Discworld MUD
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Discworld MUD is a free Multi-User Dungeon set in the Discworld as depicted in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett. It is based on the LPMud codebase.
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[edit] Overview
The MUD was founded in 1991 and opened to the public in 1992. The world has developed over time to the huge size it is today. It consists of several big cities (Ankh-Morpork, Bes Pelargic, Genua and Djelibeybi) on two continents, many smaller towns scattered around, and more than a million rooms which form the land between the cities and towns. Many of the Discworld characters wander around on the disc. At any time, there are usually between 100 and 200 players online. The MUD is based on a custom mudlib and uses its own LPMud driver.
Over 500 soul commands allow refined roleplaying, from crying to hopping around in circles and free-form emotes. All is possible, but roleplaying is not compulsory and many players choose to play in a purely social role, performing valuable services, moderating legal disputes or writing plays, or the other extreme, "numberchasing" - advancing their own skills as quickly as possible. Combat and theft between players is only possible for those who opt for "player killer" status. All other players are protected from other players (but not from the NPCs that can cause enough trouble for the unwary). There are some exceptions to this - for example, the player councils mentioned below can hire NPC assassins to kill a player who hasn't opted for playerkilling status.
An interesting feature of the MUD is that your prowess at various activities is based upon your skills' "bonuses", which are based upon your level in the skill and the various stats (such as strength, dexterity, and wisdom) that affect that skill, forming a weighted logarithmic relationship. Advancement is unlimited, but the higher your 'level' in a skill, the more expensive the next level is, while your bonus increases at a linear rate past level 60, so there is a system of diminishing returns.
This skill system contains a number of quirks and odd features; for example, some skills are used in unexpected ways, such as the skill "other.movement.climbing.rock", which, while it is used for climbing rocks, is typically used to climb virtually any surface which isn't a tree or rope, such as a metal drainpipe. Because of the wide range of uses that skills are put to, individual skills are not documented, so working out what skill you need to perform a given task can sometimes be challenging - for example, the skill "other.direction", typically used to avoid getting lost, is also the skill used in both reading and crafting maps.
The MUD is hugely complicated, and contains some bugs which have proven so resistant to detection and eradication that players and coders have simply accepted them as facts of life: despite continuing work at making it stable, until recently the MUD server periodically crashed. Crashes are less common now but still occur, and last an average of 5 minutes, the Mud shuts down for about two minutes everyday, though on certain times this is more frequent.
Discworld MUD is partly open-source and partly closed-source - the FluffOS driver is largely open-source, with new releases usually made available quickly, while releases of the mudlib are made available at intervals of some years, with the last release being made in 2003. It is expected that players who want to help with coding the game will apply to join the game's development team (Creators) rather than working independently and submitting patches. Much of the underlying system is obscured from players, although several useful algorithms such as that for determining experience costs have been either reverse-engineered or extracted from the released code. Much remains clouded in mystery, however, making most discussions about "bugs" or "game balance" or the like virtually entirely based in anecdotes.
[edit] Design Features
The game has limited permadeath - characters begin with seven lives, which can be lost a number of ways; such as to NPCs, assassin's contracts, death by falling; spell or ritual fails and more. The lives may be bought at Pishe's Pool however once those lives are all gone the player is permanently a ghost. Player versus player mode - known as "playerkilling" or PK - is disabled by default, but characters with more than two days' playing time can choose to enable it, this is also a requirement by some assassins guilds. Once the choice to go PK has been made, this choice can't be undone. Deaths to other players have exactly the same effects, but don't reduce your life total.
Development staff and Playtesters are hired from the player base, rather than promoted as a natural progression as in many other muds. In addition players can apply to be Newbiehelpers, who as the name suggests help the new players by giving advice.
One of the strongest development priorities in recent years has been on textual depth, providing rich descriptions and additional details, rather than on expanding the world or on providing higher-level content.
Advancement is experience-based, and the majority of experience is awarded from killing, either solo or in groups - both playing styles are well supported. All action commands give experience including Craft commands - but experience is more rewarding numerically when killing.
A large part of the original intent for Discworld MUD was to move away from a restrictive class system, and to allow any player to do (almost) anything with enough effort and advancement. However, guild choices are still irrevocable without losing all the character's skills and possessions, and each guild has several unique abilities not shared with any other. Fundamental abilities such as health, perceptiveness, and swimming skill aren't guild-based. GP (guild points, or energy) regeneration rate, or access to certain powers, such as the ability to backstab or Inhume (assassinate), are limited based on guild.
