MUD/RPG/MMORPG idea collection

Suppose your character is born in Mernitia and your friend's character is born in Fragulis. These are two (imaginary) very distant places and a different language is spoken in each of them. So why should your characters be able to understand each others?

My answer: They shouldn't, unless they study languages.

You, the player, the soul of the character, may speak in whatever tongue you wish, be it English, Finnish or Japanese.
Your friend may speak the same language, but as your speech is actually the speech of your character, you won't understand each others.

The game engine should take care of that by garbling the speech you hear by the amount inversely equivalent to your character's skill in the foreign language.
Different garbling methods for different languages, of course, so different languages would sound different...

Needless to say, this of course applies to heavily roleplaying oriented games. Also applying this would require a large player base, because otherwise people wouldn't much interact... And the game should be interesting enough even without language-based interaction.

There shouldn't be any "channels" or "tells" either.
Some remote communication could exist between telepaths or such, though.

I've heard a MUD called NightmareMUD already does something like this.

Humanoids are boring. Why must all the player character species be two or more legged human resembling things, which do familiar things like "walking"?
Do something different!
Start with dolphins and a completely underwater world! :)
Something where the new player feels like a baby who doesn't comprehend anything of her surroundings at first.

Respawning

One of the boring things in MUDs I have played is this: You kill monsters, and the monsters pop back eventually again.
The world gains nothing. Fighting the wind.
Yea, your character does gain experience. So what? Kill more monsters?

Nonrespawning

What if the monsters died permanently when you kill them?
Unless the monsters reproduce (by whatever means) quickly, a monsterslaying-oriented MUD quickly runs out of monsters to kill.
In this case, life should be valued.
Most MUDs I know are based on monsterslaying...

Permanent death

Last updated 2003-09-03

The character only dies once. After that, the player can only create a new character if he wishes to play more.
Some MUDs (hcbat for example) employ this method.

Die many times

Last updated 2003-09-03

In most MUDs, players die often and there's some way to restore life to the character's body - with varying penalties.
When you're dead:

• You might be waiting in hell/heaven unable to do almost anything.
• You might wander around as a soul/spirit and can't touch anything and seldom be seen.
• You might see a dreamworld, which you can explore freely. Nothing from there can be transferred or affect the "real" world of the game, though.

To regain life:

• You might "pray". Someone might answer your prayer. You suffer penalties: some stats could be reduced, your body needs extremely difficult healing, etc.
• A cleric or magician must cast a powerful spell to bring your body back to life. Penalties possible.
• You must accomplish a task with your soul/spirit while you're dead.
• All the dead are restored into life when the stars and moons are in some position the next time. With a time control spell someone could affect the moment.
• You might automatically restart somewhere plain naked.

There could be a limit how many times you can die. After that, you'll die permanently. (Like in most platform games.)

Dying moves you from a world to next

Last updated 2003-09-03

When you die, you'll leave the world behind and move on to the next one.
You'll lose contacts to everyone you knew, and they'll lose you.

This new world could be:

• Completely a new world
• Just a different era in the same world.
  This might be exciting. If dying moves you backwards in time, you could leave messages for those who you left behind.
  More sensical would be to move forwards in time though.

It might depend on your life in the previous world.
This kind of system would probably require that the separated players don't interact with each others regarding the game.
Impossible to enforce.

• You might be born again as a child.
• You might carry your dead body to the new world and be barely living.
• Your soul/spirit might move into a new adult body in the new world - possibly to a body of someone who died recently.

No death

Last updated 2003-09-03

Maybe nobody ever dies.
If the game doesn't have any life-threatening hazards for the characters, nobody dies.

Last updated 2003-09-03

A question of the meaning of the life.

Shortly:

• You play for the benefit of yourself.
• Nobody cares about you, unless you're a threat to them.

You (your character) gain strength by whatever you do.
For example, you kill monsters and get stronger. You kill stronger monsters, and gain even more strength.

What do you do when you're the strongest in the world?

What use does the strength have, other than feeding itself?

