Shadowgate

knyghtthyme · Joined: 07 Oct 2014 Posts: 9

Okay.... Ive played alot of different muds and staffed on a few, most of them RPI muds... And two of them are amongst the busiest RPIs out there, Inquisition and Haven.

The problem, as I see it, is that the mud is trying to serve two masters at this point, being a hack and slash mud and a role play mud at the same time. The former is more for having a 'video game' feel where things are episodic (where going out and clearing a given zone is an 'episode') and there are not so many long term changes to the game. An RPI is more serial and rather then the focus being going out and killing things but on the interactions of the players with each other and the game world on a social level. Now sometimes those social interactions involve violence but more often not.

At this point it is hard to get a feel that what you are doing has a persistent effect on the game and that is part of what causes the widespread ennui that the few dedicated people who remain seem to be experiencing.

There are a few things that can be done to shift the games feel away from that PK/hack and slash feel that it has towards more of a persistent story telling environment, some of them minor and some drastic.

First, and maybe simplest, emotes should include spoken words. This is done in pretty much every role play mud extant and gives a much more fluid feeling to things, you type emotes just as though you were writing a story rather then having words and actions separated.

*****
Valkorior walks into the inn, glancing around as he moves towards the bar, "Kinda dark in here, aint it?" he remarks idly as he notes the trio of drow sitting in the corner. He looks towards Dionysus with a wry smiile, "I wont be staying long tonight..." he suggests.

****
Valkorior walks into the inn, glancing around as he moves towards the bar.

Valkorior says in a deep voice: Kinda dark in here, aint it?

Valkorior notes the trio of drow in the corner then looks towards Dionysus with a wry smile.

Valkorior says in a deep voice: I wont be staying long tonight...
*****

Which do you think reads better and seems more like writing a story? Whatever is in quotes in your emote would still have the language code applied to it. In an emote, rather then having to target your emote at a specific person, as with emoteat, you can target anyone or even an object by using /name or #objectskeyword in the emote.

Second, we need areas of the mud to be persistent. Homes, businesses owned by players and the like need to save. That means you can drop things there and they will be there after reboots. This would allow burglaries and the like to happen but, more importantly, would allow players to craft areas to their fancy, adding in items like furniture or art, etc. It would open up more character possibilities as people played painters and sculptors or other artisans who could make things that would be displayed in people's homes.

Third, being able to set poses on objects. IE, you drop something in the room and when you do... For example

drop sword lays here, it's blood stained with dark blood.

or

drop bottle lays discarded here, empty.

fourth, this goes along with object posing is setting a 'mood' in the room.

This lets people entering the room know what is going on or HAS gone on in the room.

The Mood would appear in parentheses under the regular description of the room. Examples....

(As you enter you notice that a large number of people have gathered here for a celebration of some sort. There is a small band in the corner playing lively music and everyone seems to be having a good time)

(The chest in the corner of the room is open and it is clear that the normally orderly items in it have been rummaged through)

(There is a large bloodstain on the floor here)

Moods should be persistent as well, saving through reboots so that people can set messages about RP related things that happened in an area.

Thats the start of it, there is more but its late and I have to get to bed. Ill think of more things to suggest that might improve the environment.

George

Ares · Immortal Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 1006

The ability to mix speech in with emotes was implemented briefly, but do to the nature of the mud it was removed. We felt that allowing speech to be used in emotes took away the ability for people to immediately react to actions rather than waiting to react until the end of a long chain of events.

Persistent player areas is another project that's been on the back burner for a while. It's a large and detailed project to implement in whole, but it is something that we're definitely interested in doing. We have to be careful with which items are persistent, however, so we don't skew the game balance by giving free storage in an incorrect way.

As far as I know, the idea to give players the ability to add additional short descriptions to items hasn't been brought up before. I can see some uses for it for roleplay purposes, certainly, and it wouldn't be all that difficult to implement I don't think.

As for Mood, I could go either way on it. People may or may not remember to update it, but it could be a good way to quickly get a feel for what is happening when entering a room.

Verbannon · Joined: 30 Sep 2013 Posts: 398

Also part of what makes Shadowgate feel so unique and close to authentic D&D is the mixture of hack & slash and RP. (Also unrelated, but a good thing to learn is that RPi is a volatile and subjective term that some mudders will murder over and is best never, ever used.)

