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Old 12-30-2013, 12:51 AM   #1
Cirion56
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Question I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

So I'm returning to MUDs after about a year hiatus or so and I'm looking for a new place to call home.

I've put a lot of money and time into Midkemia, only to return with everything decayed on my character, and rather than walk around naked and rebuild, I'd like to start at a new place.

I'm looking for somewhere that RP is enforced, because that's the reason I play MUDs personally and something that I find enjoyable.

What I would like is somewhere with a large selection of races, also with supernatural ones. I'm not looking for a million vampires, werewolves, or whatever your game has to be walking around, but I'd like that element of darkness to be present in the game.

Class wise, I enjoy classless systems and if there is a "level" system in your game, I'm not interested in spending time bashing or grinding for hours on end, or even minutes for that matter. I'm looking to make a character and grow them through RP, not play a glorified World of Warcraft. I also enjoy an established magic system that doesn't require me to alias 500 commands to do one thing.

I've done pay for perks so if your game has it, I'm not interested at all. This includes, "We have a donation system where you get a free house," or things along those lines. I don't care if you get a 1 slot inventory expansion for donating, I'm not interested. If your game is good enough, people will want to donate to keep it up, with the only incentive being that they get to play the game they love. As I said, I've done the pay for perks thing before and at this point in my MUDding career, I'm looking to find something different.

Since I'm returning to text based gaming, I'm looking for a sort of contradiction, and that is an easy introduction to the game that leads to complexity. Now when I say complexity, I don't mean system wise. Coded, I'd prefer a very simple system that doesn't require aliases. Role wise however, I'm looking for that complex atmosphere that comes from developed stories and characters that someone can work their way into. That is what originally drew me into Midkemia. The commands are very simple but the roleplay was complex.

As for aesthetics, color is always good, just to break things up a little. Room descriptions should be detailed though not a novel, and correctly spelled. I'm no grammar nazi, as mine itself isn't perfect, but I do appreciate something well written.

I look forward to trying a small selection of MUDs and possibly finding a great new place to call home.
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Old 12-30-2013, 04:08 PM   #2
Leniri
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

I was looking for more or less the same thing about a year ago. I found and never looked back. The game is RP-Mandatory, has a wide assortment of races without going completely over the top, doesn't have any pay-to-win features, and boasts around twenty years of development and RP. The setting is fantasy renaissance/early modern with some steampunk and magitek elements.

The game does have classes. The main difference between them is how fast you progress in various skills and what sort of magic you have access to, but there's an enormous amount of customization available there to allow you to build your character more or less as you like. The world itself is rich and vibrant, with tons of flavor text and an enormous world to explore:

[City of Kaezar, Tempest Road at Avanil Way, Crossroads]
Sitting in the shadow of the clock tower to the east, a large stone building occupies the entire side of the block. A wooden placard is fixed to the wall in a prominent position above a bench near its door. Pockmarked with holes and loose stones from the carts and wagons that traffic to the northern, eastern, western and southern sections of Kaezar City, the cobbled road is riddled with frozen slush and icy puddles. You see a large snowbank.
Cardinal Exits: east, south, west, and north.
Other Exits: a large stone building.

Leveling is mostly combat-based, but the game utilizes a buffer system that allows you to rack up several hours' worth of experience in a short time. This means you can spend an hour or so killing orcs and earn hours of buffer which converts into experience over time, so you can put your sword up and go RP while still advancing your character. Even better, it's completely unnecessary. Many of the game's "top players" have been around for years and years without ever getting anywhere near the level cap.

So come say hi! As a player, I've never seen anything that even comes close to UL, and I'm always eager to point people in the direction of a game I wish I'd got into years ago.
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Old 12-31-2013, 12:54 AM   #3
dark acacia
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

Everyone in Unwritten Legends has a race and class, and there is definitely a level system. While, yes, there is no need to grind, you will have to do a lot of grinding to skill up and level up if that's what you want to do. A lot of people don't seem to go too far into the levels because it's so grindy.

Basically you earn up a buffer of experience points and then sit around waiting for them to actually apply to your character. You'll want to use the time waiting for the experience by trying to convince other PCs that you are not just an NPC who talks.

I didn't have to do 500 aliases for each spell, but it sure felt like I had to alias everything in order to cast my spells, and I wasn't even playing a primary spellcaster. I also had to make aliases with multiple commands just to fight and to skin and store corpses in order to make any money.

I don't remember if there was a pay-for-perks thing going on in Unwritten Legends. I usually didn't pay attention to such things.
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Old 12-31-2013, 04:19 PM   #4
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

GEAS fits here ->

Not really many races - human, elf (and darkelf as opt-out for the later "evil" style), human, halfling, dwarf. half-elves (hybrid of elf and human, naturally) Additionally, a race created by mages / magic, the tshaharks. And according to the initial draft, a catrace too but it was not really player added. So in short, 7 playable races.

