LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

This time I'm after something a little different:

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You don't have the option to -not- roleplay - your character is a character at all times, you are never -not- your character while playing the game, that's how it's coded. You can chat in the chat channels OOC all you want, but in the game screen itself, you (the player) don't exist.

Skills and levels improve with use, and to some limited extent with potions you can win through finding loot around the game world through discovery (or purchasing them for game-coin in the game-mall).

No permadeath.

No training parties at all.

PvP is an option that you can toggle on once during each ascension. Once it's on, it stays on til your next ascension. I've never used this option, and many players don't use it. I don't know what PvE stands for.

Commerce - there's a whole OOC chat channel (all chat channels are OOC) devoted to trade, plus there's the in-game mall, and there's auto-sell for getting rid of junk you don't need and don't have much value to other people (like bat wings, for example).

Botting is allowed, and there are even special buff-bots in the game you can send game-coin to, to get magickal buffs to help you with your own "farming" or grinding sessions.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Isn't kingdom of loathing the silly stick figure game?

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Yes it is, and I played it years ago.

By commerce I don't mean spamming the auction channel with lf or wtb. I'm interested in production of goods from raw materials; for instance, a character could do any part of the following: mine metal, smelt metal into ore, forge a sword from the ore, then maybe enchant the sword or decorate it, then sell it, with each part of the chain adding value to the work in process.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Sounds like you would have liked Lusternia, maybe.

At least, I think it was Lusternia. Umm, player run economy. Everything was done by players, from material collection to making parts, to putting the parts together.

Crafting was more like combat than usual.

I wonder what happened to it. I tried it once, but there were very few players and I made a bad class choice.

Still, you should try sticking with games for a while before deciding you need to try a new one. A lot games (Especially RP ones) take time to get going.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I played Achaea and two of its sister games (one was possibly Lusternia) for a while and didn't like them. I remember that leveling up as a Paladin in Achaea was a lot like taking a college course with a job interview, and I didn't like how PvP was purely a war of attrition. Also, it seemed in one of the games like people just hung out in one spot until they heard the call to defend their city, then they'd fight and go back as if nothing happened.

I do stick with games for a while; several weeks if they don't get boring right away. I've been in Shadowgate for quite some time now, and I recently started Unwritten Legends. I'm phasing out of Shadowgate for a few reasons, and I don't imagine that I'll be in UL much longer unless that improves (hence why I'm asking for a new game now).

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

It really sounds like what you're looking for, with the exception of the permadeath issue, is an RPI. But you don't want permadeath, so that leaves RPIs out of the equation. They fit all your other criteria though, and I don't know of any other type of games that do. Armageddon in particular has a robust crafting system, you won't find people mindlessly grinding, or level-whoring, or hunting parties among people for whom it would make very little IC sense for them to hunt in the first place (such as, a city-based assassin, for example).

The roleplay can get stressful at times, but usually it's the scene itself and whatever rp people are putting into it, that's stressful. Not much of the childish OOC shenanigans you sometimes find in some games (though these shenanigans occur in ALL games to some extent - Arm isn't innocent by any means, but I've found there's simply less of it there). Plus it's free with no perks for pay. Any donations go toward the cost of the server, no one gets paid and you get nothing in return for the donation except the admin's thanks and the knowledge that youv'e helped keep the game running. They don't ever ask for donations either.

Death is permanent, however because of the in-game culture and possibilities for play, it's not nearly as "traumatic" as that might sound. It stings, definitely, when you lose a character. Especially if you manage to have one last awhile and form tight RP groups. But when they die, you pick something new, something different, something you haven't tried yet and were wondering what it'd be like. Maybe a different city, or maybe not a city at all. Maybe you want to try and play a character who gets neck-deep into politics; maybe you want to try a sneaky back-alley thief who spends most of his life in near-starvation and is looking for a way out of the alleys and into respectability.

It's because of that variety, that regular players of Arm don't generally get too bent out of shape when their characters die. Because they usually have another concept lined up and ready to submit the next day.

The combat system started out as a diku, but has been tweaked significantly. It's still recognizeable if you're familiar with diku, but you would also notice the differences immediately.

The learning curve for Arm is steep, but there's a helper system where you can ask veteran volunteers to give you assistance on pretty much anything from syntax on moving around, to pointing out the helpfiles, to what you're supposed to do when a guy in a blue robe, flanked by a pair of half-giant soldiers, comes into the bar, to how to find the grocer, to how to find a method of earning coins.

