Several bugfixes, updates to fishing, and some skill changes as well as new skills for a few classes, among other things.

General Changes:
-set NPC raise timer to be based on character level at raise (level 10-25) or death (level 26-50)
-added a delay to bartending
-added wait timers to dismember
-restricted gtell and tell from stunned or blackjack/sleep’d characters
-made tell usable while asleep but not stunned unless to/from an immortal
-allowed notelled players to send tells to imms
-changed lots of fishing stuff to work off skill, pole strength, and bait quality
-allowed choice of bait when fishing, modified catch chance
-added code so if a fish escapes, fisherman can see what it was
-changed examine to show fishing pole strength and bait quality/uses
-changed bait so bait is edible/administerable and weight changes with use
-allowed clanpower while hooded/masked

Skill/Class Changes:
-required at least 30% skill to use sneak, backtrack, and cover
-adjusted sneak improvement rate and made it only improve on success
-made thief/nature sector affect sneak success for respective classes
-changed all sneaking to count up worn metal armor to affect success rate
-added in skill component to sneak
-removed failure when starting sneak/backtrack
-added wear chain/scale to thief and vagabond classes
-added wilderness fighting to vagabonds, made it not stack with street fighting
-added some code to copy currently known chars/mobs into smells for track
-added new food choices to create food and allowed choosing if skilled enough
-made wind start fighting if used while out of combat, only works in fighting position
-redid code so link and mana share now work properly

Bug Fixes:
-fixed bug in pardon when pardoning people who aren’t online.
-fixed issue that was making pet/mount nofollow on quit
-blocked dead mobs from attacking via prog kill
-blocked dead victims from being attacked via prog kill
-fix to bug that was crashing when progs ate chars
-fix to allowing wands, staves, pills, and scrolls to take a string for oset spell
-fixed bug in examine that was doing strange counting things
-fixed bug in flurry/scald vuln stacking
-fix for game crashing when a switched NPC checks the wholist

Message Changes/Typo Fixes:
-made materializes message for copyover only show to those who can see the char
-correction to bleeding for messages on cover
-correction to cover messages if used in wrong area
-fixed a typo in drinking shots
-added messages for wilderness/street fighting in at start of each round
-added messages for sneak failing
-added some better bug messages for security and affect removal

Building Changes:
-set OLC for foods to only take a food hours value
-modified OLC for fishing poles to be flaggable as nets
-modified OLC for bait to have multiple uses
-cleaned up some fish descriptions for fishing and upped prices of big fish
-modified eat, administer, fishing, and create food to not set v0′s
-made all liquid names count for name, even for noncustom liquids
-disabled some room/mob autosetting

Immortal Stuff:
-made rset, oset, and mset give a message on what was changed
-changed oset, rset, mset, delapply, addapply back to room first on targeting
-changed a number in oset so it’s possible to set values to -1
-added has_name check to obj_data to check liquid names and mask imm tags from players
-blocked out shop exchanges and buy/sell list with switched shopkeepers
-made it so you can give items to switched shopkeepers
-cleaned up backtrack to not fail on setting affect

version r1041

We will be holding an RP event on the evening of May 6th.  Start time may be around 8-9 EST, but we will start if we have a good crowd.

Be there!

May’s Q&A focused on how players can get involved in quests.  We talked about the specifics of RP nights and went over some examples of how a character can respond to a quest hint in different exploratory ways.  Much of the event was like an interactive seminar with some general questions at the end.

I’m not sure how RP nights work. It’s first come first serve, right? If we want to do something, we have to wait in line then?
RP night is time we’ve set aside in our schedules to puppet mobs for you guys so you can continue and investigate quests.  You can go get confirmation or more information about the leads you’ve found. Test the theories you’ve been making.  All you have to do is go to where you want to RP and then send a tell to the staff member in charge that night.

You don’t have to worry about us being busy because we’ve set aside that time specifically for you. You can ask us to help with anything where it would be unfair for you to determine the outcome yourself.  For example, if you talked to a mob from a staff plot, you wouldn’t have the right to make up what it said to you by yourself or else you would be manipulating our plot for yourself.

The thing about the first-come, first-served bit is that there’s only one of us available on each night, so we need you to send us a tell so we A) know to come RP with you and B) can help everyone in the order they ask us to come RP.

It normally falls on the weekends, doesn’ t it?
The times for RP night are continuously updated at the bottom of HELP RP NIGHTS.  Usually there’s two times per week: one on the weekend and one on a weekday.

There are in-game plots?
Yes.  There are two immortal-run plots going on right now.  We try to get a lot of people involved, so you should keep your eyes peeled.  See also: The later note on MOTD.

Let’s move on and talk about plots and the general flow of them.
The easiest way to start a plot is for us to have something unusual happen.  Hopefully, something that makes people want to go ask questions and figure out what’s going on.  For example, a giant snowstorm might cover Seria in snow when there’s never been snow in the city before. You might get a mob muttering about losing something. These cues aren’t intended to be hidden or hard to notice.