And personally, I always felt the long list of player objects that show up in Muds that have persistent objects is very cluttering.
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knyghtthyme · Joined: 07 Oct 2014 Posts: 9

You know whats not very cluttered? A who list with only three or four people on it.

The problem with maintaining a mainly hack and slash environmentis that games like WoW are where people are going to get that fix, where they have graphics as well as stats to represent things.

If the players and staff of this game want it to move forward instead of remaining stagnant then the game itself needs to change in some fundamental ways. There are muds out there dedicated to one or the other, rp or h&s/pk and the people who want each are going to them. This mud seems to be trying to, as I said before, serve two masters. Were not doing pk as well as a pk mud and were not doing rp as well as a rp mud.

I know some of the things have been considered in the past but the mud is at a point where its mostly a ghost town. I want things to change. I want to see a large pbase where the ability to tell sweeping stories with long arcs are possible. I dont see that happening without significant changes to code and policy.

To give some thought to the issue of item storage, it could be implemented as a chest in the room (or shelves, or a box or whatever kindof container.) That would have a certain capacity. The whole room would not be pesistant, just the contents of the chest. That would limit what a person could store.

As for using speech in emote, its a matter of educating players not to powergame. You get one action per emote so you cant enter, emote walking up to someone and threatning them, slapping them and walking out. Thats 3-4 actions, depending on how you slice them up. There are other etiquette issues like entering a room where a scene is taking place and allowing one round of emotes to pass before you emote. This allows you to have a good idea what is going on in the scene. Likewise people should not react to your arrival until youve gotten your first emote so they know what is going on with you.

More to come later.

Verbannon · Joined: 30 Sep 2013 Posts: 398

This should be moved to a different thread as this thread is really about Kellan's idea. And I'm trying my best to resist answering you.
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kellan · Joined: 27 Oct 2013 Posts: 39

Knight Person,

I do agree with most of what you said about the rules/policy needing a change. I can also see the two masters thing, my major issue is that D&D in general serves those master. It is about story-telling that includes violence, exploration, etc. I could be miss reading what you're saying, but what I am understanding reads like you want no PK, NO exploration, NO level advancement, just RP.. That sounds like one GIANT Teacup Orgy, now I'm different then I was 5 years ago, where teacup rp annoyed me, but that just sounds boring to me. If I'm misunderstanding, I apologize.

What I do think Knightme has right, is that we need a change. One change that might work is in character creation allowing people to decide if they want to be adventurers or non-adventurers. If they choose non-adventurers we have different classes like painting, blacksmithing, etc. We could do leveling like old NWPS skills. Adventuring would retain what they have now.. We would need a real economy and the ability to actually be part of cities/history of towns more so then we are now. It would require a fundamental change. I hate to say it, but I feel like SG has ZERO direction except for adding new abilities and rebalancing classes. I hope I'm not alone on this, but my idea was in an attempt to get us refocused on story-telling, which avatars used to do. Now that we are all older, we have limited time and the avatars can't be on 24/7, so we need to police ourselves. Perhaps the immortals should look into giving HMS more control of the game and more commands then just higher level to help with the avatar duties. I don't care what ideas are discussed here, if it is for the better of the game. The problem is we all talk about making it better, but nothing is ever done, except for the adding of abilities. I won't care if we just balanced the classes that are currently have, wizzes didn't add new ares etc and just took time updating cites, making an economy. I don't need more powerful items(though I do think about them Smile

) or more gold, I need the ability to tell stories without avatars that are as good as those with avatars. I have experienced this a few times, but it really requires every player involved to be of exceptional quality to do this.

Alzar.

Nienne · Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:25 pm Post subject:

I've split the relevant posts to a new thread as I don't want to see either topic de-railed. This stuff wasn't relevant to the whole group-plot-ideas thing so it has its own spot now.

Remember if you ever have something you want to raise for discussion, it's better to make a new thread rather than taking over an unrelated topic Smile

kellan · Joined: 27 Oct 2013 Posts: 39

Nienne,

Thank you so much. I looked for like 30 minutes trying to move posts as the creator of the original thread, but decided I either couldn't do it or was too stupid. I was too lazy to copy and pass it to another thread!

