Hello, I'm a very, very junior MUD developer working on my first game. It actually started as a dare from a friend to learn Python (he pointed me toward Evennia).

This game is actually currently live, if in a very raw alpha stage, so I have SOME experience with mechanics and coding and the pitfalls of the trade. But the one thing I keep circling back to without resolution is how to really attract people. There are LOT of MUDs out there, and most of them offer many of the same things - the same story in new words. I want to find a way to really set mine apart.

I'm relatively new to MU* anything in general, I've played various ones for the last five years or so. So this idea I've been toying with could be entirely old, already tried, and proved a horrible failure. That's why I'm here looking for input on the idea itself.

In simple terms, I'm toying with the idea of something like...crown of conquest meets dwarf fortress, in a MUD. The premise of the game would be a world overrun by a malevolent force and hordes upon hordes of Really Bad Stuff. Then mankind establishes a tiny foothold on the surface.

This game would include all the elements of a more traditional MUD - you make a character, gain skills, battle monsters, explore the world, learn more skills, complete quests, gather resources, craft and customize items, etc etc. But instead of a traditional map, there would be ONE area, and then a 'wilderness' map that generates itself as players walk through it. So every trip would discover something new.

But the real draw would be in an additional dimension to the game. Players would be able to establish 'factions' that other players could join - these factions would be very vaguely defined, mechanically, allowing players to customize them to be anything at all, from a cult of fanatics to an order of holy templars to a bandit brigade to a crafter's union - anything. Once established, faction members would be able to gain 'fame' by completing tasks in game such as killing monsters or bosses, completing quests, and so on, and stockpile 'supplies' by creating special items like lumber, bricks, rations, etc. Once a faction built up enough supplies, they would be able to found a settlement on an empty wilderness tile, as long as it was outside the influence of the Dragon Keep or any other faction's holdings.

Establishing a settlement would create a new room off the wilderness at that location, which the faction leader would be able to expand and develop, running roads, fencing fields, and raising buildings, all with the use of supplies and resources. These settlements would have nebulous 'statistics' like security, prosperity, and so on, which in conjunction with the development of facilities would cause NPCs to migrate to the settlement, offering various services. For example, if you built an inn and the settlement was prosperous enough, an innkeeper would move in and start renting out rooms.

These settlements could be upgraded and developed to offer different facilities and services, to produce resources, and to include defenses such as walls, gates, or hired NPC guards - all for an upkeep cost, of course. And other player factions would be able to 'assault' these settlements. In addition, wild animals or hordes of Bad Guys could also attack settlements, damaging or destroying the defenses and potentially razing sections of it. If the defenses were not replaced, the settlement would eventually be overrun, its citizenry disbanded and the tile reduced to ruins.

I have a lot of other provisions and ideas in mind, obviously such a system would be quite complex at the end of the day. But I was hoping to hear from you all some general feedback on the concept itself. Does this sound like something that would be popular? Has it been done before? If so, was it successful? What sorts of hurdles would such a system face? What dangers would need to be provisioned for?

Thanks in advance to all of you!

I'm working on developing a very original (if not totally, because I'm positive a lot of things have been done before to varying degrees, if not all together, in the same order...etc) MUD and have actually had it live for alpha testing for several months and worked out many of the base mechanics by now. But thus far I've done it almost entirely alone, with a few players occasionally helping with things like room descs and helping to kick around ideas periodically.

I'd really like to enlist the committed help of another person. As this game is still quite raw, it's not bringing in any revenue or anything, so this wouldn't be a paid position, though there will be the potential for players to purchase minor benefits, and I'd be happy to discuss compensation for staff when we get that far.

Below is a list of necessary qualities for someone who would like to help with this.

• You MUST be highly organized, because I'm not. I'll need you to be able to sift through an aimless outpouring of ideas, cross reference with player suggestions and complaints, and make a prioritized to-do list. Or at the very least, be able to tell me what we need to work on next at a given time.
• You must have faith in and commitment to the cause! Obviously, it'd be hard to have any sort of hand in making something you don't particularly like, and this type of game is nothing if not a toil of love. I'll include an overview of the game, theme, and primary mechanics below. If it's not a premise that gets you excited, you probably wouldn't be a good fit.
• You must have solid people skills, and especially the capacity to handle disagreement in a professional manner. I'm a coder, and a designer, and I like players and all, but if I'm constantly being called away to handle issues with players, I'll never get anything done. The bulk of that would fall to whomever was in this position instead. You'll probably also be the go-to for moderating the forums.
• You must be willing to sit and listen to potentially ridiculous ideas, and give relevant input - and especially be able to tell me when I'm talking crazy talk. You'll probably become my main go-to sound board, and it wouldn't be good for the project if you're a yesman.

