genre?

[Blecki]

Hack and slash? Noir? Something else?

[Trevoke]

I'm interested in a ... magical realism type. Mostly normal world, but lots of slightly odd things at the edges. Imagine something like White Wolf's Mage: The Awakening, or basically Neil Gaiman's stories.

[piggybankcowboy]

I'm behind Trevoke's idea of magical realism, but I'd be worried about the technology aspect of the resulting world. It seems when magic is involved, there's a tendency toward a more sci-fi treatment of tech that isn't magic, in order to sweep the balance issue. As much as I love sci-fi anything, I'd like to see that avoided for once, for the sake of something different; a world that very much reflects our own, but with magical influence. So basically, lets avoid recreating Shadowrun.

[Trevoke]

I agree. For me, magical realism is a very normal world with a very darkly magical aspect to it.

It's closer to horror. Think of Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, or HP Lovecraft's tales when they're not diving deep into the other aspect of the terrifying. Think the Portrait of Dorian Gray.

It's mirrors with a dark shadow, flickering street lamps, dark tomes and whispered words in the corner of a library. Old friends playing chess in an eerily silent park, without the fluttering of bat wings. Guns work very well. Magic is not understood, it doesn't get harnessed. It works, but it has consequences. There's a price.

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:21 PM, piggybankcowboy notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm behind Trevoke's idea of magical realism, but I'd be worried about the technology aspect of the resulting world. It seems when magic is involved, there's a tendency toward a more sci-fi treatment of tech that isn't magic, in order to sweep the balance issue. As much as I love sci-fi anything, I'd like to see that avoided for once, for the sake of something different; a world that very much reflects our own, but with magical influence. So basically, lets avoid recreating Shadowrun.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/Trevoke/let-us-write-a-mud/issues/1#issuecomment-55297551 .

[piggybankcowboy]

You had me at Lovecraft. Yeah, I'm definitely on board with trying out that avenue, but keeping it current time frame. I feel like there might be a clever way to work smart phones into the commands with communication between players, or quest logs, etc, but I'm too far removed from any real coding ability to say for sure.

[txdadu]

So is it more modern than a fantasy type setting. I was thinking a magical realism akin to Joe Abercrombie's world, dark fantasy with some weird shit going on but nothing that overtly says Magic other than a guy who seems to live forever.

[lrk89]

I prefer good old fantasy, D&D style.. but your idea sounds interesting @Trevoke

[Blecki]

Dark magical modern day noir?

[Trevoke]

This wiki entry Fantastique explains quite well the literary genre / setting that I would like to explore. I haven't really found its equivalent in English literature.

[piggybankcowboy]

From the definition of Fantastique: "Instead, characters in a work of fantastique are, just like the readers, unwilling to accept the supernatural events that occur. This refusal may be mixed with doubt, disbelief, fear, or some combination of those reactions."

I really think this is gold. Don't get me wrong, I love D&D and all that just as much as the next guy, but I think desperate rationality and doubt toward magic as a defining aspect of a world is wildly interesting. In fantasy, it is, just as the description says, treated as commonplace. Even in that area of sci-fi like Shadowrun, where shamans with supernatural gifts walk calmly along side folks with skulls laden with data jacks or sprouting horns, because people got used to it. If we stretch our imaginations and pretend that happened in our reality, right now...well, I suspect that most of us would never just get used to it. There would be massive resistance, outcry and denial. We tend to not like things that are strange and different, especially if they're perceived as more powerful than we are. That wouldn't be hard to tap into for the sake of bringing the player a believable story that might result in some serious introspection on their part. Make them think and feel, be part of the game, and they will care about it.

Blecki also mentioned noir, which popped Hellblazer into my head. Moral ambiguity, cynicism...these things are like beacons to me when it comes to a good story, but hard to write without sounding like an angsty teen. Still, if done right, they're powerful tools for getting players (or readers) involved by causing them to put themselves in their character's shoes, even if they're not strictly role playing.