So you have your choice of self-reliance, using the help files and guides on the web, or contacting a helper (usually live via a special help chat set up on their main website).

It might not be your thing afterall, and it's definitely not for everyone. But the worst that happens if you don't like it, is you waste a few hours of your life trying. You do that anyway when you play internet games :)

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I just re-read the OP and realize the last criteria is that botting be allowed so he can read a book while his character mines.

That, combined with the "no permadeath" issue, eliminates RPIs entirely. Botting isn't allowed, and in many cases, can result in your character dying since you're not paying attention to the scrab in the next room looking for its next meal. In an RPI, it's expected that when you're logged in, you're paying attention to the screen, and if you want to read a book, you log off and read the book. On the other hand - skill-grinding isn't efficient, and farming for loot has its limits (the shopkeepers will only buy a certain amount of stuff in any given period of time and your character can only carry so much excess before he can't move even 1 room away).

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I do agree with the RP and botting being somewhat exclusive. Typically people would throw out botting when this kind of conflict arises, but if you throw out RP instead, Alter Aeon matches all of the requirements.

IMHO, the RP requirement itself is inconsistent: the OP wants mandatory RP, but drama and politics is the heart of most RP games from what I've seen.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Alter Aeon is an on-and-off game for me. It's a good game, but I tend to take breaks from it now and then. I'll be back someday.

I realize that my RP requirement seems inconsistent, but really I'm tired of the bickering and infighting among characters which inevitably crops up, whether or not I'm playing a spitfire. I think the best way to describe what I'm looking for is PvE rather than PvP role play. In PvE role play, the plot surrounds active threats to the PCs, or the plot is about getting the PCs to band together for some reason. In PvP role play it seems like the PCs are left to their own devices more often than not, and role play tends to turn into couples breaking off for romances or people finding ways to get on each other's nerves.

Botting isn't important to me, but ideally I'd like a game with some latitude here. I played a game where you could spend 1-2 hours having your character hit a training dummy to improve melee weapon skills by typing "attack dummy" and waiting, but you couldn't automate all of the commands necessary to improve thrown weapons ("throw knife, throw knife, get knife, get knife, wield knife, wield knife, repeat") because all those commands had to be typed in. Training with melee weapons like that was perfectly legal because the game computed rounds automatically, but using a script to do the same thing with throwing weapons was not.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You will probably need to look in the Pay to play games then as those are the only ones I can think of that could possibly afford to have that amount of interaction between the programmers and the players, as it would essentially be a full time job for the programmer to achieve that.

Either that or instead of a Mud, you'll have to find a living game.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

It's unreasonable to expect a real person or group of people to be DMs 24/7, and that's not what I'm looking for either. I'd like the sort of role play where the DM runs periodic events, and between events the PCs have to deal with whatever the problem is. Maybe over the course of the event period the PCs are coordinating their efforts, making preparations, reconciling differences with enemies so everyone can focus on the real problem, and so forth.

If RP just gets into a pattern of who's two-timing who, who is making out with who in what public place, or so-and-so controls the city guards and can make life miserable for the people he doesn't like, that's where I lose interest.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

What about "So and so controls the city guards and can make life miserable for the people he doesn't like, until someone with influence gets in touch with so and so's boss and so and so gets the smack down."

Or how about

"So and so who controls the city guards TRIES to make life miserable for this one guy, who turns out to be a powerful mindbender and convinces so and so to take a flying leap off the shield wall and into a pack of hungry gith."

In short - in a permadeath game, there is ALWAYS someone more powerful than you. If you're the head honcho, SOMEONE will eventually become more powerful, and you will eventually cease to exist. That's part of why permadeath games appeal to that particular niche of players - because you're not stuck with the same bosses who have the same grudges against the same lower-class people for the entirety of your time playing the game. Sometimes you get to be the boss, sometimes someone else does. Sometimes you are the boss and get along swell with the minions, sometimes not. And sometimes you're a minion who gets along fine with the boss and sometimes not. It's up to you to roleplay a response to the situation, not just say "oh he's mean" and jump ship just because you can't handle conflict.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Because that's not an adventure to me.

I want to have fun adventures. I want to throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. I don't want the kind of stress that comes with having to deal with some idiot on a power trip who can kill a PC at will just because they disagreed on the color of the carpeting.

I want my character crawling from room to room (MUD room, that is) just to get a morsel of food to get just a little more strength to press on. I want evil demons on flying horses scouring the countryside for the MacGuffin I'm trying to destroy.