You do interact with other players, but you do that only because it helps yourself.
Some monsters are impossible to kill alone, so you must group together.
If you're a fighter, you need healers because otherwise you die.
If you're a healer, you need fighters because otherwise you never get to practice your skills.

You dislike the social gains system, because it helps the weak stay weak and makes the game generally boring.

As a sidenote, in my personal opinion this system follows slightly a satanic view.

Last updated 2003-09-03

A question of the meaning of the life.
Shortly:

• You play for the benefit of people around you.
• Everyone cares about you, unless you're lazy.

[To be written]

You dislike the strength-based system, because it makes the world a harsh place and lacks an useful goal.

As a sidenote, in my personal opinion this system follows a christian view.

When the people (npcs) are walking around in circles and having nothing to do, they should really say so.

- "What are you doing?"
- "I'm looking at this pond."
- "Why?"
- "Next I'll go looking at that bush over there."
- "Why?"
- "And then I come back here and look at this pond."
- "Why? Are you that much bored?"
- "Sort of."

Last updated 2007-06-13

I recently read about Toki Pona (sorry, no Wikipedia link; they deleted the article suddenly after several years) and it brought a Star Tropics -style primitive island people to my mind.

If your RPG contains such people, you could try to simulate their life and use Toki Pona as their native language. As a very simple language, it seems perfectly suited for that.

You could add a translation layer to English, but they would still think in Toki Pona.
You could even make possible to communicate with them using Toki Pona...
Or not.

I've also considered constructing an entirely musical language. (Yes, I know about Solresol. I'm aiming for more dimensions.)

Last updated 2003-11-26

In adventure RPG games you usually can talk with everyone and have them say a few words.

Break the tradition: Do it like the Finns do! If you are going to just chat with someone with no plan, expect the following responses:

• *gasp* What do you want? eek! molester!
• What is it?
• *thinks* is he drunk?

So your character would always need a reason for chatting.
"Do you like <something>?" - "Why? What kind of interview is this?"
"What are you doing?" - "It's none of your business!"
"Hello, how d-" - "*steps quickly a meter backward* Stay away from me and my children!"
"Can you share a thought with me?" - "*loudly* Now that's a strange question. *nearby people start looking suspiciously*"

Last updated 2007-06-25

In most RPG games, when you want to talk with NPCs, you simply "trigger" their speech without actually having to talk. So in most cases, it looks like the NPC talks first. However, real life does not work like that.

So how to change that?

• When you want to talk to NPCs, you would possibly need to first select your own words from a list of statements.
• When your character has got nothing, she could think "I can't think of anything to talk about" and turn away, refusing to talk.
• Characters could instinctively avoid eye contact. If you spend long time ackwardly close to an NPC, or you look at it for a long time, it would get equally embarrassed and possibly turn away, or initiate discussion themselves.

Last updated 2004-02-16

  Time travelling modes:
    — in predetermined moments / eras — some select vantage points in history
    — smooth, to *any* moment
  Experiencing modes:
    — view only, gain information (ghost mode)
    — participation (flesh mode)
  Causality modes:
    — no consequence, each era is causally separated
    — concrete changes (like in Chrono Trigger)
    — chaotic changes (breath somewhere and a storm emerges week later)
  Reality modes:
    — destined universe (can't change, everything just fulfills the destiny)
    — variable universe (one thread; changes its shape)
    — threading universe (changes create a new branch)
    — multiple universes (superset of the threading model)
  Existence modes:
    — you become a separate entity (possibly existing twice in the same time)
    — you reuse an existing entity (e.g. someone's body, e.g. own)

Last updated 2004-09-07

Shortly:

• Eerie temporal desync in a summon spell

This special effect has absolutely no use, but it would add some spice: A person being summoned arrives to its destination before he left.

An example is shown in my diary: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/diary/11984

This of course would require that the game calculates the events to happen between the arrival and leaving with major certainty.
If it could be made working, it would be frightening experience :)

Last updated 2007-01-15

This idea was originally written by Warp.