[ghost]

Now that sounds like an interesting genre ('Fantastique') to work with. Personally, as much as I love more traditional genres in this medium like high fantasy, I feel like something this distinctly different would be a breath of fresh air. It gives me a 'Shin Megami Tensei: Persona' vibe.

Anyway, I agree with you piggy. There's a lot of really strong themes involved to pull the players in and build up a general, immersing atmosphere. Having that modern day world where players instantly get that intimate sense of relation to the going-ons of daily life is major.

[Trevoke]

Alright, so it seems like people are interested.

Why don't we try to generate a few room / object / NPC descriptions in the fantastique genre and see what we like?

[Blecki]

Don't worry about the engine, just write them and those of us doing the programming will adapt your work to whatever system we use.

[ghost]

@Trevoke Sounds good. We'll all need to come to agreement on a consistent flow, or style of writing, so to speak. I'll mock up some stuff later.

If everyone writing can contribute at least one example, that'd be a solid start for bouncing concepts around and settling on a common ground to begin world building.

Just for some discussion: Do we want to start creating anything specific, such as a city, or something rural? Do we want to base it off a real location? What kind of architecture exists? What's the geography like in the immediate area? Climate? What are the people who live or work there like? How vast of an area do we want to cover in the immediate time frame?

Government, crime, wealth, etc. etc.

I don't expect us to come to any immediate agreements, especially before we even start writing any ideas out. However, these are things to keep in mind. Having all of this stuff in the background makes it easier for everyone to write without stepping outside the scope or theme.

[Blecki]

I know of a city we can use. Not a terribly large one, a town really. The kind of city that calls itself a city, but has a zoning ordinance preventing anyone from building more than three stories up. It's on an island, and it would be a tourist trap if it wasn't so cold, and the beaches weren't so rocky. Back when it was founded, when ships actually had to stop there, it was almost important. It's called Port Ivy. It's been years since I left, keep that in mind. I haven't actually been on the island since I was a young man, but I don't imagine it's changed much. Life there moved at a very different pace. Everyone was so careful about everything, but that was because of how close to the edge everyone was all the time. I remember there was this bed and breakfast across from the post office, the same b&b where Margette Wok hung herself. A man who called himself captain ran it with his round British wife. He always said his name was Captain, but we called him Of What. They would book out a room for three or four nights and go ahead and sell that same room starting the second night because no one ever made it more than one. Of course, if you're native to the island, it doesn't get to you quite as much.

[ghost]

@Blecki I love it. That is the exact kind of atmosphere I'd like to build upon. The whole story in your last paragraph is something that pretty much melds right in with this world thematically. So an island 'city' -- colder, definitely not that tropical paradise everyone dreams of visiting, but one much more dreary and secluded. That said, the world is still very connected these days, what with the Internet and general social web/media (even an island has access to satellite connection). This should be enjoyable to create.

I'll try to get into the mindset of a place like this -- coming from a city boy it will be a [fun] challenge.

I suppose the more difficult part will be transitioning the world itself into game-play. Again, stepping outside my forte (hack n' slash was my thing), I'm not sure how to really go about this. This question goes out to everyone: recommendations to MUD's similar in the style we're shooting for? I have a basic idea what we'll be doing, but seeing some real-world examples would give me (and others) a nice footing. A lot of MUD's I've spent my life on were VERY brief in descriptions, but I'm also big on interactive fiction/text adventures, specifically ones with loads of detail for each room and object.

I'll continue working on my mock ups to post regardless. With some back and forth it'll work out in the end.

[Blecki]

The problem with big descriptions is that they take longer to write. Anyway, you still either need a clear goal for the player (quests) or a strong social aspect. I prefer the questy muds. They also don't require as many active players to remain interesting. I wouldn't mind hack and slash, but combat could also be far more serious. Things like gunplay could require the player to do lots of training just to have a small percentage chance of hitting their target, and there's still a chance they could hit anybody else in the room.