Is there ever a definite ending to the plot already from the very beginning?
For some plots, yes.  For some plots, no.  We don’t script everything beforehand.  RP is coming up with the concept, then throwing it out and letting people interact with it as they see fit.  We take into account a lot of how players respond to the initial concept.  Although we usually have an ending in mind, it’s generally a flexible ending, or it’s very open as to how players get there.  Sometimes we incorporate character speculation (“Maybe such and such happened.”) and that changes the storyline.  Characters’ decisions shape the endings of plots and often the reward they might receive.  If we run a plot and you have to investigate to get prizes, and then an entire group doesn’t do any of that, we won’t twist the plot to give them freebie prizes at the end.

I, as a new player, have little to no idea what plot is going on or where in the story we are. Is there something I’m missing… like a mail or a notice?
Sometimes there’s mails out, but it’s less consistent plot to plot.  We may mail out as an NPC sometimes, like when we started up the plot with Farmer Mack.  You may also have mails about plot if a player has mailed to a city.  A more reliable way to know what’s going on is to look at the message of the day (that screen you see when you log in, accessible with the “MOTD” command), which we try to keep updated with bits of generally-known information about whatever’s going on.  You can use the information in MOTD as publicly known information and ask questions about that to get involved.  HELP PLOT UPDATES has more focused, but sort of OOC hints on certain plot goals.

Of our two metaplots, one of them is more focused towards groups in Seria, and the other one has been giving cues to almost everyone we can catch online. We actually have a pretty low response rate even if we give direct cues to one person alone in a room.  I’d like to pose a question here. Why might you not respond to a direct echo in a room while you’re alone?
Some answers we got from players:

• botting (bad!)
• spellspam
• not paying attention
• nodding off at the keyboard
• don’t know how to respond
• think it’s something that happens in the area

My only real comment on this is if you’re in the game, you should be attentive.  If someone’s tried for 15 minutes to get you to respond and you haven’t noticed, you’ve wasted that person’s 15 minutes.  We might also suspect that you’re botting.  If you genuinely aren’t interested in RPing, you can do something to signal this such as looking at <whatever> disdainfully and walking away, or thinking about going somewhere quieter and leaving.  That’s more helpful to us than ignoring RP.  I’ll be able to know for sure you didn’t miss it and now I can go on to someone else.  We decided to go with not knowing how to respond for the rest of our sort-of seminar.

If we’re unsure about whether it’s a quest prompt rather than an atmosphere message, is it okay to ping over the question channel and ask?
My suggestion is to respond to it.  If it responds to you, it’s probably not random.  We’d rather see you respond because if you’re not sure, then it’s still something strange to your character so you should react anyway.

Let’s say I am a new character, maybe not even a new player. I may not want to RP my new character with the staff if I haven’t really thought about their personality.  Maybe I’m afraid to look silly if I decide on a different personality a little later?
This wasn’t mentioned at the Q&A so much because our question was directed towards why experienced players on old characters might ignore RP cues.  Our event cues aren’t meant to grill you on your backstory.  When you created, you chose an alignment, race, and a class.  You should be able to come up with a minimal response since it doesn’t take much to wonder why something weird happened or pick up things that fall on the ground.

Let’s talk about ways to respond to strange things.
Players mentioned running away out of fear or wanting to kill any creature that appeared.  While these may seem reasonable, both of them will likely terminate any quest possibilities immediately.  If all you do is run away, we can’t tell if you’re ignoring it, missed it, or genuinely scared; it can help to yell, think, or say something if you choose this route.  It may also lead to interesting RP if you tell others about the terrifying thing you found in the woods.

We looked to other responses.
There are two primary ways that people emote to respond to things if it’s not killing or running away.  1) Emote staring/watching to see if something else happens. 2) Try to get it to do something by poking it with a stick.  Watching is okay once or twice, but it’s hard in general to RP if all you get in response to something you do is “em watches.”  If you’re talking to someone and they just “em watches you talk,” the RP is going to end pretty quickly.

We went to some concrete examples so players would have something to brainstorm around.  They are as follows:
Example 1: The Demon Sheep

A BLINDING BOLT OF PURPLE LIGHT ERUPTS FROM THE GROUND and leaves behind a small sheep in its wake.

A sheep baaaaas.

“What do you do?”

Suggestions: “Poke it with a stick,” “Kill’it. It’s clearly an abyss-spawned demon.”  We went with:

Lyseri watches a sheep.

A sheep chews on the grass as its eyes glow an evil red.

Elana edges away from a sheep.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘So watching isn’t bad, but the sheep isn’t going to do anything else. What else could you do?’

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘Watching has served a use to give you another clue about the sheep, but what can you do afterwards to learn more?’

Suggestions:
“If it just baas, I would pet it.”
“React like normal? Shield eyes from light, see sheep, scan area for more demon sheep. Prepare to run away like a bitch.”
“Clearly it just has pink-eye and needs medical attention.”
“I will let the avian pet it first… if it pulls back an intact wing, I will just watch from the sideline.”
“Possessed sheep = hit squad. Or an exorcist. Probably both.”
“Cast sleep.”
“Feed it.”
“I would LOOK at the sheep, and carefully read the description, to make sure its eyes are not glowing red, or purple, like the bolt it came out of… etc…”

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘These are all really good suggestions.’