I want companions who come from different backgrounds and have different attitudes and perspectives to come together to fight the great world-ending evil through very credible hardships and difficulty, and not win just because there were a few high level PCs in the party who did the tanking and dealt the DPS.

When it's all done, I want songs sung about our noble deeds. I want that kind of role play development.

I don't want to sit in a bar while some 70-year old man makes out with his winsome young half-elf maiden. I don't want to read purple prose on the character concept forum about the woman who became a successful whore after getting roped into the business and then killing her pimp. I don't want to farm mobs to max out my XPS.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

How old are you?

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Well then I'll refer you back to my Kingdom of Loathing response, which (at the time) was meant in jest. Now, I'm serious. What you want is Kingdom of Loathing. It's fun, it's zero pressure, it's no drama, you get to kill the MacGuffin and fight evil demons and have pets who assist you, and you get fart jokes interspersed with the memes and movie quotes.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You should just go right ahead and make a MUD of your own with the exact features that you want.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Old enough to know not to troll strangers on the Internet.

If your game passes off semi-private couples romance and endless bickering in the town square in between sessions of farming mobs for XP as "adventure," I don't think you know what adventure is.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You want a tabletop RPG game. Maybe you should try out a living game then? D&D has one. And a few others do. Because I doubt anything else can fit your criteria.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I doubt that any existing game will fit his criteria, living or unliving. Notice that he wants highly literary RP in which there are no "power trips". So, basically he wants to play with Tolkien-level DM's and peers whose only aim is to weave an astonishing tapestry of co-ordinated genius just the way he wants, for his pleasure.

Setting aside for a moment the obvious fact that people are on power trips all the time, in life, as well as in RP, and many can't ever be paid enough to serve in that kind of capacity, there is still the logistical issue of finding and hiring a lot of literary talent.

Making his own MUD will only get him half the way there. Most of the "features" he lists depend on other people behaving just the way he wants them to, while also oozing talent. Throw in a punishing environment that would turn off most other players, so this game would basically have to exist for him only. So, obviously, in a real world, we're talking a lot of money. A lot.

The reason I asked was, we all have a dream game, a dream job, a dream house or tropical island, etc. But most of us know enough by the age of 8 to know that unless we are heirs to a multi-million dollar estate, there's no point in discussing our dreams with strangers.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Play New Worlds Ateraan. I'll break down the good and bad based on your request:

1. Skill system where skills are improved through use (classes and levels optional)
Classes and Levels are in the game. The skill system is part of the classes and levels so not all skills don't necessarily improve through use but some do.

2. RP enforced, tinyplots and events preferred, but no stress and no srs bsns politics
RP is enforced and tiny as well as large plots and massive events occur. However, with serious RP there is going to be stress based on how involved you get. If you want to play a rogue or other character that doesn't get involved with religion or politics you can. So, basically, it is up to you.

3. No permadeath. NWA has both. However, permadeath is reserved for serious in depth roleplay and the choice is mostly up to you whether you get in a position to be permed.

4. No endless training parties where people show up and let you hit them to improve your sword skill
None of this.

5. PvE with optional PvP. PvP is optional to the extent that your roleplay dictates it. We require roleplay serious roleplay to be involved in Pk's so if your character keeps it's nose clean you shouldn't have to worry about it. On the other hand, you get into intrique and dangerous situations you can expect to have to live dangerously.

6. Commerce (optional). Commerce is a huge part of the game, but up to you how involved you get in it. Two large guilds in the game are commerce intensive.

7. Some degree of botting allowed (if I want to read a book while my character mines iron ore...).
I say why play then? You shouldn't have to bot to get ahead in any good game. Go read your book, when you are ready to play come back. Hopefully the game has enough in it to be enjoyable and not enjoyable if you aren't actively involved.

Might not be all you want, but have fun looking!

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Many muds touch on what OP wants, but no mud is going to be the perfect game, because a mud is 6-200 people on the internet, exchanging text. The roleplaying OP wants can be found in quite a few places, but I'm still going to run off and cybersex the hotties who are actually 56 year old fat women in the real world, and keep track of who's cheating on who, ruining the game for him even though the other 199 players are having fun. Besides, while the essence of fun roleplaying is conflict, conflict with other players in a multiplayer game is stressful and never any good or any fun.

The adventure and PvE environment OP wants can be found in quite a few places, but in a PvE game, I'm going to organize a group of Ps to go kill some Es with me, and as we all know, hunting groups are the antithesis of a good mud. And the other 194 players not in my group are having fun, but because I'm there, OP can't enjoy the game.