Fits only to darkelf but it's rather difficult to play one successfully. Humans fit into it more easily as they are more flexible. Other than that, "dark races" are not prevalent. The style of the MUD focuses more on the good guys and heroes.

GEAS is class-less.

GEAS is level-less.

Note that "experience" exists in a way - due to the skill system, experience is channeled into the "strength" of a character. For instance, someone who picks a lot of locks will end up with higher dexterity attribute. Someone who mines a lot will more likely have "bulky, musculous arms". And so forth and so on.

Ok but... do you plan to roleplay as a warrior? Because there is no shortcut to that. You have to grind so that the skill raises in order to become a warrior - otherwise it would be unfair to other players who did so and become great warriors. By spending time in-game.

Well this is possible, though it might not be easy. You should give it a try and even when you don't like it, you can provide feedback to the game staff there to see what they can improve.

RP elements alone don't really work well to answer questions related to skill checks and combat situations, because you can not really RP defeats and victors that way, so you need some kind of coded mechanic in place. And the coded mechanic favours more easily those who invested more time into grinding in the first place.

GEAS has that, it requires a lot of training though so those who seek instant gratification may need to find that it requires a lot of time. It's a barrier, of course, but a wanted one, as otherwise magic would become something for every commoner to practice. A commodity - and that was not wanted.

GEAS does not have that.

GEAS does not need donations. But it requires people to give feedback.

In principle you can do that but I am a lazy guy myself: I mean, I don't need the MUD to give me aliases,
I use my clients. But you can use aliases defined in GEAS too. GEAS keeps the traditional telnet spirit alive.

GEAS has that. Of course you should, if you decide to play it, give things some time.
It has been easier to play back in 2002 than it is right now.

GEAS has colours.

Well, the grammar and style differs depending on the original builder of areas. Some came from Spain, some from the USA, others from Central Europe.

If you find typos simply use the 'report' command. These then will be fixed rather quickly usually.

For the most part, the grammar and style is ok.

Try it. And even if it is not for you, provide feedback why it was not for you - feedback helps them to improve.

I still play it, but not for its mechanics, there are some great roleplayers in the game and interacting with these can be a lot of fun (the rest of the game in as far as mechanics are concerned are a bonus, but not the reason I play - my main reason is for interacting with other players, be it friends or foes).
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Old 01-03-2014, 12:24 PM   #5
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

You are really narrowing your experience by your requirements but I'll give you my two picks even though I normally wouldn't recommend either of them normally.

First is Armeggedon. This game has very intense roleplay and has no levels and most of your other requirements. The downside is that I don't feel this game is very fun to play and you will likely get frustrated very quickly as it is NOT a simple system.

Second is Geas which has already been suggest. The upside is that they have most of what you ask for, the downside is that it is a multiple creator MUD in that numerous people have had a hand in it and so it doesn't flow like some others. Doesn't have many races and there aren't alot of players to rp with.

If you loosened your requirements a bit I could recommend some of the best roleplay games out there that you would thoroughly enjoy after playing on Midkemia (frankly a very limited roleplay game in my opinion).

Good Luck!
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Old 01-03-2014, 03:06 PM   #6
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

I highly recommend Armageddon, as we have most of what you're looking for. Armageddon is roleplay enforced, and has an extremely detailed setting with 20 years of in game history and stories to flesh it out. When you say you'd like a complex atmosphere, Armageddon delivers that in spades, with multiple developed tribal and city-state cultures to learn and explore. Room, NPC and object descriptions are all held to a very high standard of writing to help the world feel immersive.

You mentioned wanting a detailed magick system, a wide selection of races and supernatural elements, all of which Armageddon features, but not exactly front and center. Magick is extremely powerful and most specifics about it are kept as both IC and OOC secrets; mage guilds are restricted from new players until they've shown they understand the setting. Playing as a non-human race is not recommended at first, because racism is very prevalent in the game world, and being an elf or dwarf can severely cramp opportunities for a character, which can make it hard to get involved and learn the game. You also mentioned wanting a classless system, which Armageddon does not feature, although there are no "levels" or "experience" to grind out. Class is treated as an OOC construct, so you won't find a Burglar's Guild or PCs walking up and saying "I am a Warrior" either.

Newworlds makes a comment that Armageddon is not a simple system codedly, which I'll partly agree and partly disagree with. Armageddon is a DIKU derivative, so in terms of coded systems like combat, it's pretty standard - no need to set up complicated aliases and triggers to switch between fighting stances and formations and so on. The emoting code does seem complex at first, but this is one of Armageddon's biggest strengths in my opinion, because almost any coded action - (say, shout, drink, eat, sit, stand, sleep, wear, remove, give, put, ...) can be wrapped in an emote. This has the effect of making Armageddon logs almost read like a novel, since players can and do wrap most of what they do in emoted text while still achieving a coded result.