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘Let’s pick one and do it.’

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘The point is to do something that’s going to elicit action instead of just watching it chew more grass.’

We fed it a blood spring.

You utter the words, ‘blood spring’.
A fountain of blood flows from the ground.

Iskvarren makes a fountain of blood near a sheep, then edges away quickly.

A sheep lifts its head, sniffs at a fountain of blood, and moves over to drink deeply.

As a sheep drinks it begins to grow and its fleece begins to darken to a rusty red color.

Now what?  Responses: “RUN!” “Claim it.” “Make it sleep!”  We went ahead and tried to put it to sleep, but it attacked and got stunned.

Katja reaches out to get some wool off the demon sheep.

Elana gathers some wool off the sleeping sheep.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘What do you want to do with our immobilized sheep now that we have a specimen from it?’

Suggestions: claim it, kill it, get a necromancer to send it back to the abyss, lock it up and teach it to eat your enemies, raise it as a zombie.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘Let’s say we herd it somewhere to teach it to later feast upon our enemies.’

Lyseri purges a sheep.

What we’ve done is interacted with the strange thing and retrieved something that can help us investigate it further.  Maybe you want to take that nice piece of wool to the Tower of the Arcane and ask one of the mages about its magical properties.  On RP night, you might go “I got this off of a demon sheep, what can you tell me about it?”

Example 2: Falling Shingles

People were much better at coming up with ideas now.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘What if you’re walking along a nice street in Seria one day and suddenly a bunch of shingles fall off the roof and almost hit you?’

With a soft rattle, the shingles on a nearby building slide off the roof and land with a loud *crash* at your feet!

 Rythe looks up at the roof to see if anyone is there.

Zihin emits a loud hiss as he shuffles hastily to the side in an attempt to avoid the falling shingles.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘Okay. Let’s say you jump back and look up to see why the shingles are falling off at you.’

 A dark figure is momentarily backlit by one of the moons before a cloud blocks the light.

 Zihin says in common, in a low-pitched gravelly voice, speaking in a slow and deliberate manner, ‘Levitate myself and the mammoth and pursue said figure.’

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘Could you yell at him?’

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘If you couldn’t levitate?’

Zihin thinks in common ‘Hey, you…stop…or I’ll disrupt the energy around your face.’

 Rythe yells in common, in a low, calm voice, ‘You there what business do you have on that roof?’

The figure jumps to another roof and small piece of paper falls from its pocket, drifting down to the street below as the figure vanishes deeper into the city.

At this point, everyone went and picked up the paper.

Rythe picks up the paper and begins inspecting it.

Nozeraak quickly glides forward, using his small wings for thrust. He deftly snatches the paper.

Though torn and worn, the sigil of Seria’s armor shop is clearly visible on a corner of the paper.

So now you have another clue and something else you can go investigate.  If we’re running the plot right then, you can investigate right then.  If we don’t want to puppet further, we’ll say “You can investigate more on RP night.”‘  You could go to the armor shop now, and maybe it’s mysteriously closed and we say come back on RP night, or maybe we puppet the mob for you to ask questions then.  Either way, you have a lead to investigate.  We usually use non-RP nights to give you leads, then RP nights for you to explore yourself.  You can choose not to pursue a lead, but we might give it 2-3 tries before deciding you really don’t care and then go on to someone else.

Example 3: Injured Bird

You’re in Center of Seria.  A rainbow-colored bird crashes on the ground.

A bright multi-colored bird flops around squawking, one of its wings dragging uselessly behind it.

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘What can you do?’

Suggestions:
Take it to the temple to have it healed.
See if it’s related to an avian you know.
Stare and poke it with a stick.
Eat it.
Take it and try to sell it.

Lyseri says in common, in light tones, ‘I do want to say that staring is generally less useful than other available options.  If it’s squawking around and injured and you stare, it’s probably just going to keep squawking around injured.’

Rythe says in common, in a low, calm voice, ‘Think this example would vary greatly depending on the character. good characters would try to get it aid, evil characters may just watch it struggle til it dies.’

You say to Rythe in common, in a listless drawl, ‘Even if you’re evil, you can sell it for gold.’

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘Let’s try Elana’s scenario.  She takes it to Marissa, who heals it and says it’s weird that this bird is in Alandis, because it’s from Haphen.’

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘What could you do?’

Suggestions:
Take it to Haphen, or chain it up in the throne room.
Find a ‘bird’ person to find out why the bird could possibly be in Seria.
See if there’s more of them around the area, maybe there’s a sudden migration or something.

I’d investigate about their origin, and possible reason for why it would be there. Then it be off to geta raft for haphen to find out more.
Tie a necklace to it, release and monitor through locate item spells.

You say in common, in a listless drawl, ‘Let’s name some people you might ask about birds or migration or whatever.’

Suggestions:
Anyone who might have knowledge of rare or strange birds. probably start at arcane tower, or find a known ranger or some such.
Avian pigeonkeeper atop the apartments.
Pet store.
Library.