And if there's any possible way to buy, sell, and trade things to get ahead, or conflict with some people and side with others, and use drama, conflict, and commerce to make my game easier, faster, and more interesting, you can bet darn well that I'm going to be doing the heck out of that, because repetitive skill spamming and killing stuff is boring. But if a game did away with all that stupid roleplaying drama and player-initiated economics and just allowed botting, I think we can all agree that would be an improvement.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I didn't realize that I was posting on 4chan.

Did I strike a nerve somewhere? Is the invective due to my pointing out that the emperor has no clothing in some games?

People default to romance role play when they're bored enough. When people sit around in an inn waiting for something to happen, and there are couples in full bloom sharing the same room and describing exactly how they are cuddling or kissing, nothing is going on.

When nothing is going on but the grand poobah is someone who only likes to deal with his small group of friends, and the only time he'll willingly bother with you is when he feels like finding an excuse to send you to jail, which is something he likes to do when his friends are bored, still nothing is going on.

When parties form and it's just the tank leading the group and everyone in the party has buffs/debuffs, healing, and DPS handled, and they all are making sure that their triggers work, that's the same thing as anything you'd find on an F2P Steam MMORPG.

If the immortals drop a huge pile of HP on "the biggest party this MUD has ever seen" and the dozen lowbies can just sit there and try to make sense of the combat spam while the one or two highbies deal the damage, where's the credibility?

If I'm allowed to "attack dummy" and sit back while my melee skills automatically improve, why can't I set up a system of triggers to do the exact same thing with throwing knives?

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You may want to check out DragonRealms (if you don't mind paying for a game) and DartMUD, if you do mind.

Here;s the run down on DragonRealms - as I remember it.
- Last time I checked out the game the had just rolled out trade skills (mining, blacksmithing, etc) I read a quick tutorial on blacksmithing and it seems pretty cool. I'm guessing there is/will be a lot of trading going on as they add more crafts/resources, etc. Plus, there is a whole trader class that runs caravans and stuff through the cities, can act as a broker, loan shark and more.

- The lore is pretty deep and there are plenty of groups that actively RP and I think Immortals that support it. There is a whole strict RP server, but that comes at an additional price unfortunately.'

- There is permadeath, but I think you would have to go out of your way to achieve that. You have to die several times without an orb or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it works, though.

- No training parties. That's a toughie. People do get to together and work on their skills or teach. When I played, I just set up a system of triggers and RPed while training.

DartMUD, in my opinion is similar to DragonRealms. I guess it's just the way I play, though. I make triggers that practice skills while RPing, or just hanging out at my computer. Never unattended though. The amount of things that you can craft and completely customize is amazing. There's so many materials, dyes and finishes and more that is assures that no character can be outfitted alike. Ogma seems to be constantly adding new crafts and features as well.

DM also has RP, there are different houses, guilds and stuff to join. I don't know how much drama there is between each, though. I've read on the forums that people swear by the RP there, but I can't find too much of it. But, I've been so into the crafting side that I've been lazy to the RP part.

Commerce...not really. It seems that must characters can craft a ton of different things. And if you can't crafting it, someone can and will craft it for you for free. Sadly the Merchants guild is no more, but ICly, my character is looking to bring it back (somehow...).

Lastly, there is permadeath, but that can be avoided if you are careful and always wear an amulet.


Alrighty, that's it from me. Hope this post helps a little bit.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

@Dark Acacia, just out of curiosity, if you don't expect there to be a 24/7 DM involvement. What do you expect people to do in between the set piece plots if its not going to be.

1. Grinding/exploring

2. Small/talk Romancing

3. politics/conflict

4. Standing around waiting.

There has to be filler somehow.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Maybe I am misreading something, but I feel like people are being a little too harsh on the OP.

Did he ask for a lot? Sure. But what's the point of posting a wish list without including your entire wish list.

I would imagine the OP knows it is unlikely that there is a MUD out there designed specifically with his EXACT feature list. But 80-90% might be a lot of fun for him.

While it is entirely possible that the OP is one of those "impossible to please" gamers, its at least as possible that he's a wonderful asset to any MUD community.

As devs or players in the MUD community, we kinda owe it to ourselves to do our best to help him find a game to play. After that it is up to him.

Because even if he did find a game with his exact feature list, the truth of any online game is you only get out of it what you put into it.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You're right. I want to apologize to Dark Acacia.