That's all I require! Mind, there are several other things that would certainly be nice to have.

• It would be nice if you had a coding background of any sort. The game is written in Python, on Evennia. While I wouldn't necessarily expect you to help with the coding side of things, it'd be nice to be able to kick around problems and discuss potential solutions with someone who at least knows the basics.
• You should try to keep yourself accessible. Obviously, it would be unreasonable to expect hours and hours a day in what is essentially a rather thankless volunteer position. But I'd at least expect a check in once or twice a day, and would need to be able to rely on you when we undertake bigger scale projects.
• Passion - I'm incredibly passionate about my beautiful baby game, and would hope to bring someone else who's equally passionate on board in working on it. This game is highly innovative, with a lot of novel ideas and creative features. It's passion that allows us to keep building on that spirit.
• It'd be nice if you know how to build and work on a wiki. Because I don't!

Now, for a bit about the game itself. My game is called Nalvia, and takes place in the fantasy world of Creon. The main premise of the game is a worldwide conflict between mankind and a semi-physical force called the Mist. The Mist has previously overrun the entire world, with the last scattered surviving humans enslaved by Others (Mist-possessed mutated monster-creatures) and sequestered underground, as the Mist itself cannot get underground and humans touched by Mist become mindless borg-zombies called the Taken.

Just prior to the beginning of the game, a small group of human slaves stumble upon and hatch a dragon egg, discover that dragon flame can actually destroy the Mist itself, and that dragon tears cleanse the Taken. They make their way to the Surface and find the ruins of old human civilizations, constructing the Dragon Keep over the ruins of a particularly large ancient city. They then set about hunting down more latent dragon eggs and freeing other 'cells' of humans from the Others, while attempting to maintain some semblance of order within the Dragon Keep and slowly beat back the Mist.

So the setting is post-apocalyptic high fantasy. This game includes all the typical features of a MUD, from balance-based 'twitch' combat to quests both repeatable and 'storyline'. Players discover and learn skills, which are raised through use. There is no strict class or stat or level system. Instead, players can only learn up to ten individual skills at a time, and so create their own 'class' by choosing which to go with.

Rather than having a large world with various areas, the game world consists initially of two things: the Dragon Keep, and the wilderness. The wilderness is a roughly 200x200 map of terrain tiles. When a player enters a wilderness tile, it'll 'build' itself based on a template for that terrain, selecting different desc elements, occupants, and contents. If a room thus 'built' remains empty of players for 2 minutes, it will re-roll itself again when the next player enters it, so traveling is a constantly-changing adventure.

Players will be able to create factions among themselves and, if their faction happens to come into the possession of a dragon egg, will be able to establish settlements out in the wilderness, with a sphere of influence free of Mist depending on their dragon's capabilities. These settlements will be new areas attached to the wilderness tile they're built on. Players will be able to gather resources and build up meta-stats for their settlement such as 'security' and 'prosperity', which will attract various NPCs generated similarly to wilderness rooms - with randomized features and properties. These NPCs will offer quests and services, such as teaching new skills or renting out rooms at an inn.

As I mentioned above, I have many of the basic mechanics already in place. However, I'll be doing a database wipe and significant rewrite over the next few months to shift the game from into the Mist-riddled timeframe, add dragons and player 'personalities', and permit for the building and expansion of settlements. Below are some in-game logs of various features currently in place, to give you an idea of the feel of the game.

• Combat
• Skills
• NPC 'conversations'
• 'Canned' emotes
• Wilderness
• Quests

In addition, the game already features a detailed overhead map while in non-wilderness areas (and a wilderness map, but that is showcased above), and a fully functional crafting system that includes going out to find resource nodes, harvesting from them, refining the materials with an NPC (for a cost in coins, this is to provide an easy, universal gold sink that can be readily adjusted as needed), and then creating items that can be fully customized via a PATTERNS system.

So that's about it! If anyone is interested in helping out, please let me know! I'd also be happy to field questions and anything else if necessary.

I'm working on developing a very original (if not totally, because I'm positive a lot of things have been done before to varying degrees, if not all together, in the same order...etc) MUD and have actually had it live for alpha testing for several months and worked out many of the base mechanics by now. But thus far I've done it almost entirely alone, with a few players occasionally helping with things like room descs and helping to kick around ideas periodically.

I'd really like to enlist the committed help of another person. As this game is still quite raw, it's not bringing in any revenue or anything, so this wouldn't be a paid position, though there will be the potential for players to purchase minor benefits, and I'd be happy to discuss compensation for staff when we get that far.

Below is a list of necessary qualities for someone who would like to help with this.