This is what we mean when we’ll adapt to how you decide to RP. This could end lots of ways. You can follow up on any of those paths to find out more information.  Now back to questions:

Tell us about rewards for participating in plots.
It really depends on the plot.  The little ones will give you rpool/level and possibly a small restrung item.  Sometimes we’ve given away bags with good reduction on them for participating in a small plot.  For bigger plots we give out nice equipment and things like that.  If we give you 2 months to do something, you’ll get very nice rewards.  A long plot will reward you along the way because they’re frameworks for lots of miniplots, so the more you participate, the more rewards you get.

How do the rewards from long plots compare to items from mobs?
We don’t give you things you can get off of mobs, but we often provide things that you can’t get in the game.  The things we hand out aren’t overpowered based on item standards but they’re often of comparable niceness to gear from supermobs.  For winter quest, we gave out fire damage type weapons that had a chance to increase fire vuln per hit. Most of them don’t exist in other forms in the game.

Are players permitted to come up with plots that we could ask for imm assistance on? Or should we leave all those up to you?
We encourage you to run your own plots and adventures.  Of course, be sensible.  Since you’re making up a premise, you shouldn’t use a plot to handwave a huge advantage or a huge penalty. For example, you wouldn’t run a plot where mobs are poisoned and they point fingers at the enemy clan.  And as always, if you like running plots, we encourage you to join RP Team.

Are there exceptions to this? For example… if I have a plot idea with someone else? Or is this even allowed?
It doesn’t matter how many people are involved in a plot.  Mostly be sensible.  We won’t let you run a plot that ends up with you finding an imaginary super god weapon.  You can try to find it and change the ending, but we’re not going to create one and give it to you.  Don’t handwave a magic powder that resolves the current metaplot.  If you’d like to run your own plots, see the second-to-last paragraph in this.  You can run quests without being RP team.  There are limits on what you can do with them, but you don’t need mobs puppetted or big echos for a lot of things.

Would the number of people involved with a custom plot affect whether we might get help?
Any number of people can participate.  One person can do something for himself.  If you want to draw attention to it, announce it and we’ll post it on the website.  It can be IC or it can be OOC.  Part of what RP night is for is if you need things puppetted for a little quest, you can ask us to do that, too.  We won’t do things that are like “I wore this cursed necklace and I want a handwavy spell to get it removed,” but we will provide help if you’re searching for why this glowy star you found fell out of the sky.

Something that has bothered me slightly, for a LONG time.  when trying to find armor items, it is sometimes difficult to find an item for a specific slot, cause nothing really says where it goes.
Most things you can guess. A hat goes on the head, a robe goes on body or torso. If it’s on a mob, you can look and see where it’s on the mob.  If you see a mob wearing a piece of equipment where it shouldn’t, tell us so we can fix it.  Some items are slotted a bit badly, such as cloaks (half on neck, half on body), and robes (half on body, half on torso).  Maybe we’ll revisit a shop peruse command.

I’m still curious about potential ideas for visardi revamping. The all languages is very useful for RP, but everyone has some sort of attack thing.
We haven’t gotten to visardi.  If you like, you can start a brainstorming thread for visardi racials like how there’s a taurlok one.  It’s better than everyone showing up and nobody having ideas.

Thanks to everyone for coming.  Lyseri will hand out the door prizes when she remembers.  Hopefully you found this Q&A session helpful!

We will be having an OOC Question & Answer session on Thursday, May 3rd at 8:30 PM EST (7:30 PM CST). Our focus this time will be on IC Quests; in particular, we will discuss participation and investigation. If you’re interested in being involved in anything from metaplots to smaller RP events hosted by staff/RP Team, come and join the discussion.

Afterwards, players will be able to ask the staff general questions about game directions, rules, concerns, and suggestions for improving the game in general. Questions should be relevant to the average player, not about individuals or private matters. The only rules are to be civil to the staff and players at the event. The Q&A will last around an hour, but we can go longer if there is interest.

Hope to see everyone there!