One idea I have is, if we're going with the fantastique setting, is to give people supernatural powers; but not everyone gets the same power, and it's vitally important that they keep them secret. How we enforce that importance, I don't know yet.

[ghost]

I would tend to agree, at least now-a-days. Realistically, we won't have a huge, active player-base (as nice as it would be). So, quest-based seems like a solid option to me, at least. Like you said, it will keep the MUD playable even if there's only a few people around at a time. That said, it's mostly just us talking at the moment, I'm not sure if anyone else has any ideas/objections.

I'm good with either direction for combat. I'd lean to the side of a more serious, focused combat system personally; I feel it fits with the world we'd be trying to build. As you mentioned, it should be dangerous and tough. Sans third-world countries locked in war (and even then...), people aren't typically walking death machines, slaughtering everything everywhere.

As far as supernatural powers, that was one of my first thoughts as well when I read that wiki description of the genre. Players being able to have these mysterious powers would be great for quest, story, and combat tie-in. These would be powers that 'normals' wouldn't ever believe. Things that, if you told people you could do, would have you labeled insane. Locked away, even.

The player could even be in the dark about their abilities. And they probably should be. Through whatever means we decide (exploration, quests), they could slowly learn more about their skills, how to harness the real power while still keeping it hidden from the general public. Certainly could be a large part of the story, if not the basis for the story altogether.

[piggybankcowboy]

Love where this is heading. The island idea definitely trumps what I originally was going to propose, so I'll save my idea for later as maybe it would make more sense for a city that players would later travel to.

One thing I have been trying to think about is historical context for everything, and how closely we want to base that off real world history. This should be deep enough to allow us to create conflict in the world that would give structures to build quests off of. Say (and this is just an example) there are 3 major factions, and players could be caught in the middle of their various struggles for control over territory, or economical power, political influence, etc. To make them believable, we'd need to flesh out why and how these factions came to be, which allows the player to access them by sitting down and examining the ideals or goals of the groups to see how they might align with their own. This could be approached a number of ways though, but the key is deciding how we want to handle history. I'm for loosely basing it off real world history, but being flexible enough to allow creativity on our end.

Another thing I have been thinking about is how to handle the magic/abilities. See if you like any of these:

1. Players won't get any abilities until later levels. This could allow us to play heavily on the "disbelief" aspect, since starting players would just be normal humans for awhile, and can optionally choose a magical path.
2. Keep the magic/abilities subtle. Avoid things like people able to call lightning from the heavens, or launch fireballs from their bare hands, and instead favor object manipulation, where a player can perhaps imbue the rounds of their pistol with incendiary properties as needed, or electrify a knife. Even subtler would be mental and emotional manipulation, or perhaps language. Have more of a "psychic" bent to everything, where words have power, but it's hard to notice. To explain a little, this stems from a random experimental short story idea I had that explored how the media manipulates language to sway people's opinions or change their minds entirely to align with an agenda. I had two characters meet in a bar, and one was, at first glance, a conspiracy nut, but in the process of him explaining what the talking heads on tv were doing (as puppets of a greater power), we find out that words themselves actually do have subtle supernatural powers that were being used against everyone without their knowledge. They had even more power in the written word, because as soon as you look writing, you cannot stop your brain from having read it. This, however, might be harder to implement into game mechanics, but I figured I'd toss it out there.
3. Keep magic/abilities as close to science as possible, but not so close that it can absolutely be explained with science. What I mean by this is when, to use a previous example, a player electrifies a knife, there is a somewhat believable process there involving a boost in brain and nerve activity or some brief over production of ATP that results in a charge, or whatever. The idea is it could be explained by science IF science were a bit more advanced...at least we think. Treating magic/abilities like this sets up that plausible deniability we need to perpetuate the idea that the world at large does not believe in magic, yet it exists. Alchemy would be an interesting example as well. On the surface, it often seems like chemistry and physics at work to someone who only has a mild understanding of the two fields, but anyone with even slightly advanced scientific knowledge would tell you none of what alchemy proposes is possible.
4. The magical source. This is a weird one, and I don't really expect anyone to be on board with this, but I'm just throwing it out there because I thought it was a neat idea. In short: radio physics. Not only are radio physics a pretty neat vehicle to for communications, but, with some imagination, they could be used to explain the channeling of magical energy, maybe at a quantum level, which is very easy to spin as a sort of "reality beyond our own" since things behave really weird at that order of magnitude. I know, this is kind of a goofy mechanic, but for the sake of full disclosure, I'm a radio hobbyist, so this stems from my own imagination running about wild with some of the strange stuff I've encountered on the airwaves. Thin, tinny voices that sound like they're coming from another plane of existence, strange pops and whistles in the static of a dead frequency, and the haunting aspect of numbers stations. All of these things and more can be (and are) explained, but it's not hard to take that extra leap into a bit of fantasy and allow yourself to pretend that you're hearing the breathing of some Lovecraftian elder god that exists just barely under our own reality, or that the hypnotic inhuman voice calling out a string of seemingly random numbers and letters is somehow injecting a message directly into your subconscious.