I have nothing constructive to add, though. He's tried every mud I'd suggest and not liked them. He seems like he'd be a good Threshold or New Worlds player if he could get past the "light RP" that occurs in between all of the major plots and the fact that at any given time, at least a portion of the playerbase is going to be: 1) powerful and screw with people; 2) exclusive with their own little circles of friends; 3) dramatic/romantic/annoying; 4) grouping up to go hunt and gather; or 5) more than one of the above. Not that this is unique to those muds. For many mud players, that list is what makes a mud the type of game it is, and what makes it fun.

I'd counter that going out into the Tolkien-esque forest on an epic adventure to kill the dragon is a unique adventure the first time. Then, the next time we go after that dragon when it respawns, we're just a hunting group. If you're not supposed to form a group and kill that dragon or have ineffectual small talk, what kind of mud is left? I'm drawing a blank on any good suggestions. He might like Discworld if it were a roleplaying mud, which it isn't. It's an improve skills by use-type LP mud, though. Supposedly, there are some small circles that roleplay there, but they're the minority.

Maybe Cities of M'Dhoria? It still has character classes and "levels," but you go up levels by improving a certain number of your class' skills to a certain extent. It's a roleplaying mud. I didn't find the roleplaying that epic or anything, and I don't believe there was much if any crafting or things to do when you weren't actually at your keyboard, but it's another place to try out.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Judging from what the OP has shared so far, can you tell anything about what this person is likely to *contribute* to the game that he wants so much out of?

I, for one, am having a lot of fun re-reading this particular passage:

I'm interested in LFM threads as a genre and as a kind of Litmus test for where we are. This one is an instant classic :)

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Plamzi, did you notice we're in the Newbie Help Thread, not the Flame The Newbie Thread?

Just sayin'

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

He's not a newbie mudder. He's new to TopMudSites (and not even really new - he's been a member since December). He's been playing muds for around 10 years now, including Aterean, which he said he didn't like. He's said that he flits from game to game, and never stays long in any of them, and finds fault with every game he tries. Really, all he can do at this point, is to accept that he's going to continue playing games he doesn't like, or stop trying to play MUDs and maybe switch to reading, or bowling, or hang-gliding, or working on a college degree, or inventing something, or picking lint from his bellybutton.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

He needs to make his own MUD with just the right combination of features he wishes he could find in all these other games he keeps trying. It's the next stage in the (MUD) Heroes Journey.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

I don't think some of you understand: there are problems which are common among various games, and they detract from the credibility of the game's environment. It doesn't matter how much different a game's system or setting is from another game if both games don't do much to establish credibility, or enough to mitigate the issues which detract from the game's credibility. What I posted in the first post in this thread just happens to be what I'm looking for in a game right now, but I've played and quit from a lot of mechanically decent games.

What do I mean by credibility? It's tied to the level of immersion a player experiences while playing the game. The more believable the dangers, the more exciting the adventures, and the greater quality of character development support (not limited to immortal involvement), the more immersive the experience.

To reuse an example: in a certain game, there's an event where a god-killing beast comes to the mortal plane, and it's up to the heroes to defeat it or all existence will be destroyed. If it's just a huge pile of HP for the party to whack, that's fine; the trick is making the players believe that it's more than a pile of HP. If the immortal keeps joking around with the players on the OOC channel while he tries to figure out how to get the thing to move, there's some immersion lost. If the party includes a bunch of newbies as well as the elite highbies of the game, the newbies will likely realize that they're not going to do anything but maybe die every 2-3 rounds with no experience lost, and there's some immersion lost there.

Again, the other issues I mentioned previously are things which detract from the game's credibility. If people are logging on 3-4 hours every night to make out in the bar (or in a private room), what is there that's keeping the adventure going? If the game's politics is headed by the autocrat-of-the-month who goes around executing or jailing people at whim until he's ousted and replaced by someone else who does the same thing, to what end was this accomplished?

I'm not saying that a game has to have immortal involvement at all times, or whenever the PCs want something to do. I'm just saying that I'd like to play a game where there's more going on than farming dungeons for XP or willowy maidens sitting on old man laps or giant piles of HP set down for mindless killing.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Unfortunately, that's going to be every multiplayer game, by their very nature. If you put 100 people in the same cyber-place, more then half of them aren't going to roleplay up to your standards. Some are going to do things that detract from the "credibility" of an otherwise immersive RP scene, and maybe not even intentionally. Some aren't going to be interested in the big, real, important roleplaying thing that's going on and are going to do other stuff, like make out, form a leveling party, idle, try to dominate the scene to make it more interesting to them, try to include/exclude preferred participants, and other things that probably make the game less fun for you.