A list of older building updates. Most recent updates are available in game in HELP BUILDING UPDATES.
01.14.2012 – Added QUIT override in CoS
01.14.2012 – Removed glow from battlefield waraxes
01.17.2012 – Fixed no passdoor on Rhyodin ghosts
01.20.2012 – Updated HELP MALEVOLENCE to indicate its evil-only use
01.20.2012 – Updated HELP RIGOR MORTIS, ETHEREAL WEB, ENTANGLE, PARALYZE
01.20.2012 – Updated HELP LEVITATE
01.23.2012 – Updated some programs in Barbarian Encampment
01.23.2012 – Fixed a proper long in Belverin
01.25.2012 – Updated HELP RELIGIONS
01.25.2012 – Swapped “mottled” for “spotted” in races
01.29.2012 – Fixed some EQ in Graveyard and in Jotunheim
02.04.2012 – Revised HELP SHORT
02.12.2012 – Updated HELP HUMAN
02.14.2012 – Cleaned up progs in Rhyodin so the underground area is accessible to all
02.14.2012 – Removed all the random, nonsensical no_recall rooms in the game
03.01.2012 – Set some interp progs to block death
03.01.2012 – Blocked entry into the Ishon by ghosts
03.02.2012 – Added new potion to Dagahasi Colony
03.11.2012 – Updated many portals and prog triggers in game for new code
03.11.2012 – Added HELP TENACITY
03.11.2012 – Added HELP AURASPEAR
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP DRAG PUSH
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP FLEE and HELP WORD OF RECALL
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP ENCHANT
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP RECALL
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP NEWBIES
03.11.2012 – Enabled REINFORCE command
03.11.2012 – Updated supermob eq from Ki Baltan, Ghart Nhuz, quests, and religion items
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP SIRIYU and HELP HUMAN
03.11.2012 – Updated HELP MUDSEX
03.11.2012 – Updated all practice mobs in game to use new guild system
03.14.2012 – Updated HELP CLANPOWER
03.16.2012 – Updated HELP ENCHANT SPELL
03.19.2012 – Updated HELP ACCENT
03.19.2012 – Updated HELP GATE ROAM “ASTRAL WALK” “SUMMON VOID” PORTAL NEXUS
03.19.2012 – Added HELP EXPOSED and HELP TENDER
03.20.2012 – Updated HELP MUG
03.20.2012 – Updated HELP SIRIYU
03.21.2012 – Added a bird nest into CotG
03.21.2012 – Added some more ruins of the old temple into Tremont Street
03.22.2012 – Updated HELP DEMISE
03.25.2012 – Updated HELP AMNESIA
03.25.2012 – Added HELP SCENT TRAIL
03.25.2012 – Updated HELP CLAN LEADERSHIP
03.25.2012 – Added HELP NEW CLAN APPLICATION
03.26.2012 – Updated HELP CLAN ALTS
03.26.2012 – Updated HELP OOC
03.26.2012 – Updated HELP MULTICHAR
03.25.2012 – Updated HELP ECHO to include SECHO
03.26.2012 – Added HELP TERRITORIES

Edit: Changes for 4/30/2012 and 5/04/2012 added at the bottom.

New Features:
-added DESCRIBE command
-added dagahasi fiendsblight racial (auto abyssal type attack, chance of abyssal vuln and low curse)
-changed curse so that it reduces the divine favor of a target
-made any named affect on objects add/remove from a character’s affect list
-added code to log creation time and then return it with a command (“creation”)
-added an average rolls option in chargen

Skill Changes:
-changed favor calculation to check self/nonself, beneficial/harmful communes and strength of curse
-changed curse and soul taint to have a modifier for strength of curse
-made curse and bless no longer removable with dispel magic/cancellation
-cleaned up some remove curse stuff for soul taint and curse since they’re copies
-capped damage to mobs with bow and arrow to either 25% or 1500 HP, whichever is lower
-tweaked searing/freezing blade damage to be more reasonable
-made steal/slip show ‘someone’ instead of short desc on failure if thief isn’t visible
-changed some durations in magic spells so they aren’t lasting next to nothing at low level
-allowed specific track only for known smells
-changed track to memorize visible people’s smells in room if used without argument
-added a wait timer to track in room
-made it impossible to ensorcel an item above character level
-set identify to tell someone if the level on a magical item is too high for them to ensorcel
-changed recognize to only forget 1 name when used on PCs
-set skill to affect efficacy of spells on wands, scrolls, staves, and scribe
-added a range for character mana after mana share
-increased wild swing’s ability to hit an unseen target

General Changes:
-added a check in plague spread so we don’t have negative level plague
-removed spell_affect affect since it didn’t work
-changed a couple of ‘ to double quotes in saving in case we want apostrophes later
-added code to reset dagahasi’s pbite skill
-moved clan revenue gain to once per IC day
-changed display for clan revenue gold/silver
-changed some targeting of stuff like look/look in to room first instead of inventory
-cleaned up ‘area’ list
-cleaned up the religion initiation/ordain/excom to not use skills
-changed excomm so HPs can’t have grudge wars
-allowed priests to excommunicate all but high priests
-made range of rolls in chargen smaller
-moved ‘new’ question in chargen to before race/class
-set hard races/classes to not show up as chargen options to newbies
-cleaned up the class descriptions and race option displays in chargen
-sorted out class choices in chargen by mage, hybrid, or melee
-reclassified classes based on CLS flags
-enabled =! to repeat last executed command

Mob Changes:
-increased (made worse) mob AC
-made mob daze inactivate specs
-added some position checks to spec janitor
-renamed stop_hunting() to idle_hunting() to reduce confusion

Building Changes:
-allowed removing shop item types in OLC
-changed OLC points so vulns don’t give as many points back
-added some code to remove redundant room lighting flags
-changed teal skin color to brown
-made addapply, prog_addapply, and oedit_addapply take a value for modifier for all apply types
-added ‘bonus effect’ skill as a default in case of hard-to-name applies
-rearranged how some values show up in oedit
-added prog checks for str, int, wis, dex, con, and luck

Bug Fixes:
-fixed bug that caused NPC ghosts to use movement
-fixed bug that prevented Druid/Necro summons from attacking
-fixed berserk affect stacking bug
-fix to scent trail to not detect imms at all
-fixed prog/imm addapply equipping bug for adding affect to char
-fixed delapply effect removal bug for unidentified objects
-fixes to affect_check for several affect/resist checks
-fix to conditions for magical identify setting affects
-fixed a bug in prog_addapply due to ability to set mod on all types
-fixed a bug causing mobs not to remove players from last_fought when not directly targeted
-fix to demise effect for get_ooc_char_world
-added log_string bug reporting for broken act() calls to make bug fixing easier