Anyway, I just wanted toss those out and see what people think. DevRW, looking forward to seeing some sample writing, and I will submit some of my own in the next few days, because consistent tone will be important. I'm very flexible on that, and any other idea for that matter. I figure if we can come up with at least a starting city/town/island soon, it will set help set the tone greatly, not to mention give the programmers an idea of what kind of structure we need vs. what is possible.

[piggybankcowboy]

Oh, before I forget, do we want to fire up a wiki or something for keeping track of story once we this ball really gets rolling? Not sure if there are better ways to handle that, but a wiki sounds like the easiest way.

[Blecki]

Github repos already have wikis!

[piggybankcowboy]

Oh whoops. Sorry, I'm new at this.

[RonniDeWorm]

@piggybankcowboy Your proposal for 'magic close to science' gave me an idea about how to handle factions. The basis for these factions could be the different ways in which society copes with the discovery of magic, I have some ideas: EDIT: I really like your idea's btw, including the 'radio physics' one.

1. the first of these, based on your proposal, is the scientific study of individuals exibiting magic abilities, this faction would be focussed on understanding these abilities (all of course in very early stages, given the setting previously outlined). This faction is internally divided about the direction of this research (controling / remedying it or aiming at the integration of these abilities in daily life).
2. the second, and closely related to the first, is the 'control and profit' - faction. They use the knowledge form the first faction to hunt down and contain occurences of magic abilities and for economic, military purposes.
3. for the third faction I had in mind a kind of 'magic promotion/celebration' group, a group that like the first one aims for the integration of magic into society, but in a more cult-like way (a sort of church of magic) maybe with a hidden agenda.

note: faction 2 and 3 are more opposed to each other and 1 has interests pulling them bot in the direction of 2 and 3.

1. The fourth faction I imagine to be a sort of outcast private contractors using their magic abilities mainly in service of the other factions

I imagine diffrent (rough) playstyles related to these factions, for example: maybe crafting for the first, combat oriented for the second, 'lore digging' (investigation of the history of 'magic') for the third and maybe more focus on social interaction in the fourth. Again, these factions need to be in the very early stages of their development (or maybe the 3rd one should be the exception)

Just some thoughts, really like where this is heading.

[ghost]

@piggybankcowboy I'm definitely feeling a mix of two and three. Subtle abilities, something slightly akin to psychic powers in traditional genres. We could tie it into science, definitely -- powers dealing with the mind and body. Standard manipulation through language and gesture, precognition and increased perception, telepathy, and more dangerous things in the vain of *kinesis -- uncontrollable abilities like causing a victim's body to fight against them, igniting objects with the mind, etc. etc.. Then move into even more supernatural abilities, such as astral projection. I, personally, am big on a paranormal-scientific basis, definitely less-so of the elemental magic you see in typical RPG's.