• You MUST be highly organized, because I'm not. I'll need you to be able to sift through an aimless outpouring of ideas, cross reference with player suggestions and complaints, and make a prioritized to-do list. Or at the very least, be able to tell me what we need to work on next at a given time.
• You must have faith in and commitment to the cause! Obviously, it'd be hard to have any sort of hand in making something you don't particularly like, and this type of game is nothing if not a toil of love. I'll include an overview of the game, theme, and primary mechanics below. If it's not a premise that gets you excited, you probably wouldn't be a good fit.
• You must have solid people skills, and especially the capacity to handle disagreement in a professional manner. I'm a coder, and a designer, and I like players and all, but if I'm constantly being called away to handle issues with players, I'll never get anything done. The bulk of that would fall to whomever was in this position instead. You'll probably also be the go-to for moderating the forums.
• You must be willing to sit and listen to potentially ridiculous ideas, and give relevant input - and especially be able to tell me when I'm talking crazy talk. You'll probably become my main go-to sound board, and it wouldn't be good for the project if you're a yesman.

That's all I require! Mind, there are several other things that would certainly be nice to have.

• It would be nice if you had a coding background of any sort. The game is written in Python, on Evennia. While I wouldn't necessarily expect you to help with the coding side of things, it'd be nice to be able to kick around problems and discuss potential solutions with someone who at least knows the basics.
• You should try to keep yourself accessible. Obviously, it would be unreasonable to expect hours and hours a day in what is essentially a rather thankless volunteer position. But I'd at least expect a check in once or twice a day, and would need to be able to rely on you when we undertake bigger scale projects.
• Passion - I'm incredibly passionate about my beautiful baby game, and would hope to bring someone else who's equally passionate on board in working on it. This game is highly innovative, with a lot of novel ideas and creative features. It's passion that allows us to keep building on that spirit.
• It'd be nice if you know how to build and work on a wiki. Because I don't!

Now, for a bit about the game itself. My game is called Nalvia, and takes place in the fantasy world of Creon. The main premise of the game is a worldwide conflict between mankind and a semi-physical force called the Mist. The Mist has previously overrun the entire world, with the last scattered surviving humans enslaved by Others (Mist-possessed mutated monster-creatures) and sequestered underground, as the Mist itself cannot get underground and humans touched by Mist become mindless borg-zombies called the Taken.

Just prior to the beginning of the game, a small group of human slaves stumble upon and hatch a dragon egg, discover that dragon flame can actually destroy the Mist itself, and that dragon tears cleanse the Taken. They make their way to the Surface and find the ruins of old human civilizations, constructing the Dragon Keep over the ruins of a particularly large ancient city. They then set about hunting down more latent dragon eggs and freeing other 'cells' of humans from the Others, while attempting to maintain some semblance of order within the Dragon Keep and slowly beat back the Mist.

So the setting is post-apocalyptic high fantasy. This game includes all the typical features of a MUD, from balance-based 'twitch' combat to quests both repeatable and 'storyline'. Players discover and learn skills, which are raised through use. There is no strict class or stat or level system. Instead, players can only learn up to ten individual skills at a time, and so create their own 'class' by choosing which to go with.

Rather than having a large world with various areas, the game world consists initially of two things: the Dragon Keep, and the wilderness. The wilderness is a roughly 200x200 map of terrain tiles. When a player enters a wilderness tile, it'll 'build' itself based on a template for that terrain, selecting different desc elements, occupants, and contents. If a room thus 'built' remains empty of players for 2 minutes, it will re-roll itself again when the next player enters it, so traveling is a constantly-changing adventure.

Players will be able to create factions among themselves and, if their faction happens to come into the possession of a dragon egg, will be able to establish settlements out in the wilderness, with a sphere of influence free of Mist depending on their dragon's capabilities. These settlements will be new areas attached to the wilderness tile they're built on. Players will be able to gather resources and build up meta-stats for their settlement such as 'security' and 'prosperity', which will attract various NPCs generated similarly to wilderness rooms - with randomized features and properties. These NPCs will offer quests and services, such as teaching new skills or renting out rooms at an inn.

As I mentioned above, I have many of the basic mechanics already in place. However, I'll be doing a database wipe and significant rewrite over the next few months to shift the game from into the Mist-riddled timeframe, add dragons and player 'personalities', and permit for the building and expansion of settlements. Below are some in-game logs of various features currently in place, to give you an idea of the feel of the game.

• Combat
• Skills
• NPC 'conversations'
• 'Canned' emotes
• Wilderness
• Quests

In addition, the game already features a detailed overhead map while in non-wilderness areas (and a wilderness map, but that is showcased above), and a fully functional crafting system that includes going out to find resource nodes, harvesting from them, refining the materials with an NPC (for a cost in coins, this is to provide an easy, universal gold sink that can be readily adjusted as needed), and then creating items that can be fully customized via a PATTERNS system.