Message Changes/Typo Fixes:
-changed the text for shop profits in OLC to be clearer
-changed the keywords on mail that has been copied
-made player attack wiznet red
-fixed an imm secho message
-changed noracial messages so it covers all automatic racial attacks
-changed the messages for chain lightning
-fixed a typo in corpses
-cleaned up some messages in ordain/initiate/excom

Immortal Stuff:
-made permanent, god-level spell affects immune to dispelling
-made it so permanent, non-god-level affects on characters don’t save
-changed targeting order of things like string and clone
-added a login warning for players logging back on in RotD
-changed immortal info command to show date in a different format
-made it impossible to describe gods

r980

Changes for 4/30/2012:

Bug Fixes:
-fix to flurry/scald for stacking effects bug
-fix to boatman spec due to check on wait/daze
-set movement to not lag unswitched npcs

Building Changes:
-set OLC to automatically flag spears and polearms as two-handed
-changed hex back to original calculation now that we have obj modifiers
-upped scavengers to level 40 obj as limit
-added form plant for plant-type NPCs

General Changes:
-pulled a lot of places where wizmorted imms were getting affected by things
-properly set ic_hidden imms to be immune to spells unless by another imm
-set storm to check saves against air instead of random
-added FORM_PLANT to slew of checks for aid, diagnose, herb, purse, shrunken head, etc
-made blindness, gouge, dirt kick, and blacklight require target to have eyes
-made trip require target to have legs
-moved NPC daze/wait decrement to violence_update

r989

Update 05/04/2012 for bugfixes:

General Changes:
-streamlined wanted list to find victim by pnum instead of short desc
-set pardon and wanted to send out mail to victim and clan
-colored some clan mail headers
-added in/lb to height/weight display in score

Bug Fixes:
-fixed a bug so important effects like death get saved
-fixed rename so a char’s position isn’t set to standing
-fixed bug that was preventing blackjack/sleep working on mobs
-fixed messages in addlag

Immortal Stuff:
-added ‘undaze’ command for imms to clear wait/daze states

Building Changes:
-added lines to copy missing parts from race file for mobs
-removed code to autoset stuff for plant race mobs

r996

Don’t run away because the title says “quests.”  This is a post that is relevant to everyone.

When I use the word “quest,” I refer to any sort of IC RP that might be a thread for further investigation and development. I understand that this is an extremely vague definition. This can be an end-of-the-world metaplot with overarching effects. This can be you and some friends investigating the taste of roasted mantis egg. This blog post is intended to help players, clan leaders, RP Team, and staff members alike with holding RP events that others want to and can participate in.

I’ve organized this post into questions to ask during the course of your event and examples of how things can go wrong. When I use the word “host,” I refer to the person running, leading, or guiding the event. When I use the word “player,” I refer to the person trying to solve the event. When I use the word “character,” I refer to the persona faced with the IC situation you’ve placed them in. IC is IC and I’m not arguing that you should avoid IC events and consequences based on OOC. However, it’s important to keep OOC considerations in mind because angry players will find a way not to participate even if their character is interested. This post is more about how not to confuse and enrage players than characters.

WHAT is your event?
This is the idea and progression of your event from beginning to end. Start off with a basic storyline and translate it into an event or prompt that causes players to investigate. Each followup event gives players options for how to act next until they reach the resolution. There should be something for characters to do when they are participating. RP should not be scripted down to the details; you have an idea that you start up and then allow others to respond the way they see fit. You can come up with ideas for each step, but the downside of this approach is you are less flexible if players decide to do something you did not anticipate. You can improvise as you go, but then you must be able to direct players toward a reasonable resolution while making it seem as if the decisions they make are natural.

Lack of Direction
A common mistake is to run an event purely for shits and giggles. This may be echoing a sound coming from nearby without any intention of revealing the source if players investigate. It may also be to have something traumatic happen to your character with no intention of letting other players help if your character acts upset or depressed. Prompting other players to do something and then refusing to let them do something discourages them from trying next time. While the host might be having fun watching other people be confused or giving them attention, it isn’t always fun for the players involved to come up fruitless. You should have an idea of what to do next if players see your hints and then decide to look into it. If you do not intend to develop a line of investigation further, it is less frustrating to openly echo or say that there is nothing more; this can be to echo that a sound stops or your character saying they do not need to be looked after.

WHO is your event for, and WHY might they participate?
Consider your target audience. Are you running a serious plot that everyone should want to participate in? Are you starting a line of inquiry for some light RP between your character and his/her friends? All characters have different motivations, but for anyone to willingly participate in your quest, you should give them a reason to participate beyond the expectation for rewardpool. You can motivate them with fear, duty, curiosity, or an expectation for a reward. The type of motivation for participation should mesh with the type of characters you expect to respond and how hard it will be to participate. It would be strange to try and motivate an evil-aligned group out of duty to protect the weak. It would be improper to expect players to kill multiple hard mobs for no reward.  In general, rewards are a better motivation than punishment.