Open to everything, though.

How we build these into the game, I'm not sure (yet), but it could definitely be done well with some thinking.

@RonnieDeWorm I feel that sways outside the scope of fantastique though, no?

The general concept is that these phenomena are widely dismissed by the majority of people. I could see world superpowers (ie. United States in the real world) having 'black ops' teams that are aware of these people and their abilities, but these task forces would be invisible to the vast majority of people -- even those in high positions of power.

It seems a bit off to me that multiple, large organizations based around these supernatural occurrences would exist.

These abilities and occurrences cause confusion and fear. People refuse to accept them as reality. Professionals label the people insane, or wave them off as audio-visual hallucinations, dreams, self-created memories, and so forth. For the most part, these cases are dismissed entirely by the world.

That's just what I got out of it, at least. I don't have anything against a world where these are more commonplace, but that is really just another theme entirely. Which, if everyone wants to do, is perfectly fine -- this just seems like it caters to more of the mysterious, the unexplained.

I realize, also, that you mentioned they are early in development but I am strongly against having any organizations/'factions' built around an in-game concept (such as crafting, fighting). It feels like you're forcing players into one or the other based on play style, rather than through a narrative where they genuinely agree with what such an organization is doing. This genre seems to cater more the the narrative style than a game-y style.

Again, I'm open to everything, though. Just putting out some thoughts.

[RonniDeWorm]

@DevRW (thanks for your reply) It think I agree with you about not tying these factions to play-styles (what I had in mind was just an 'orientation towars' but I think your reply is a fair one nonetheless.

About my proposal for factions making these abilities to commonplace: I see that being a problem for the first and fourth faction (the first one is a little to 'x-men' the fourth a little to 'shadowrun'). But I still see some value in my other proposals, maybe the focus should be on how these individuals themselves learn about, and learn to cope with their newfound abilities (or givin that the player chooses a 'normal' path how they react to these strange occurences) : For reference I was thinking about a cult of magic a little anlong the lines of the roguelike 'infra arcana' (http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/Lore) which is obviously within the range of fantastique. I see no problem with an organisation like this having more or less extensive 'knowledge' about these abilities, as long as they are quite secretive about it to 'no initiated' (and they also seem the place to be to dig into the history of it all). The scentific faction is much younger (and the 'knowlegde' they aim at is obviously of a very diffrent kind). To avoid this being another large organisation (and so again a large amount of people 'in the loop' about magic) I imagine a small group of magic users systematically experimenting with their abilities (no huge r&d labs with advanced equipment but more 'homebrew' initiatives)

I'd love to hear some ideas about how to make 'normal' people viable characters (I like the idea) .

[ghost]

@RonniDeWorm Yeah, I don't mean to dismiss them entirely, but we definitely should put some careful thought about how the exist within the world. A 'cult' would definitely be a good starting point! Looking to the real world, we definitely have entire groups that believe in the paranormal or otherworldly entities. It's definitely not fair to dismiss that completely, which I almost did!

I agree with your ideas in the latter paragraphs about small, quiet organizations where a rag-tag bunch of people experiment with their so-called 'abilities' in abandoned homes, garages, or warehouses at night. It might even attract normal people who want to believe they have powers, so you have a mix of legitimate paranormal humans and your average Joe's.

I could also see something like a 'church' growing, where members (who are mostly normal humans) would be brainwashed (akin to Scientology off the top of my head) into believing a mythos created by the 'elite' or 'prophets' of the org, who may have legitimate powers and use them to manipulate everyone into their followings. Those 'elite' few would work behind the curtains to learn about their abilities, and perhaps even experiment on those who've pledged their life to the 'church'. Easy to tie in all sorts of dark, morally controversial themes into that -- I'm giddy just thinking about it.