Alzar

Verbannon · Joined: 30 Sep 2013 Posts: 398

This game is heavily Avatar reliant. And does get high populations but generally only when there are Avatars around. Without them things sputter out very quickly. Which is what Alzar's idea is trying to help solve.
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knyghtthyme · Joined: 07 Oct 2014 Posts: 9

The ideas presented by others are great and I think they would all make fun plotlines and story arcs to take part in... But I honestly think the cart is being put before the horse. The problem isnt that there wasnt interesting RP to take part in or good RPers to RP with. The problem is that the way RP happens, the options that players have, is not attractive to the bulk of RP mudders.

Coming up with new story ideas isnt really going to do any good if the way those stories are told and the ability of players to participate in them isnt changed.

Most of the muds Ive played and all three Ive staffed on were RPI muds and Ive invited more then a few players to come to Shadowgate. Of the half dozen that did all pretty much said the same thing, that the interface was too focused on hack and slash, that the way you interacted with other players (the separate emotes and says) were both things that made it seem too awkward. The separation of offestry was a little offputting as they had no one to RP with at all and it gave the game the feel of being all about combat. Even after they got out of offestry it was an issues because of the miniscule pbase. They were accustomed to 10-15 players at the slowest times and 40-50 peak.

Thats where I want us to be but I honestly dont see how that is going to be accomplished without significant changes. If that isnt what everyone else wants then Ill certainly be willing to participate in whatever does happen... But my honest opinion is that it wont draw any new players in and thats really what the mud needs for a real renaissance.

New stories alone arent going to be enough.

knyghtthyme · Joined: 07 Oct 2014 Posts: 9

Im not talking about anything currently part of the game being REMOVED, simply the adding of more features that will make RP more like storytelling, will enable players to have more ability to communicate the scene with other players and to create an environment on the fly that is conducive to the storytelling experience.

Verbannon · Joined: 30 Sep 2013 Posts: 398

There is absolutely only one change that could actually help with roleplay, and that would be reducing the avatar reliance. Which would require clearly defining HMs authority enough that they can do stuff on the small scale without an Avatar around. Right now HMs are 100% limited to face to face RP only. There is no working behind the scenes or setting up anything.

A perfect example is when Loki left, House Rilinath was embroiled in a plot, when he suddenly had to leave leaving the whole house hanging, they had nothing they could do so they all left. Thats five players leaving the game because the imm they were relying on went away and they had no way of resolving the plot themselves even temporarily.

And all were HM.

So I'm afraid any suggestion you make that doesn't reduce Avatar reliance just isn't going to do anything.

Also right now we really don't have much in the way of programmers to 'add' anything.
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knyghtthyme · Joined: 07 Oct 2014 Posts: 9

most of the RPI muds Ive played had minimal staff influence, on some it was actually prohibited so that the players themselves drove the plots... so...

while I realize HERE the game has been very avatar dependent there is no reason it has to be. When you have a small pbase the issue is that you HAVE to do things involving NPCs. If you only have 4-6 people logging on regularly and 3-5 of those are in one group just who are they supposed to have conflict with otherwise?

If you have 30 players the case is very different.

Verbannon · Joined: 30 Sep 2013 Posts: 398

I don't know. We have had populations as high as a hundred. And close to 30 on at once about a year ago. But as soon as the Avatars leave everyone else does as well.

I think it could be helped if players were allowed to plan better set-piece scenes. So many plots I've been in could have at least ended somewhat sensibly if players were allowed to do a quick set-piece that gave a reason for it to be on hold so everyone could move on.
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kellan · Joined: 27 Oct 2013 Posts: 39

I'm not sure I really understand the need for the changes in emotes, I have never played a mud besides Shadowgate and never felt the lack of feeling immersed in the RP. I have heard stories of muds or mushes(?) where there is no combat or PK. The fact that we are lightly based around D&D makes those things needed, so I'm not sure how this suggested change changes anything, could you elaborate more besides just easier to tell stories? To someone who isn't experience with that form of typing besides book reading, it looks very congested.

Second, I know you said there was rules for engaging like waiting an emote to do something, being acknowledge etc. That doesn't seem realistic at all. If I walked into a bar tonight I could walk up to someone and start a conversation interrupting, punch them, wait for my turn or a million other things.

Lastly, I completely agree things need to change, but in my opinion we have to decide what type of mud we are again and we need the immortal staff back, which means us working together as players to make it enjoyable for them. We bitch a lot, myself include, we get bitter, we whine, we rage quit, we get pissy when we don't get our way.. All of this has to change, myself included so they want to come back and code plus avatar.