Forcing Participation
Be careful when you are forcing participation.  While you may want to give players the choice whether to participate, you do not want them to be able to be immune to any bad event simply by opting out. Whether and how you should force participation depends on several factors as follows:

1. How much does the character deserve the consequences?  If a character has fallen into the situation because of prior actions, it’s more acceptable to pressure them with consequences.  Your character is perfectly fine to threaten another with death if that character has offended in some way. IC actions have consequences, but it’s one thing to threaten someone because of something they did and another to come out of the ether scaring innocent characters with DO THIS OR DIE. Being malicious towards innocent characters solely to show off how badass you are becomes irritating for the players of those characters very quickly.
2. How bad are the consequences? It’s often fine to have something happen to someone innocent without giving them a choice.  An example of this might be a temporary effect such as misplacing an item or hearing voices, provided the victim has a plausible way to get out of it. However, it would be inappropriate to strip someone’s ability to speak and cast spells or saddle one character with all of the blame for world destruction without any prior roleplay.
3. How easy is it to resolve the situation? If a character is going to be doing many difficult tasks, it’s best if he chooses to do them of his own volition. Forcing people to jump through hoops can be extremely discouraging in terms of quests, especially if they feel they did not deserve to be in the situation and have no other way out.  Offering hints to alleviate the difficulties of the situation helps here.
4. How nice are the rewards for finishing? The nicer the reward at the end, the more acceptable it is to push a character into doing something, especially if it is difficult. It would be poor etiquette to force characters to perform unpleasant tasks with no reward for their troubles at the end.

False Rewards
This is a reward that is revealed to be less than promised and is especially bad if combined with difficult tasks in order to reach the reward. It can occur if the host wants participants to jump through flaming hoops so he can finish with a “Haha, I tricked you!” It can also occur if an IC reward is promised that participants OOCly know they cannot have. This is not to say that disappointing rewards are always bad. If a character did not have to perform difficult tasks to reach the end, it is perfectly acceptable to reveal a reward to be less than imagined. However, if you are holding a competition in which characters are meant to PK each other to compete for a rank, it would be more than discouraging to walk off with “Haha, I tricked you!”

HOW do players participate and reach the next step?
This goes with event progression. Characters should be able to have an IC idea of how to proceed. You can accomplish this by giving them overt instructions (“Go talk to this man about that.”), but it can be more rewarding to give them hints and let them figure out what to do (“I can’t find it ever since I got back from that man’s place”). You should also be able to move the event forward if everyone is stuck either by giving more hints or by making a suggestion yourself, whichever is appropriate for the situation. Of course, this means that you need to know what the next step is. Sometimes, it is fine to come up with the next step as you get to it, but you should know where you want characters to ultimately finish.

Red Herrings
Sometimes in the interest of storytelling, you’ll throw out little details that players think are significant. You have several ways to proceed from here. If that line of investigation would lead them farther away from the end goal, it may be better to debunk it (“That happens all the time in my line of business. I don’t think it is important.”). If your plot is more open, however, you may consider incorporating it into your event. If players think that a small detail like a wavy red ribbon is important, maybe it is a symbol for an organization. I prefer a more fluid type of storytelling, but it’s easier to lose sight of the goal this way.

Movie Time
RP is interactive. You should have something for players to do in response, and some way to respond to their actions. Beware of putting on plays where you are the only one being dramatic or sending out echoes for people to watch. If there is nothing for players to do, they will lose interest. Likewise, be responsive to what players do. If you ignore people’s attempts to help, don’t be surprised if they don’t try again next time. Trying to RP with you shouldn’t be like uselessly yelling at a character in a movie.

WHEN and WHERE are players supposed to participate?
This is a logistics problem. Obviously, if you’re hosting an event, you have to be online at the same time as the players who participate. If you are all online, characters need to be free to participate and they need to know where to go in game to participate. Most of the RP that occurs in game is spontaneous and unannounced, and if you can do it this way, you should. In the case of one-on-one RP where you are frequently online and your partner is frequently online, it’s not hard to meet up. Otherwise, it can be easier to plan or announce the time of the event. It is all right to OOCly announce RP events through mudmail without an explanation of IC details (if you schedule them for a wide audience, we can add them to the website calendar for more exposure). You may also consider scheduling times through mudmail or tells. Note that this is not a suggestion to script every detail of the RP at hand, just a tip to help coordinate timing.

“Get back to me with when is good for you.”
We notice that generally, mail to all is not a good means of communication for any event, be it recruitment or tasks. The result is usually something like bystander effect, where because everyone is addressed, nobody thinks it is his or her responsibility to respond. Some suggestions for increasing response rate are to ask players directly through mudmail/tells, or to come up with a few times that are good for you and have participants choose. Long-running events can also be advertised through regular RP if you talk about what has happened or what you think needs to be done.

Interrupting RP
It is not always wrong to interrupt people’s RP to start your own.  However, there are many ways for this to become irritating, which discourages people from participating in whatever you are starting up. If a group is investigating a serious murder and your character barges in to weep over breaking up with her boyfriend, it’s highly likely that you will be viewed with annoyance even if and especially if those characters are obligated to be kind to you. When deciding whether to interrupt, watch if players are receptive to your quest prompts first.