I love the idea of having a normal human completely viable, and I have been thinking about how to make it just as fun as being one of the gifted/cursed individuals. If the game has a very powerful story, I don't think we'll have to worry about them having an unfair advantage for the most part. This is assuming we're not doing a hack n' slash, because I'm looking at quest-based design like discussed earlier.

That said, there should be downsides to having these 'powers'. Perhaps the more dangerous ones are uncontrollable, which could be fatal to the user if they try anything beyond their ability. Perhaps they get lost in an astral projection, separating their body from spirit permanently. Maybe they hear and see things (harking back to the audio-visual hallucinations) that confuse the player. A chance for something like that to happen while exploring the world, to have the prompt spit out a line of text that might not even be real -- could result in some serious mind-fuckery (along with great opportunities for gameplay).

Regular humans, of course, wouldn't suffer from these things. Of course, they also don't get the whole benefit of cool 'powers'... so we'd need something more than just that in my opinion. It feels too much like races in a lot of RPG's where humans are balanced and others have direct benefits and downsides -- that's boring to me.

I'll think on it some more though! But everyone should contribute for sure; brainstorming brings the coolest ideas to light.

[RonniDeWorm]

@DevRW Oh I like your idea of how to give a 'handicap' to magic users. Infra Arcana has creeping insanity when you spend too long on one level, so I'm thinking this is something that builds up little by little, not only when you use magic out of your reach (but this should have more severe consequences like you indicate, visible 'scars' of such episodes f.i.)

I had a few thoughts about the viability 'normal' human, I'm just going to list them:

1. an obvious route would be to make humans more tech-savy but that brings us right back to shadowrun an I agree we should try something diffrent (as already mentioned)
2. Given the importance of keeping these things secret, you could give 'normals' some possibilities to expose magic users (mobbing up on them, recording odd phenomena, but this would drive them into a specific role again, and it seems like another handicap for magic users (and I agree with DevRW normals can't just be the 'balanced' type.
3. I was thinking about how dark creatures (f.i. vampires) use humans to help them in many different ways, maybe somekind of symbiotic relationship between 'normals' and 'magic users'

Oh, (given 2 and 3) maybe humans could have the ability to raise or lower suspicion (to keep open their alliances and playstyle), something that would be unatainable to magic users (because of the 'creeping insanity' they tend to raise suspicion on themselves). This 'suspicion' doesn't lead to exposing them as magic users, just general dislike towards these individuals, making them outcasts. Given the Island community this could lead to some interesting stuff.

Then the magic users could provide the normals with services (healing?), echanted objects, ... in response to help (lowering suspicion) or something like blackmail (enhancing suspicion).

That last bit became a little specific (and more oriented towards game mechanics than setting/theme) but the general idea is giving normals more control over the attitude toward strange phenomena (alienating certain people on the island for example), but nothing along the lines of exposing them (given that widespreadd acknowledgemet isn't an option).

[Blecki]

I'm going to come from an entirely different angle. I don't think we can do anything with 'creeping insanity' or 'alienating people' simply because as much as we want the character to be this way, the person behind it will continue to behave rationally. Friendships between players supercede things like 'reputation systems'. We would be able to do things like make NPCs react to them in different ways, but that's fantastically shallow, considering that what he absolutely cannot do is make the game less enjoyable to play just because you're a werewolf.

Consider what it would mean for the game if we kept these powers secret from the players. Let players think the game is about something else; and then a few levels in introduce them to subtle powers. One key would be to make it absolutely vital that they do not reveal their ability. The ability must only be helpful if it's secret. Each one must have a simple foil that would allow even a first level player to cripple it if they knew how. New players would get no information what so ever on these powers. I don't think we should even let the higher level players know anything about it - let them discover the power, and the foil, on their own. Perhaps they can't even choose what power they get, and they aren't going to get it until they've settled on a 'career' (class), so they'll have to figure out how their power benefits their play style rather than picking a power that obviously helps them.

