21st Century MUDs

There was a recent thread at TMS asking if MUDs need to be brought into the 21st century. A few years ago my answer would have been a resounding “Yes!” and I’d have gone on about accessibility and web clients and user interfaces and blah blah blah. Nowadays I tend to think that there’s not … Continue reading 21st Century MUDs →

Reusing Old Designs

One of the things I remember Bartle banging on about in his Designing Virtual Worlds book was how many designers simply copied ideas and systems from earlier games without fully understanding why the original designers had implemented them. I was reminded of this recently when reading about a MUD in development called Casadona. There’s a … Continue reading Reusing Old Designs →

Albion Online

Albion Online will allow you to buy in game gold directly for real money Albion Online is a new free to play sandbox MMO with a rather odd business model. Here’s some copy from their website: Imagine the following situation: Someone is spending real money to get in-game currency. Next, he buys a crafted sword … Continue reading Albion Online →

New MUD Ideas

So I’m thinking about doing a MUD based on “old school” D&D. Partly because I like this style of game on the tabletop but also because I fancy doing a bit of a re-imagining of DikuMUD. I really like BECMI as it was my first introduction to D&D but race as class just feels clunky … Continue reading New MUD Ideas →

Skill and Talent System Proposal

Nothing particularly revolutionary here, but I wanted to set out a bare outline for the kind of skill system I’d like to see in a multiplayer virtual world RPG. World of Warcraft’s talent trees Skills Skills would be mostly non-magical and reflect a single verb. Once learned skills could be improved over time or through … Continue reading Skill and Talent System Proposal →

Tools for Building a Multiplayer Web Game

I’ve been thinking some more about doing a 2D battlemap style MUD and have been looking around at possible tools that I could use. Although I used Flex/Flash for FMud I’d rather go with HTML5 for the client on this project, mainly because it’ll be fun to learn something new. There are lots of 2D … Continue reading Tools for Building a Multiplayer Web Game →

Any interest in a tactical battlemap style game?

Following on from my post looking at D&D style game systems I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a MUD that uses a 2D graphical battlemap instead of text to represent the world. Maps would be covered with a square grid and characters would be represented by tokens which would move around the map … Continue reading Any interest in a tactical battlemap style game? →

Taking Inspiration from the Tabletop

I’ve been considering doing a quick MUD/web game (I’m thinking no more than a few months to get at least something online) and to save time I’ve been looking around at some existing systems/settings that I could adapt. Pathfinder has a generous community use policy for non-commercial works The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a fork … Continue reading Taking Inspiration from the Tabletop →

Is pay for perks ethical?

'I'm not talking about the potential for game imbalances that a pay for perks system creates, but rather is it ethical to construct a payment system that allows players to spend large amounts of cash on a game which is designed to be compelling, or even addictive? I'll take an IRE game as an example … Continue reading Is pay for perks ethical? →

From Skinner Box to Slot Machine, the rise of F2P

I get annoyed when I read this kind of thing about how wonderful free to play is and how it’s the future of online multiplayer gaming. Yeah so I used to run a free to play commercial game, but more on that in another post maybe. The Massively article talks about how Turbine successfully integrated … Continue reading From Skinner Box to Slot Machine, the rise of F2P →