Shortly:

• A fumbled summon results in the body and mind being separated, the body being summoned but the mind being still in the originating place

Once the mind and body are separated, the mind cannot influence the world. The mind needs to travel to the body's location by its own.

Last updated 2007-01-15

In some games, magic spells are learned in shops. The game asks for which character of the party will learn the spell. After you select the character, the spell is learned. It costs a fixed price.

My idea is that when the party goes to the magic shop, the shopkeeper would teach the spell by showing example. The whole party would be allowed to watch it. The teaching takes as long as the player wishes. Usually it ends when the desired character(s) have learned the spell. The longer it takes, the more it costs. Time is money.

Teaching easy spells to an experienced mage would cost virtually nothing, and teaching powerful spells to a newbie mage would take weeks and cost millions.

Naturally, there would be prerequisites for certain spells. For example, for a regeneration spell the student needs to have knowledge on healing and biology.

Spell-teaching could be a profession too.

Last updated 2005-09-01

You need to watch some Iron Chef to understand this.

In BatMUD, there's a system of alchemy, where by combining different herbs together you can create different potions and medicins of almost any imaginable effect. Most herbs grow only at certain times of year, and only in certain places of the world. They also need to be preserved carefully.

Now, apply the same concept to cookery. Imagine a world with hundreds of different ingredients that can be made into food. Plants of all kinds, meat of all animals of different kind (and animals that have been raised differently), mushrooms, possibly more even imaginary materials, and dozens of different ways to combine, prepare and to serve them. Meals that are cooked with armies of chefs, for supplying anything from soldiers to kings. Tools of different materials, size and level of automation. An endless opportunity of learning new. And of course, battles between master chefs from all over the world!

And there's a hazard... fishes, mushrooms, plants... many of them are poisonous or even lethal if not prepared properly. You wouldn't like to kill your king or give the army of your land a week-long diarrhea!

Now there's an idea for something to do in an RPG.

Internally, the game could use some kind of algorithm to calculate various aspects of the ingredients and how they transform as a function of the cooking method together into a set of another aspects that define the quality of the meal. And the quality is a multi-dimensional aspect, of course. There's of course the taste (which itself has various aspects), but also how satisfying it is, how nourishing it is (again, various aspects), and how beautiful it is estetically. And there could be some magical effects too.

The players would need to give names to the dishes they create. For a game with millions of possible dishes, the game developers can not possibly name them, and it wouldn't really make sense t make an algorithm for them either. The names your players invent can become common knowledge in the game, and other players may try to guess what ingredients went into them. The game may also give some hints when analyzing the dish.

You could earn money by writing books of cuisine... but such books don't make you a master chef. They give inspiration, but you still must learn yourself how to perform the things you do.

Elementalist ways of cooking

In the various elemental theories, there are a few elements that fit very nicely in cooking. I took liberty of thinking meanings for the others:

• Fire (火): Boiling, frying
• Water (水): Soaking
• Earth (地/土): Burying
• Air (風): Wind-drying, blowing
• Thunder (電/天): Electrocute
• Light (光): Illuminate
• Darkness (闇): Sealing, preservation

These could be the basis for the cooking.

Last updated 2006-06-30

In Final Fantasy VI, there's a scene in an opera house where the player must help a character to sing an aria by selecting the right words at the right moment.

In a MUD, a player could be playing in a band, and occassionally the game would present the player with choices of chords to select from. Selecting the right chord would give a token amount of experience to the character, and selecting the wrong one would give disapproval from the fellow band members and a decrease in the spirit of the audience.

In the beginning of one's musical career, playing the music (selecting the right chords) would take all of the player's concentration, but as the character gains more experience, the game will prompt the player less often, and will allow the player to make more observations of the overall scene, and of the audience. When the character has mastered the skill of musical performances with the instrument, the player does not need to do anything during the performance. Different instruments would have slightly different methods of playing. Performances would be a way to earn one's living in the game.

I had another similar idea for professions in a game, but the idea escaped me before I had chance to write it down...