[ghost]

@Blecki That's an interesting direction to take, I like it a lot. It would prove pretty interesting (and challenging) creating the powers/foils for this. If done well, it would make game-play really unique and put the players themselves on edge, reinforcing a lot of the themes mentioned earlier in the discussion.

---

Another discussion regarding rooms (not sure if we want to open seperate issues for all of these tangents)...

Obviously we (well, Blecki for now) have the ability to program an engine that fits exactly what we'll need for our MUD, but what is it that we want?

I'm working on some sample rooms and am working on trimming the fat, so to speak. I have a thing for dynamic worlds, and often spent a lot of time writing/programming in Inform worlds that were full of local and global flags and variables to change rooms. Things like weather, light, previous actions, time, and so forth.

Now, this is obviously a little different in a MUD. At least, I've never played a MUD that had rooms as dynamic as I've created in IF.

I suppose this is because:

• Players tend to fastwalk and skip room descriptions altogether a lot of the time.
• The description isn't really going to be read every time after you've seen it once, so it is wasted effort (though I disagree).
• It doesn't impact the world enough to be worth the exponential increase in work-load.

On a personal level, I love dynamic worlds. I like my worlds to seem alive. But static rooms are almost infinitely easier and more fail-safe to build. The trade-offs are pretty ridiculous.

It is pretty important to set a baseline now, early on, because it streamlines the writing process. Do we want to write this much? From an engine standpoint, what level of complexity are you capable/willing to implement, Blecki (& other programmers)? If we do something semi-dynamic, what kind of changes are we thinking of writing in? Any other thoughts on this?

All that said, I should have some examples up soon. Took much longer to finally sit down and focus on it than I'd have liked!

[Blecki]

I don't think we should include anything that doesn't serve a gameplay purpose. So we can have weather - it can rain, snow, whatever - but it better have an affect. Snow can make hand-to-hand combat impossible, for example, because it's too slippery.

When it comes to anything, don't be afraid to suggest it. If I can't do it immediately I'll give you an idea of when it could happen and what it would take. I'm very familiar with Inform and a lot of Inform's power comes from it's rule based paradigm. Unfortunately that doesn't scale so we'll have to do it the more typical way.

Basically I'm willing to implement it if you're willing to write it.

[piggybankcowboy]

Weather could arguably serve a gameplay purpose in the sense that it lends atmosphere, though. That could be important for immersion, depending on how rich we want the world to "feel." Say we have a city that's basically an analog of Seattle, so you'd think "what's Seattle without some drizzle falling from the sky?"

Might also be important in the realism aspect. One of the MUDs I play on has absolutely minimal weather. It gets a mention and that's about it. So, once in awhile you will see a line of text pop up that says "The rain begins to fall" or whatever, but you won't hear from it again until you read "The rain has stopped." It doesn't do anything. It's just kinda there, and you forget about it while playing, which makes all the areas in that world seem like they're in the same climate, which makes little sense when you're in a desert area one minute, and on an island the next.

Depends on the level of complexity, though. How much is too much? If we go too hard on it, we'd just annoy players. What about smaller effects? Such as, if it's raining, you have a slightly higher chance to fumble an attack since your gear is wet. Snow could maybe have an impact on movement/endurance since it would take more energy to trudge through it. Dry heat could increase player thirst faster, etc.

[piggybankcowboy]

@DevRW Regarding the discussion about "powers at a price," I feel like a simple solution would be to have abilities cost HP, as though using them is taking some physical toll on the body, so one has to do it sparingly. Might have to tweak that for any sort of self-healing abilities, or maybe make them all regenerative over time, as opposed to that more traditional immediate cure. This, while encouraging players to always have first aid kits, or something, while adventuring. It sets things up so that nobody will be out there relying 100% on magic.

[ghost]

@Blecki Excellent, I am glad to hear that!

@piggybankcowboy I agree with you on the weather. Even if it wasn't directly affecting gameplay, so many MUD codebases seem to have it thrown in as a random prompt every now and then, but no real change in the world. Obviously there's a lot of work involved in making sure you cover all those cases of weather, but I think the payoff is worth it EVEN for the ambiance alone.

