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Old 12-16-2005, 06:53 PM   #1
Valg
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I know.  You've played some other game that allowed you to play as an orc. It meant "+1 Strength, -1 Charisma" and little else.  You drank tea with elves and helped them get something called 'k3wl l3wt'.  I know how sad it was for you.  But it is time to bury those memories.

<span style='color:red'></span> has had for some time.  Some notable facts about our orcish friends:

- Orcs may choose from any of the following classes: Berserker.
- Orcs begin belonging to the Grinning Skull Village.  On one hand, you automatically have a cohort of other orcs with significant common interests and enemies.  On the other hand, it's a motley heap of backstabbing goons with pea-like brains, led by the orc whose only qualification for governance is that he killed the last sap who became Chieftain.  The village shaman is also available, mostly to call you worthless.  Orcs may also seize the Items of Power from organized cabals, robbing them of their power so long as they can keep them in their dark shrine.
- Orcs have many unique skills not available to any other profession. Other professions lack an orc's pragmatic approach to life.  They lack an appreciation of the finer points of biting people in the face, among other things.  Hiding non-pointy objects by ingesting them and later regurgitating them.  Drawing the blood out of corpses for later consumption.  Enslaving weaker orc-kin, at least until they think they can murder you.  The proper use of swamp leeches.  Demanding that lesser orc-kin give you stuff, at least until they think they can murder you.  Poisoning sharp weapons with their own blood.  Hiding behind other people in combat.  Eating dead bodies, even if they've been out in the sun a bit.  The list goes on.  Did I mention taunting?  Everyone loves taunting.
- Orcs prioritize offense.  Successful orcs know that if you hit people repeatedly with large, heavy objects enough, they will stop hitting you back, thus obviating the need for such trivialities as defense.  That second arm isn't for some sissy shield.  It's for holding a second large, heavy object.
- Orcs prioritize self-preservation.   Less enlightened races incorrectly interpret this as cowardice.  Orcs tend to panic and disengage combat if hit hard.  Fortunately, growing up as an orc also teaches you to take a serious beating, and orcs are notoriously hardy.  It also teaches you to conceal yourself in the type of lovely real estate orcs tend to be
in possession of: caves and swamps.  Concealing yourself is not only handy for self-preservation, but it often lets you clock people in the back, which is a very good angle from which to clock people.  Especially if they just walked into one of the traps you set.
- Orcs do not get Christmas cards.  Orcs have few, if any, reliable allies outside of their village.  The most unsavory of villains will occasionally permit them to stand nearby, but at a safe distance.  A laundry list of other groups views orcs as somewhere between "an abomination to be purged from the lands" to "an abomination to be avoided".

Now, that was already a lot of orcishness.  But we decided to add around a couple dozen more skills this week.  (Why?  We're frickin' <span style='color:red'>Carrion Fields</span>.  That's why.)  Orcs who have risen above the rabble may join one of the factions within the Village:

- <span style='color:red'>Mamlauk</span>: This is about as close as close as the Village has to a standing army.  Mamlauks gain an array of skills dealing in the fine arts of hitting people with especially heavy weapons.  Four-pound swords are cute for children, but no self-respecting Mamlauk would clean his ear with one.  Well, maybe sometimes.

- <span style='color:red'>Mundunugu</span>: While Tremblefist isn't about to teach the rest of you knuckleheads how to be a true shaman (he knows how chief-dom works), his Mundunugus learn a number of rituals, mostly dealing with setting things on fire, making handy stuff out of dead people, and consuming blood in large quantities.

- <span style='color:red'>Shig-Ru</span>: While all orcs are berserkers, Shig-Ru are berserkers.  Hitting a Shig-Ru sounds like a good idea, but it mostly just makes them angrier.  (You wouldn't like them when they're angry.)  If you disarm their weapon, you should make sure there isn't a nearby corpse, lest you suffer the ignominy of getting clubbed to death with a leg.  Shig-ru hobbies also include kicking or charging smaller opponents clear out of the fight.

- <span style='color:red'>Skrugga</span>: Skruggas are mostly known for standing behind the three categories of orcs listed above.  No one can cower, whine, and duck quite like a Skrugga.  This is not to say that they are harmless, but rather that they are more about kicking you while you're on the ground.  They also have multiple abilities which are handy in running for their lives, which is handy given their reputation.