The world itself is not persistent, resetting areas and objects invisibly, but players' possessions (including rentable housing) are. Users can bid for houses and shops, due to limited availability these are highly sought after.
[edit] Guilds
The majority of players join one of the six basic guilds - organisations that handle training and career advancement, and are often the first port of call for social interaction. These six guilds are the guilds of assassins, priests, thieves, warriors, witches and wizards. They are loosely based on the Discworld novels, although there are differences - in the novels, for example, warriors, wizards and witches are not considered to be Guilds in Ankh-Morpork.
Someone who has not joined a guild is said to be an adventurer. Adventurers lack the cheap advancement and social structure provided by guilds, and so most players join a guild as quickly as possible. However, a few players choose to remain outside the guild structure and play as adventurers.
Many of the guilds have specialisations - further choices that need to be made concerning the player's role in the guild, the thieves and wizards guild for example, players must specialise. Priests, Assassins and Warriors however must choose a organisation to join. Different specialisations have different "Primary Skills" for example a a Cutpurse has a primary skill of covert.casing.person while a safecracker has covert.casing.place.
most guilds have 15 primaries however priests have 14.
Each guild has a refined set of special commands and abilities. Some guilds are "player-run" - that is, operated, within limits, by leaders who are elected from within the playerbase.
[edit] Clubs
Uniquely, Discworld MUD allows players to join and create their own clubs - player-run and -funded organisations with their own finances, global communication channels, democratic elections, and occasionally collectively owned houses. Hundreds of these exist, some very long-standing indeed. They're used variously as social groups, chat channels, in-character corporations and public bodies, and ad hoc organisational tools. Players can belong to or create as many clubs as they want.
Some examples include Taxi (providing magical transportation around the game world), Synod (for the High Priests of the various gods), OOC (for roleplayers to chat and organise events out of character), and Begorrah (for Irish players to chat and organise meeting up in real life).
[edit] Gods
With the exception of magic users such as wizards and witches, players can choose to worship one of the MUD's deities.
Over a hundred deities exist on the MUD, however only seven can be worshipped by players; these are Sek, Fish, Hat, Sandelfon, Gapp, Gufnork, and Pishe. One of these deities, Pishe, goddess of slight showers, only accepts clergy, not followers. Non-player characters sometimes worship one of the other deities, such as Redu Neku, Patina or Om.
Hat, Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests and Seven-Handed Sek originate in the Discworld novels. The other player-worshippable deities do not.
The MUD uses a one-dimensional alignment system to determine how much the deities like you, with "good" and "evil" on opposite ends and "neutral" in the middle; killing good creatures makes you more evil, while killing evil creatures makes you more good. Other ways to change your alignment exist, such as praying to your deity, which moves your alignment towards the deity's favored alignment, and shattering relics of other faiths - Sek is the most evil, while Pishe is the most good - and so in shattering a sekkite relic the player will move closer to Pishe, and vice versa; the previous list is in order of what alignments the deities like. The deities offer rituals in theme with their title, for example Gufnork (God of Fluff) grants a fluffy protective shield and Fish (God of Sea Creatures) grants the ability to breathe underwater; deities also offer rituals outside their basic theming.
Players who worship a god can extend their skillset with two rituals offered by that god. For example, Gufnork offers "summon fluff", a ritual that produces a ball of fluff from nowhere, and the much more popular "cure light wounds", which heals a small amount of damage.
Furthermore, players can get their hands on faith rods, a baton or a cane bestowed with rituals by a priest, which theoretically will allow any worshipper of any deity to use almost any ritual. The High Priests can declare that their faith does not grant or receive specific rituals; for example, at the time of this writing (September 7, 2007), Hat followers cannot use the "cure drunkenness" ritual from rods, as the Hat high priest has banned it.
[edit] Player councils
The game world includes several political regions. The cities of Ankh-Morpork and Djelibeybi are run by councils of elected player magistrates. Despite an effort by the Djelibeybi council (usually referred to as the Klatch council, after the Discworld continent and coding area in which Djelibeybi is located) to seize control over those areas with no player council, it is generally held that there are no written player laws which apply to these areas, and that only the game's acceptable use policy, invariably referred to as "the rules", applies.
Ankh-Morpork has seven magistrates, while the Klatch council has five. Elections are held every six months. The council system is based on the game Nomic.
