUD world is that the world was not designed for that. This goes upon the lines of respawning of objects and mobiles. Say you have Tim the Baker, if some criminal kills Tim the Baker, then Tim should not respawn after five minutes. As with the previous example of the Dragon, the world is not set up to realise that the dragon is dead, instead it just allows every character the opportunity to slay the dragon. 6.1.3 Time periods, genre's, and you The time period you use in most cases dictates the type of MUD you run, be it Fantasy related, present day, or even future. The problem with some worlds is the occurance of "flukes" that really don't belong in the world and detract from the realistic belief of the world. A specific example of this, is in an unnamed MUD, I encountered a sanitarium on the dockside of a city, and that was fine. Here is the room description. Hallway You are standing in a hallway. An old man is drooling on himself in his wheelchair. A sanitarium worker goes about on her business. First off, the description is lacking, it is too attached to real life views. I am standing in a hallway, so the first thing that comes to mind is a hallway that I have encountered in real life. We as humans unconsciously fill in the blanks as to what we see. (See building tips for further discussion on this.) The main thing I am getting at is the old man in the wheelchair. This belongs here about as much as an alien ship with laser blasters and flashing lights, unless some illusionist was trippin'. 6.2 Prices Prices as of the current CircleMUD (and other worlds) are way out of range for role playing. The major part of creating a rp mud is realism. This means people won't pay 50+ gold for a waybread! And then a non-sentient mob giving a character 10k gold is also unrealistic. The following is a list of prices in which I (Faras) use for my MUD, you are no way inclined to use this list, its just an example of low prices. Item Type Value in Copper --------- --------------- WEAPON/ARMOUR 1 - 1000 MAGIC ITEMS 1 - 1000 OTHER ITEMS 1 - 100 (fishing rods, bags, etc) FOOD 1 - 20 Note: In shops, no item should be worth more than 1000 gold, or give more than 1000. Non-shop items can have a maximum value of 5000 coins pending on the approval of a QC. Remember, this is only what I use. QC has the responsibility to set standards. 6.3 Balance Balance is the degree in which areas in a mud mesh together. This is having a standard of how much experience to gain per difficulty mob, and how much gold to gain, etc. There is no way this document can help you balance your world, but there are a few ideas. 6.3.1 Food Food is a problem with realism, in addition to prices, there is also the amount a food makes full. Just recently I saw a single tuna that kept someone full for 13 hours. I don't know about the average populus, but a single fish isn't going to keep me full for that long unless it is much larger. If you want a standard, no food should keep full for more than 12 hours, which would be something such as a 5 course meal. Price is easy to set, just make it cost how long it makes you full, a simple standard that works most of the time. Now this may not be true if you have a very rare berry, or wine. 6.4 Environment Environment is undisputedly a great contributer to personality, and consequently it is vital that an administrator have a world which is realistic in as many ways as possible. If the players cannot understand the world and see it as a consistent whole which works according to sets of rules, (although there is no necessity for them to be those of this world), then they will have difficulty in truly living the lives of their characters. To achieve this consistency and realism, it is necessary for administrators to carefully judge the applicability of ideas (where in the form of areas, items, or abilities) to their world. Everything should be in strict accordance with the theme - any break from this, unless with a suitably `in-theme' justification, destroys the concept of the game world being distinct from, and yet no less real than, the world we live in. (jn) 7. Non Player Characters 7.1 The Invisible Population Another suggestion to consider for mud use is the concept of an 'invisible population'. Since we can't logically create a mobile for each person in the world and include stories, etc. for all the people that once lived or do live in our world, we adopt the concept of an 'invisible population'. The invisible population are people that aren't particularly interesting, thus we don't really create them, we just say they were there and they did this or that. They rarely have names, although on occassion there is a child or grandchild mobile and thus some history is revealed via that and the player can take a peak at the invisible population. Essentially, in most muds the invisible population exists, just is ignored. Someone had to have built that great city (and I don't mean the immortal), so who? Well, part of the invisible population. They don't exist in the game, but in the fantasy world they do (or did). In role-playing games it's important to acknowledge the invisible population and occassionally give them names, etc. so as to provide insight. See, in your world you probably have millions or billions of people...Maybe more, who knows. Each one has some kind of insight into the world, they participated in something that shaped the world or they are going to do something in the future that will shape the world. While I find what each of them might have to tell on the world extremely interesting and advantageous towards shaping how it looks when the mud takes place, your players probably won't. Thus, the creator of a role-playing game must pretend that there are these millions or billions of people out in the world, and since they can't create them all and players wouldn't be terribly interested in most of them, the invisible population only comes into play