The main "complexity" in Armageddon in terms of a coded perspective is permadeath. You will die - and die quickly, if you aren't careful. Once your character is dead in Armageddon, that's it - start a new character. If you're looking to hack and slash, Armageddon probably isn't the game to try. The upside of permadeath is its affect on plots - secrets can be kept by murder or threat of murder, feuds are final, tragedy happens, and no one is invincible.

I invite you to check us out at , and if you have more questions, you can click the "Get Live Help" button, where volunteer player helpers can assist you. Hope you find a good home, whatever you choose!

Last edited by Jherlen : 01-03-2014 at 03:25 PM.
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Old 01-03-2014, 08:14 PM   #7
dark acacia
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

Actually one of Armageddon's biggest problems is that everyone's out looking for ways to kill everyone else, especially elves. There's a whole host of problems with the game which are discussed elsewhere, but suffice it to say that Armageddon is a highly stressful game.

I know that you asked for a lot of races, but if you're seriously considering Armageddon and you don't mind only having access to one race, consider . You do buy skill sets, but everyone's human and there's no classes (aside from everyone either being a mage or a not-mage). Instead, there are guilds of people who serve a particular purpose (the Reeves are the police, the Knights fight mages, the Brotherhood is the thieves' guild, the Inquisitors are the religious police, the merchants are merchants, etc.). There's also no traditional find party, grind dungeons-type advancement. It's a permadeath game but it's not a situation where you could log in today and not know for sure if you're going to be killed.

Another game you could try is Pokemorphs MUSH if you're interested in Pokemon (and if it's still active). It's a roleplay-centered game about half-human, half-Pokemon hybrids created by Team Rocket's unethical scientists. You can pick almost any Pokemon species (some are restricted, some are too legendary, and some just can't be morphed with humans) and join a faction (or don't join one). When I tried it out there was a waiting period to have new characters activated, though.
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Old 01-03-2014, 09:08 PM   #8
Jazuela
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

MUD (as opposed to a MUSH or graphics game): Armageddon
RP-enforced: Armageddon
Selection of races: Several available playable races, though new players have fewer options at first.
Element of darkness: The overall theme of Armageddon is pretty dark. The motto is "Murder, Corruption, Betrayal."
Classless/levels: There are classes but no exp points or levels, and there are sub-classes to give your character more coded depth. You pick a main class and a sub-class (called guilds and subguilds in Arm but they amount to the same thing)
Grinding: There is some element of grinding involved in ANY game that has coded skills. Armageddon has coded limits on how much you can gain during a timed window, so there's no advantage to endlessly grinding, as opposed to practicing/experimenting/crafting for a couple of game-hours (around 20 minutes), and then doing something else for awhile. Again, this goes back to the RP-enforced code. You are expected to play the role of your character. The game world doesn't have any such character as an automaton or robot.

Character growth: Armageddon has permadeath; your character growth would be limited to how much depth you can roleplay into your character's personality and experiences during the time that he is fortunate enough to live. This could be a few hours, or a few real-life years. The story of your character changes organically for the most part so the end result is not predetermined, other than the fact that he will, eventually, die.

Magick system: In-depth magick system, but you won't see casters spelling up in town square. Magicks are illegal in one city, tightly controlled in the other city, and suspect in most of the rest of the game-world.

Donations: I believe they still accept donations but they never ask for them, and you get nothing from them other than an e-mail thanking you for it. You -can- buy logo tee-shirts and mugs on cafepress I believe, but I don't even think any of that goes back to the game.

Aliases: Not necessary, except maybe if you play a mage, and that's just to save you some typing when you cast spells. That's the only time I've ever set up aliases for Armageddon. I type pretty fast though and never felt the need for more than just a few spell aliases, so your mileage may vary. You can always make your own aliases if you really want to in your client, and you can set up to 10 within the game itself.

Simplicity: Eh - commands themselves are mostly the usual - sit, stand, kill gortok, flee west, up, enter/leave. The communications systems are a bit different from most. There aren't any "socials" left other than nod and chuckle I believe. You use the emoting system instead. And you can talk at tables, tell specific people things, say something to whoever is in the same room, yell loudly so people in adjacent rooms can hear, whisper to specific people, recite and sing - but all can have emotes attached to them if you want them to. They don't have to though so the result is as simple or as complex as you're comfortable with.

Colors: Armageddon defaults with a very plain color palette. If you want fancy colors you can use your client to customize it. Armageddon is fully ansi-color supported.