In nearly every roleplay-required mud I've tried out, there's always "more going on" than leveling groups, romantic annoyances, and boring idle smalltalk, but that more going on stuff is limited in what it can be (there's only so much a group of players in a text-based game can do), and once something's been done once, the second time is boring anyway, right? Also, that bigger better stuff isn't going to be the only stuff going on. Some people are still going to do mundane or annoying things that, in your opinion, detract from "better" roleplaying. That's just the nature of a multiplayer game. Multiple players. Each doing their own thing, some of which is going to make the atmosphere less immersive and enjoyable for you.

If you can't find fun in your own little corner or circle of a mud, and can't mentally get past or ignore the fact that other people are going to do their own lower-quality things right in front of you, you're going to have a really hard time finding a mud that measures up. You gotta let some things slide.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You might want to try . It's a skill-based MUD, with roleplay required. There's a lot of fun quests to do, some more difficult than others. Occasionally there's darkelf or insect or demon attacks on the cities and guilds. These can be difficult for newbies, but it adds an element of danger. And other times the wizards will arrange special events.

There's crafting, though right now the only final objects players can make are books. But the Alchemist guild offers potion and wand making, and the Scribes can make magical scrolls. There's also mining, gemcutting, and some other crafts, and nuggets that are mined can be used to get custom items made at a shop.

No permadeath, and PvP can be avoided pretty easily so long as you don't get anyone mad at your character. Occasionally, a deathpriest might capture you, but they tend to go easy on newbies.

It does take awhile to build up your character, and there is some repetitiveness in that. But you can choose to do whatever you want, so if something's boring you you can move on to something else or just spend some time roleplaying. Most of the conflict in the game comes between the different religions and "good" vs. "evil." There can be mundane chatting in the city square, or heated arguments between those of different beliefs, and there's a number of rather interesting characters around with their own quirks which can be rather amusing.

One thing is, they don't allow botting. Some macros are okay, but nothing that'll essentially run your character while you're not there. Combat does require you to be rather active with using "specials." Although you could just hit it with your weapon til it dies, but that'll take longer. ;) When crafting, I just tend to use the up button to repeat commands without having to type them in again.

So, yes, try it out if it sounds like something you'd be interested in.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Acacia,

Is it possible for you to be immersed without RP? I personally find that RP breaks my immersion and in general spoils games for me.

On a different topic than immersion, I'd like to know if you think it's possible to craft the adventure game you want, without necessarily involving RP. Do you think it's possible to program a world to generate that kind of adventure, without and admin/immortal to guide it?

I ask this because I think what you're looking for, the world with adventure, doesn't necessarily have to be RP, in which case you're limiting yourself artificially.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Yes, I think it's possible that a person could be immersed in a text game without enforced role play and without immortal guidance or intervention. I've even seen it done in one game's newbie tutorial, but that game kind of dropped the ball.

A while back on TMS I posted a suggestion somewhere when someone asked for advice on their game's newbie tutorial, and my suggestion was to disguise the newbie tutorial as some kind of mini-crisis, and the new player would have to survive through the crisis using the things he'd learn on the fly--opening the door, picking up a sword, attacking a monster with the sword, and so forth. This game I mentioned did something like that, although it was a cyberpunk setting and did a lot to set the atmosphere and the tone. Where the game dropped the ball was that once you survived the tutorial, you basically had to do grunt work in a factory to make money for the better gear you'd need.

Alter Aeon does a good job of providing some level of immersion with the quest system, I think. I don't remember if it's the one with the campaign quests, though.

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

He tried, it was too much work and then didn't have the features he wanted. :D

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

Well, the reason I was having fun was that merely quoting that passage would be enough for someone to accuse me of flaming :)

But anyway, I believe it is in fact helpful to speak out, as many of us have, when someone sets out unrealistic expectations for themselves, and is in for a lot of fruitless frustration. This person seems to have already tried all of the best RPI MUDs that we know of, so at this point it's not a matter of trying to convince them to reduce their expectations. It's a matter of getting them to face the fact that what they're looking for doesn't exist.

People acting just the way you want them to don't exist, period. Virtual worlds exist within the limitations of the same reality in which we know that you can't expect people to act just the way you want them to unless you pay them piles of cash (and not even then).

I like dentin's approach here. Maybe if the OP were to drop the RP dream altogether, he or she would have a better chance of actually finding a game they can play. That said, the OP has been pretty outspoken against non-RP adventures, so maybe the answer to their quandary is of the non-game variety.