Some other points to consider about Carrion Fields:

- Berserkers are one of our sixteen possible classes.  Unlike too many other games, each of our classes plays quite differently from one another.  See our ad about for an example of one of the others.
- <span style='color:red'>We're free</span>.  Not "free for a while" or "free, but if you pay us you get a super-character with super-armor and a super-weapon".   We're the free kind of free.  Don't be fooled by what other games call "free".  You've seen what those guys did to orcs.
- We'll help you..  I've been told by a number of players that our automated help system is the best one they've ever seen.  Plus, we have a large staff to help fill in the blanks and get you started.  You can generate a character and begin playing within 3-5 minutes-- no registration or boring character approval process.
- We won't bug you.  No one will threaten to shut the MUD down because you didn't vote.  (Boy, would that be a silly thing to do.)  We won't ask for your email address.  No one will interrupt your play to ask you to donate money.  You're here for advertising.  You're there to play a damn fine game.
- See for a broader summary of how we do things, or just head to our and our to character creation.
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Old 12-17-2005, 05:55 AM   #2
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Those orcs sound pretty cool, but is there any particular reason they can only be beserkers (and why nobody else - not even minotaurs - can be berserkers)? I'd have thought an orc warrior or assassin would make a nice combination - and isn't the Mundunugu orc basically a shaman?

Not a criticism, just curious, as it seems you've put a lot of thought into the race. Is it just that you've given orcs so many options that for balance purposes they've needed to be defined as their own race AND class?
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Old 12-17-2005, 08:15 AM   #3
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Old 12-17-2005, 10:43 AM   #4
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1) Briefly, orcs lack the finesse of our warriors, even those who have chosen various options to make them as barbaric and strength-intensive as possible.   choose from a pool of 50-ish skills (standard-issue, though additional skills are available as roleplay rewards, etc.) dealing with dedication to learning the finer points of specific styles.  Highly skilled warriors can explore a system of styles known as the , which were passed down to the guild from a now-believed-extinct order of monks.  All of this conflicts with our core conception of orcs as undisciplined, bestial creatures.  In a sense, berserkers are what comes out when an orc tries to be a warrior.

2) Assassins are out of the picture largely because our guild is based on precision, elegance, and dexterity.  Orcs are below average in terms of dexterity (see above commentary about defense), and not particularly concerned with the former two.  For a more concrete example, read our helpfile for a skill like and try to imagine one of our orcs executing it.  (In contrast, orcs are frequently unable to stop themselves from attacking high elves and wood elves at any opportunity, and will be forced to attack if they're pumped up for combat.)

3) While a Mundunugu is the most shaman-ish of orcs (at least for player characters... the village does have one NPC shaman who refuses to teach his secrets to other orcs), the dividing line is our concept of divine empowerment.  Our priests earn their supplications (spell-like divine powers) through roleplay, evaluated by staff oversight and IC encounters.  They seek out shrines, get sent on tasks, etc., and are expected to maintain devotion to their empowering Sphere and deity, lest their supplications vanish.  It creates a nice personal touch between a deity and their flock, even if it (intentionally) keeps priests slightly rare.

A Mundunugu has a few basic rituals, but they lurk on the edge of magical, divine, and natural.  None are 'cast' or 'communed'... their syntax is akin to a physical skill.  Also, all require material components (burning things, blood, fresh corpses, etc.), suggesting that the power is not entirely within the orc's grasp.   They are not subject to the rules of Empowerment, because they don't gain the diversity and power of a full shaman.  On the other hand, they retain all of the physical savagery of a 'normal' berserker.  In short, they play like a berserker with a few spell-like powers, whereas a shaman plays nothing like that.  (Most effective shamans win by attrition-- they slowly erode your strength through malediction while using their self-only healing and enhancement supplications to keep you from wearing them out.  Most successful berserkers have to employ some form of a 'blitz' strategy due to their general ignorance of defense.)
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Old 12-18-2005, 02:19 PM   #5
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I've got to give you some props for the thread name, if it were anything else I would never have read this thread.

Anyways, is the name Mamlauk inspired at all by the Mamelukes of the middle-east?
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Old 12-20-2005, 09:26 AM   #6
Valg
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I looked over the notes of Amaranthe, who headed up much of Team Orc's nomenclature and style/feel, and that was the original inspiration for the name. They don't reflect the Mamluks in any fashion beyond a general reputation for a warlike, turbulent society (for example, the Mamluks made their name as cavalry who used swords and shields, whereas Mamlauks are infantry who prefer heavy melee weapons and don't learn any shield-related skills), but we often try to capture a specific historical flavor with our choices. Three of the four paths have a derivation of that sort, although I'm not sure where the fourth (Skrugga) is derived from.
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