The quality of text: Some of the rooms were written by professional authors. The coders mostly stick to code. I think that's one of those "nuff said" things

Oh - population: It's 9:07PM eastern time on a Friday night, and there are 52 players currently in the world, other than myself. During announced RP events, there can be well over 100 players. During off-peak, there's usually at least a dozen.
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Old 01-04-2014, 02:04 AM   #9
PhasmaInMachina
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

Hey Cirion. Welcome back to the MUD circuit and good luck finding a new home.

I'm here from Carrion Fields, a 20 year old MUD that is still being developed, and played today. We might not be the game for you but I will address each of your points in as candid a manner as possible to see if we appeal to you:

- We are RP enforced and players frequently receive character specific rewards for exceptional RP. Our MUD is a classical fantasy type with largely original content and a well-defined world lore.
- There is a faction which is purely RP centric and is aimed at newer players: the Heralds of the Eternal Star. They frequently explore, share information and spend most of their time hanging out role playing.
- We have 17 regular races, 4 current seasonal races that cycle through the year and multiple classes each with subclass options.
- Of those classes 4 are roleplay intensive empowerment classes whereby you are required to follow an Immortal patron, 4 are mage classes and many more have at least a few magic options.
- Our MUD has a level system, though in typical D&D tradition leveling encourages multiple adventurers to band together and role play as they go. It is a good way to build relationships and friendships with other players.
- We are completely free. 100%. No pay for perks, no in game benefits for players who donate. Outside donations keep our game afloat, but they do not factor into in game play at all.
- There is an element of darkness in our game but it does not overwhelm. Things like fairly elite greater undead that evolves from the necromancer class, anti-paladins who channel souls into their weapons, assassins who can stalk their prey and assassinate. There are also darker factions such as Scion: an evil mage sect who have drawn up a power pact with extra-planar beings, or Empire who seek to dominate the world through political and military ambition.
- Unfortunately our system is relatively complex and I will not oversell this aspect to you. We are also a heavily PK based MUD. Though in recent times our extensive community has shifted towards better information sharing to make the game less grueling.

In sum, we are a challenging and extremely detailed, community-driven game but to get the most out of our enveloping environment there will be some learning necessary. If you wish to join our community, or know more you can check out , or send me a PM.

Our MUD details are:

Host: 208.117.43.240
Port: 4449
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Old 01-11-2014, 01:01 AM   #10
Cirion56
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

I'd like to add that equipment saving is mandatory, and that a detailed religion system is also. I'm sorry, I forgot to include that in the original post.
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Old 01-11-2014, 06:23 AM   #11
PhasmaInMachina
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

If equipment saving is mandatory, then you can disregard our MUD. Sorry about that, but good luck anyway!
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Old 01-11-2014, 05:23 PM   #12
Jazuela
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

You can scratch Armageddon off your list too. It has no pantheon or organized religion system.
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Old 01-12-2014, 04:55 PM   #13
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

Geas has that - to prevent accidental crashes one can do 'save' command too. There is one regular "reboot" once a week at Friday, though I also heard that they want to do with any kind of reboot. Equipment would then be saved all the time.

Geas has seven deities. The content is however thin for some deities, depending on how much work has been put into them. This is a question of how motivated builders are (for a free code base). Then again, if you think you want to contribute as a coder, you could always apply and add content on your own (though this can be a lengthy process - after all, different people have different ideas and visions, so it's always discussion).

You have a pretty long list actually. :>

I think no MUD may be 100% fitting to a very long list. Some MUDs could perhaps become very close to your ideal here.

For me, I need a roleplay MUD or I won't even play. And even then it can be difficult, due to reallife constraints.

Ultimately I play not because the code base is perfect but because there are interesting people to interact with.

I think no amount of code can substitute for good players.
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Old 01-15-2014, 07:35 PM   #14
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced


I'm going to just point out that Armageddon is -not- all about playerkilling. One of the richest things about it is trying to keep other characters alive and healthy in a dangerous environment. Just because there's permanent death doesn't mean its a kill-on-sight mud. NPCs, rather than PCs, do the majority of ending your lives! There are assassinations and battles, muggings and raids, poisonings and executions, but that only scratches the surface of the things to do.

If you're interested in a less-harsh environment, I'd point out Parallel RPI (science-fiction themed) and Harshlands, although I never used to like Harshlands because it's huge and they seemed to have maybe 3 characters on at any time. I believe it's picked up since Shadows of Isildur and Parallel are low.

And if you're really into less-permadeath, the RP-for-XP muds like Inquisition or Dark Isles would be good. Those allow your character to grow with RP and playing, rather than the RPI's which are generally skill-for-practice. I personally liked it more coded with simpler combat.
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Old 01-15-2014, 07:37 PM   #15
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Re: I'm looking for a new home; RP enforced

Then Harshlands might be your MUD. It's got a crazy detailed pantheon system with feast days and PC priesthood paths.
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