twice. Once when you are shaping the world. Writers often say that their characters write the story *through* them, that the author just put the pen on paper, and began to write, but soon they stopped writing, and the story began to write itself. In essence, the writer is now "listening" to what his characters had to say, what they did, they were telling the author a tale, and the author was acting as a vessel to transfer this information. So, you should be able to do the same with the mud world, but on a greater scale. The entire invisible population can probably say one thing or another about the world in which you are creating, so if you open up your mind and just listen to what all those little voices are telling you about the world they live in...well, everything takes shape by itself and it's almost magical to see the end result. I know this sounds a little on the crazy side (and it probably is), but it works for me. I also like to take it a step further than just letting the invisible population tell me what the world is like, I like to "ask" them what it's like, what they fear, what they find beautiful, etc. The invisible population, while it doesn't exist, can have a lot to say. In essence, you create the populus of your fantasy world, whom have lived their all their lives, they know what has happened in the world and were perhaps right in Caer Domain when Morganis Dars took over, or during the War of Challenge when Dars II overthrew Dars I for the throne after being exiled. Maybe they were there when Brin Do'Toman died and the morning turned to darkness for three hours afterward. Or perhaps they were in the southern lands of Aateoc when it was still called the Savageland and a young girl of 17 was delving into magical powers and leading and army of brutes for the north-west to take over half the known world and call it the Caer Domain? Who knows what they have to say... BTW, the examples in the last paragraph are from my own mud and are my property by trademark. (Daniel Koepke, dkoepke@california.com) 7.1.1 In gameplay Looking back on the invisible population, they can also take part in the game play. You can assign an "invisible populus" count to your areas and use that to tally taxes at a certain rate. If you add tax rates, etc. and make it so players can own terrorities and rule it however they want to. Of course, you have to remember that role-play is about reactions, too. If you are pretending to be someone and nothing happens as a result, then it's a fairly unrewarding experience. However, if you pretend to be someone and there's results then the reaction is much better. So, if a player rules a terrority with an iron fist, killing many and raising taxes, the populus might go down or people will rebel, etc. But all reactions should have some way in which the person can act in and it shouldn't be limited to the original causer of the problem. So, if Lord Lai, who is known for being rather stupid, moves to extend his city onto orc lands and hence the orcs attack, Parris Calmore of Mana Han'Tai should be able to come and fight the orcs, and Ghrish should be able to come and fight with the orcs... 8. Realism Realism has been often been looked upon as the key element of a Role Playing MUD, though by looking at it like that there leaves much to be desired. 8.1 What is Realism? Before looking at the role Realism plays in RP, one must first know what is "real." One must define the bounds of the MUD world. For instance, were you to base a MUD entirely on what is "real" you couldn't have magic, elves, etc. Too often there is the argument such as, "How could one holler across the world?" True this seems unreal for any situation we are used to, but in some twisted mental world this *may* be possible, it is just not seen often. 8.2 Why is realism necessary? Realism is very necessary to encourage RP on your mud. By setting the bounds of your mud world, it is like setting a law that will always be true. By violating this, the PC is encouraged to break others. This might sound a bit odd, but take this scenario: Once in a land long ago, Elves flourished in the misty timberlands of the North. The lands were silent, only the slight chatter of brush as the wind dances between the underbrush. Kilean the Elf gossips, "Hey everyone!" Gorath the Elf gossips, "Hi Kilean, wasup?" Tinkle the Gnome gossips, "Hi Kilean, did you crush that Dragon last night?" First a global channel was used, but that is frowned upon in earlier sections. The main point is that it implies in the description that Elves were a quiet, independant race. Sure you probably think oh, well this is just poor Role Playing, which it is. It is unfortunate to say, but if there is a feature that would allow PC's to violate RP, it will most likely be broken by someone during the uptime. So basically if you don't give them a chance to break a rule, they can't break it. That is the key to setting bounds. 9. Ending/Credits 9.1 Submission information If you have any additional information you wish to be included within this FAQ, please send email to the primary author of the FAQ, Michael Steinmann, . 9.2 Contributors to this FAQ: claywar@cetlink.net - editor, major writer ghost@eola.ao.net dkoepke@california.com jamie@akeake.its.vuw.ac.nz Special thanks to Daniel Koepke for his many contributions to this quickly growing document. 9.3 Disclaimer DO NOT EMAIL ME ASKING FOR SNIPPETS OF CODE ILLUSTRATING ANY IDEAS LISTED ABOVE, ANY INFORMATION GIVEN WITHIN THIS FAQ IS TO BE USED AT YOUR OWN RISK. (basically, if something happens thats bad, its NOT the fault of anyone related to this FAQ). 9.4 Other Information Building Information included within this document come in part from the Curious Area Workshop Builders Handbook, and CircleMUD's building.doc. The basis of the Domain/Apprenticeship structure came from the Heaven7 LP Mudlib. Some RP tips were taken from Armageddon MUD's Role Playing Guides.