So that's about it! If anyone is interested in helping out, please let me know! I'd also be happy to field questions and anything else if necessary.

Thanks so much for the feedback! The matter of 'endless' expansion is one I had considered, and my working theory for a solution is in the lore-premise of the game. The world would be overrun by 'Mist', a semi-tangible force that turns living creatures it comes into contact with into joint-consciousness borg-zombies. While it would be possible to make settlements in the Mist, they would be under constant and heavy assault from hordes of Bad Guys and the Mist itself and would be very difficult to nurture.

There would be dragons in game, and players would be able to become dragon riders. However, eggs for dragons would be VERY rare (given as perhaps admin-driven event rewards, and maybe an extremely rare random-encounter type quest, or a really intensive faction-wide expedition), and may even stop spawning entirely if so and so many dragons exist in game (one would need to be slain for a new egg to be created). Players would be able to build roosts in their settlements, which a dragon rider player could settle their dragon into, and their dragon's 'influence' would protect so and so many tiles around the settlement from Mist. Settlements under a dragon's influence would still be besieged by Bad Guys, wild animals, and as it grew in prosperity, bandits and so on.

Also, settlements that were sufficiently prosperous would be able to build 'outposts', such as military posts or trading posts, which would contribute to the security/prosperity of all tiles within so much radius of them, and gathering enough resources would allow factions to build further settlements, not necessarily just one, though each would be under the command of a mayor or governor type role appointed by the faction leader. I suspect (and hope, really) that by spreading control around even within one faction, in the form of governors and dragon-riders being afforded a degree of it, natural inter-personal drama would serve as another limiting factor to 'empires' taking over the game world.

Hello, I'm a very, very junior MUD developer working on my first game. It actually started as a dare from a friend to learn Python (he pointed me toward Evennia).

This game is actually currently live, if in a very raw alpha stage, so I have SOME experience with mechanics and coding and the pitfalls of the trade. But the one thing I keep circling back to without resolution is how to really attract people. There are LOT of MUDs out there, and most of them offer many of the same things - the same story in new words. I want to find a way to really set mine apart.

I'm relatively new to MU* anything in general, I've played various ones for the last five years or so. So this idea I've been toying with could be entirely old, already tried, and proved a horrible failure. That's why I'm here looking for input on the idea itself.

In simple terms, I'm toying with the idea of something like...crown of conquest meets dwarf fortress, in a MUD. The premise of the game would be a world overrun by a malevolent force and hordes upon hordes of Really Bad Stuff. Then mankind establishes a tiny foothold on the surface.

This game would include all the elements of a more traditional MUD - you make a character, gain skills, battle monsters, explore the world, learn more skills, complete quests, gather resources, craft and customize items, etc etc. But instead of a traditional map, there would be ONE area, and then a 'wilderness' map that generates itself as players walk through it. So every trip would discover something new.

But the real draw would be in an additional dimension to the game. Players would be able to establish 'factions' that other players could join - these factions would be very vaguely defined, mechanically, allowing players to customize them to be anything at all, from a cult of fanatics to an order of holy templars to a bandit brigade to a crafter's union - anything. Once established, faction members would be able to gain 'fame' by completing tasks in game such as killing monsters or bosses, completing quests, and so on, and stockpile 'supplies' by creating special items like lumber, bricks, rations, etc. Once a faction built up enough supplies, they would be able to found a settlement on an empty wilderness tile, as long as it was outside the influence of the Dragon Keep or any other faction's holdings.

Establishing a settlement would create a new room off the wilderness at that location, which the faction leader would be able to expand and develop, running roads, fencing fields, and raising buildings, all with the use of supplies and resources. These settlements would have nebulous 'statistics' like security, prosperity, and so on, which in conjunction with the development of facilities would cause NPCs to migrate to the settlement, offering various services. For example, if you built an inn and the settlement was prosperous enough, an innkeeper would move in and start renting out rooms.

These settlements could be upgraded and developed to offer different facilities and services, to produce resources, and to include defenses such as walls, gates, or hired NPC guards - all for an upkeep cost, of course. And other player factions would be able to 'assault' these settlements. In addition, wild animals or hordes of Bad Guys could also attack settlements, damaging or destroying the defenses and potentially razing sections of it. If the defenses were not replaced, the settlement would eventually be overrun, its citizenry disbanded and the tile reduced to ruins.

I have a lot of other provisions and ideas in mind, obviously such a system would be quite complex at the end of the day. But I was hoping to hear from you all some general feedback on the concept itself. Does this sound like something that would be popular? Has it been done before? If so, was it successful? What sorts of hurdles would such a system face? What dangers would need to be provisioned for?

Thanks in advance to all of you!