I think more subtle effects would do the job just fine, unless we were building the game itself around harsh weather, something akin to realism survival. We definitely don't have to do anything over-encumbering with it. It should promote, but not force, other directions of play. Again, something we'll have to think on.

[Trevoke]

In 'fantastique', most of the time the supernatural is not accepted, by anyone. This is a part of what lends the genre its horrific nature.

I like the idea of costing HP, or a generic 'stamina' stat of sort, that makes people able to walk, stand, maybe even affects their ability to see and hear.

As far as affecting their sanity, that's simple enough, we can affect what people see and hear. Some creatures may not be there... And we might see the crazy enough just attacking thin air, fighting themselves.

[piggybankcowboy]

Costing HP to use abilities is just an idea I tossed out there, but it's also tricky. We'd have to be very careful to not make the player feel punished for wanting to use magic, but instead interpret the mechanic as "well, that's part of why magic is not well known and kept on the fringe, because it hurts the people it uses."

[piggybankcowboy]

I have been organizing some thoughts and notes before we start finalizing how we want to approach story and world-building ideas. Don't ask me why I did it in a repository, I just kinda did as I was poking around, learning to use the site. Anyway, you can look here: https://github.com/piggybankcowboy/RMUD-Creative.git

If you like anything or dislike anything, feel free to start discussion. I have a lot more to add, but I got a bit started today so I have all my ideas in one place (they're kinda spread out between notebooks, Google Drive, and a heavily abused whiteboard at the moment). Keep in mind these are all just my thoughts, and I'm not pushing anything one way or the other and would rather decide with the group.

I'm also going to go through our posts here, and start keeping track of the various ideas we agree on to start forming the skeleton of the future wiki. I think that's the best way to organize our creative end of the game, and it's pretty convenient that GitHub provides one. Anyway, I'll add more ideas to my repo through the week, since we need to literally lay the groundwork of a starting area, which I'm all about focusing on. Speaking of, @Blecki's Port Ivy idea is terrific, but I'm having trouble finding info on the actual place to use as inspiration. Does it go by another name, perhaps?

[Blecki]

I made it up... But it's any generic Atlantic coast American island, of which there are many.

If you want to be the wiki master you got it. I don't expect I'll do it and nobody else has expressed an interest in manning that aspect.

[piggybankcowboy]

Confession: I'm a lore-hound. I tend to spend just as much time exploring back story to games as I do playing them, haha.

That works for me if there are no objections. I'll mess around on the wiki on my account so I know what I'm doing before making anything more permanent here.

[Blecki]

I don't think we can fork and merge wikis so be prepared to have to move everything over the hard way.

I'm going to fork your repo and riddle it with my commentary. You'll get a pull request when I'm done.

[Trevoke]

Hmm.. Aren't wiki on a separate branch of the repo? It should be possible to merge them, I think.

[piggybankcowboy]

I'd just build it from scratch here once we have more info that we all agree on, not on my own account. The one in mine will just be me experimenting with the options it offers to gain a better understanding in hopes that it helps me structure a solid, comprehensive wiki. I'll look into it more this week.

[Trevoke]

It occurs to me that we might want to do a fair amount of work for this and not be too limited by github itself, so I'm creating an organization and making us admins. If no one minds, I'll transfer this repo over there and we can just do stuff from inside that namespace.

[piggybankcowboy]

@Trevoke I'm down for whatever, just let me know what I need to learn, and I'll keep contributing whatever I can.

@Blecki great feedback! Stuff like that helps shape an idea.

[piggybankcowboy]

By the way, if anyone else wants to fork that repo I linked above, and do what Blecki did, that would be awesome. I'll have more proposals for various story-end things as we move through the week.

[ConstableBrew]

I think we have settled this topic and can close this issue.

[Blecki]

Okay.