I have an idea for a mud that I'd like to develop in the future.

The main thing I'm looking for is flexibility that still maintains a sense of purpose. To me classless muds are very much like a strand of spaghetti, all wrapped around and contorted with a little bit of everything sticking to it, whereas class based muds can tend to be more like a ridged pole that's impossible to bend to the side even a little.

What I'm hoping for is more of the 'willow in the wind' effect. A sort of realistic idea of having natural gifts (being strong, being quick, etc.) and then having something that you are interested in and mainly focused on for your job.

Now outside that job, there are jobs similar enough to your own that you can pick up a couple of skills from them with only a little effort, but things outside that area are much more tricky.



My basic tiered idea is:

You decide if you're physically gifted or mentally gifted.

Assuming you choose mentally gifted, you could choose to have a talent for magic, a talent for psionics, or to be beloved by the gods.

Moving on from there, if you choose to have a talent for magic, you could choose to have been trained by an: Elementalist, Alchemist, Seer, Illusionist, or Summoner.

The idea being that since you've chosen to be trained in a certain 'set' of skills, it's something that's a little bit more flexible. You can't just start as an Alchemist and suddenly decide to become an Elementalist, but you could definitely pick up quite a few Elementalist spells if you could find the right teacher.

On top of that, since you're mentally gifted, you could probably also pick up one or two pisionic skills through roleplay quests.

Just to expound a bit more: Elementalists would be mages with mostly 'element' based spells like fireball, ice blast, etc. Alchemists would be more interested in imbuing their magical powers into items or people through catalysts, such as making potions or enchanting weapons. Summoners would be able to charm beasts and also summon spirits/demons/zombies to do their bidding.

On top of all that, once you've been playing the game for a bit, you can take on a job to earn new skills, money, and influence.

Some of the basic jobs would be: Village/Temple/Fortress Healer, City/Fortress Guardsman, and Leader.

If you chose to be a Healer, but had been trained as a warrior, you would pick up some bandage and herb healing tricks, but would probably never be paid as well as an Alchemist or Priest(ess) would.

If you chose to be a Guardsman, you could pick up some new fighting techniques if you're a magic user but you'll still never be quite as good with physical combat, or be paid as well, as a warrior would. (Granted there would certainly be a special job for magic users to perform in the defense of a city--I'm talking hand-to-hand style guardsman)

If you chose to be a Leader, you could start a player-run clan/guild and recruit other players to work for you. That's where things would get really complex, but the basic idea is that you could eventually work up to having huge player run clans who have multiple fortresses, etc. and can do things like create products, hire themselves out as guards, and generally get involved with politics all the while funding themselves through their services and insuring the survival of their own clan. Or they could become a gang of pirates .


On top of that I'd be looking to have one or two kingdoms already set up and let players maneuver their way into ruling them, taking them over, running politics, and all kinds of other things so that if a person wasn't interested in the risks of running their own clan as a leader, they could become a soldier or healer for an 'insured to be there' place.




I'm sure something at least faintly like this has been done before, but I can't think of any muds who are quite like that off the top of my head. Does anyone have any comments or suggestions to make?


My main problem is that I'm sure I would need at least one highly talented coder, if not several, to see something like this realized.

[KaVir]

Perhaps I've misunderstood your suggestion, but to me it still looks like a class-based system - you've got fighters ("physically gifted") and spell-casters ("mentally gifted"), with the latter further broken down into mages ("a talent for magic"), psionicists ("a talent for psionics") and clerics ("beloved by the gods"). Mages are then broken down further still into Elementalist, Alchemist, Seer, Illusionist and Summoner.

Originally Posted by Just to expound a bit more: Elementalists would be mages with mostly 'element' based spells like fireball, ice blast, etc. Alchemists would be more interested in imbuing their magical powers into items or people through catalysts, such as making potions or enchanting weapons. Summoners would be able to charm beasts and also summon spirits/demons/zombies to do their bidding.

But are you saying that:

1. Bubba is an Elementalist, therefore he has lots of elemental spells, or:

2. Bubba has lots of elemental spells, therefore he's an Elementalist?

You know, you're absolutely right.

I guess saying that it doesn't have classes is too strong of a statement. What I'm trying to do is have the basic 'class outline', but from there you're typically going to have specializations within each class, and then you can further expand your character with 'job' classes.

Sort of a multi-level class system, but not with your typical "Graduate from Warrior to Knight, then Knight to Paladin, then Paladin to Hero once you reach level 10,000 with Super Sayan powers" .


I'm afraid I'm probably not explaining this quite as well as I wanted to.

[Nearlyhugh]

Perhaps you should check out the (very involved) thread entitled " Classless System vs. Class Based Systems" in the "Advanced MUD Concepts" forum.


Nearly'

That thing is a monster .


Plus I'm pretty sure at least half of it is going to be The_Logos fighting with half the board over something or other .