I loved Dragonrealms, but I'm a poor highschool student who's parents will not pay for a monthly pay game. Anyone know any games with a simliar skill-based system like DR? I really like the combat system in DR as well.

Inferno had a similar system (somewhat) but they closed shop last year. There are very, VERY few simu-type games out there that are -not- Simu and free at the same time.

The only other one I know of has been in "beta testing" for the past 10 years, and they insist they won't take it out of beta til the game is perfect. Personally, I'd say if they can't get a game good enough for open release within 10 years, they're either doing something wrong or setting totally unrealistic goals. That game is "Unwritten Legends" and I tried it for a couple of weeks. The code doesn't support the roleplay at all, though it's considered a roleplay-enforced game and the players do tend to stay in character from what I've seen.

You could give that a try I suppose, but their training system isn't much like Dragonrealms at all. But it's the closest thing to a Simutronics-type game I can think of, that's free.

Other than that, you might try doing a little research on MOOs. The MOO code is basically the only open-source code I know of that has some of the same capabilities and limitations as the Simu codebase, though the codes are completely different.

Any game that's using the Simu codebase, and isn't Simu, has gotten a hold of an illegal copy of the code - since Simu's code and game engine are proprietary and not for sale or use to anyone other than Simu. So you're gonna have a hard time finding anything similar to Dragonrealms, I'm afraid.

Let me give this a whirl.

I guess that would depend on how similar we're talking about. While I, personally, haven't played DragonRealms, I have met many a mud creator who left said mud, and designed muds that were supposed to be similar. It would strike me as very strange if none of them were actually close.

Also, I could use some clarification about which aspects of the skill system you want retained.

However, as I understand the DragonRealms system, it's a guild-based skill system with training by use. Five categorizations too.

If that's sufficient, then there are a quite a few muds with similar systems. LP muds, especially, seem to often have guild-based use-based skill systems. In fact, I think I've seen one with similar categories for skills (armor, weapons, survival, magic, and religion, or something like that).

If you could post what, specifically, you're looking for, perhaps I could help more.

Ahh, Dragonrealms! If you're in highschool now, you must've been pretty young to play DR before it went pay, Revenus. I started mudding with GS3, but DR was my favorite Simutronics game. After it went pay, I went down a mudlist until I found one that was fairly similar - though not the same.  DartMUD has a much looser guild/castle system than Dragonrealms, but it does have skills that are practiced individually, and more flexibility in the range of skills you can learn. The player base is generally more mature, too, from what I remember of the Simu games. Anyway, it's free, () and I and several of my DR friends all enjoy it. Good luck wherever you end up.

Kiev

Yes Spazmatic, I know several people who left Simu games to code their own. But as I said, to my knowledge, there's only one that's actually running and it's been in beta for 10 years.

Hi.

I played GS3 for years (on GEnie) just after it went live, up until Simutronics parted ways with ICE. I was on the original Dragonrealms   dev team way back when and GM'd in GS for a little while. I left GS  shortly after I'd rerolled my thief for the fourth time because I couldn't advance any higher than level 24. Steel golems was as good as it got.  I played  Legends of Futures Past for a year or so, a pretty good game built by a GS discontent, and then left gaming all together until some friends sucked me into a beta-stage game called Inferno. I fell in love and played hard core, and when Valhalla decided to shut Inferno down I bought the game and ran it for the next seven years.

Why do I go on about all this? Because I really, really miss the days of old Gemstone III, Legends and my player days in Inferno. They were three great games. So I'm doing something about it. I'm building a game based on the best attributes of all three. And while I know that people are going to say "You stole this from that game!" I really don't care. I want to try and capture the essence of three games that I loved and turn it into one world for everyone to enjoy. This is a labor of love.

It's called "Shadowfall," a classless skill-based game in the early stages of mechanical implementation. Roleplay is our #1 priority, as it was in Inferno. I think if you ask anyone who played the game, regardless of their experience, roleplay in Inferno was top notch.

So please Like I say, we're in the early stages but we're moving pretty fast. If you have questions or suggestions or anything, drop me a note:

-Mal

Well you get that with all muds. The difference is that Dragonrealms isn't built on a public codebase, so people who want to start one can't just download something and start adding lots of races and classes.

Personally, I think the whole experience set up in GS is pretty ingenious. It gives players a truly compelling reason to stop hunting and go into town, sit on a node and clear their heads. It's a decent way of controlling the rate of advancement, but more importantly it puts players in a central location where they have to see each other. These games are all about socialization and David Whatley came up with a really good social design.

As far as the GS platform, if it hasn't been seriously overhauled since  GS III,  it's pretty basic and not very flexible. It actually reminds me a lot, semantically, of assembly language.  Simutronics just has some very bright, capeable coders on staff.

I played both GS and DR for a total of about 8 years. Some recent changes in the latter game ended that run, and now I play in Unwritten Legends.

This would be the previously mentioned game that's still in testing mode after 10 years.

If you're looking for something with a very similar command syntax, UL serves that up to ex DR and GS players. However, there are some differences, so it works for some and not for others.

The differences are:

RP enforced.

More details coded into RP related things (shops, descriptions, etc.) Less detail in non-RP things like the combat system, though that is going to be changing rather thoroughly in the future.

Much direct assistance from staff to help with roleplaying goals. I've never seen a game so open to player ideas and submissions.

It's also free during this extended testing phase, so no strain on the pocket book. When it does leave the testing phase, it will be a pay to play but with a low fee that is the same for everyone, no paying for perks.

These traits will appeal to some Simu refugees but not to all of them, like all games. I've been enjoying UL for about two years now, and most likely will not leave.

---Brett

Not free? Boooo

for the dartmud, what is the input for host/port?