Certainly there is more that can be said about what makes an event successful or not successful.  I’ve been on both ends of both kinds of events, and much of the whole experience is the experience.  If you’ve read this far, hopefully you picked up some ideas for how to start events, whether they are large or small.  None of these tips are absolute, as almost every single one can be ignored in certain situations. If you feel there is another subject I should have included, leave a message and I’ll consider it.

If you’re interested in joining RP team to officially run quests, you should check out the application since Lyseri is always eager for more good RP team members.  If you’ve ever wanted to become a part of staff, it’s a good place to start since you’ll be able to practice necessary skills and show us your dedication.

Until next time, happy questing.

-vibrant signs are posted throughout major routes and Seria-

Good people,

A time has been set for Kalden Ashwor’s tournament! It will take place on the Day of Getz, 5th in the month of Zahi! All who wish to come ought to meet on the Eastern road, just outside the gates of Seria! Be sure to have an idea of
your team, so time can be saved! Be sure to come prepared to battle, and prepared to win!

[OOC] This will be held Saturday, April 21st at 6PM EST. Time may be altered to some extent, if need be. Hope to see you there!

A few new convenient features, bug fixes and changes to a few skills among other things.

New Features:
-added size in identify/read history spells
-added [Greeted] flag for newbies/newbie helpers

General Changes:
-converted all spears and polearms to 2 handed
-capped influence points to 30000 because of integer limit
-made clans automatically lose a territories with negative revenue if they have no money
-made clans not gain occupational influence while in debt
-disallowed influence for hidden, camo, invis, disguised, dead, masked, and animorphed chars
-moved influence depreciation to midnight
-changed the frequency for clan pay/revenue

Skill Changes:
-made flying disable wilderness/street fighting abilities
-made bleeding render cover ineffective
-set a short wait on cover for winded so it’s not automatic flee and cover one room away
-set a movement mod for cover like backtrack

Mob Changes:
-made mobs that can see a target w/ scan ignore covered for tracking
-tweaked a condition in visibility for aggression
-streamlined so aggressive mobs don’t try to see w/in 3 rooms unless victim is covered
-made mobs flagged cover/backtrack be protected from tracking
-changed long desc showing to check mob instead of index

Bug Fixes:
-fixed bug that would inappropriately remove AC from non-armor objects when unequipped
-blocked charmies from murdering through damage
-fixed occupation crash due to not checking for null clan
-fixed zero length string warning and memory issue in liminfo
-disabled scent trail for dead victims and dead canidae
-fixed a bug allowing scent trail to detect IC hidden imm chars
-fixed a bug that stripped item effects off when spell affect was removed
-fix to the identify flag on loadup
-fixed bug that saved incomplete chars with multiple racial skills when creation resumed
-fixed a bug in mug

Message Changes:
-changed disconnect messages to show who was disconnected if available
-changed are you new message

Building Changes:
-changed prog_influence to take ‘current’ as argument for which territory
-cleaned out some no longer needed setting during loadup
-reversed direction of door in integer for trig_greet

version r949

I’d like to take a moment to point out little things that players either do not know or falsely believe.  Some of them, such as the issue of whether saves help you cast better, have already been discussed, so I won’t be going further into those explanations.  Read on, and maybe you’ll find something helpful.

1) Misconception: Hitroll or damroll bonus is the most important factor for determining whether to use a weapon.
The help files clearly state that hitroll affects a character’s ability to land hits and damroll affects a weapon’s damage, and both numbers are conveniently visible in SCORE.  However, these numbers only play a small part in determining how much damage is dealt.  I won’t go into all of the specifics, but here are a few things to consider that are more important than hitroll or damroll:

• Average Damage: Average damage is one of the primary factors affecting weapon damage.  It is a hidden number that is determined by the weapon’s dice values, which are dictated by building standards depending on the level of the weapon, the type of weapon, and whether the weapon is two-handed.  Using a highly-enchanted dagger instead of an unenchanted axe can have the same effect as losing 30 damroll, provided your character is skilled in both weapons.  While you cannot see the average damage value for a weapon, you can use COMPARE to figure out which of your weapons is able to deal more damage on average.
• Attack Type: This is the attack noun associated with a weapon, such as “slash,” “freezing bite,” or “thwack.”  A weapon will deal more damage against enemies that are vulnerable to its attack type (e.g. freezing bite sword against a visardi, which is vulnerable to ice), and less damage to an enemy that resists its attack type (e.g. freezing bite sword against a felis, which is resistant to ice).  A resistance or vulnerability can easily make one weapon better to use than another.
• Other Weapon Skills: The ability to use certain skills with one weapon but not another should contribute to whether you want to use that weapon or not.  For example, even though whips are generally stronger than daggers, thieves prefer to use daggers for backstab, circlestab, and shadow attack.
• Bonus Effects: These include the enrage, chill, electrify, and vampiric effects as well as poison and toxin, which may provide small damage bonuses in combat or effects such as slow and blindness.  You may want to use a weapon for its bonus effect, such as for slowing regeneration by poisoning an enemy.

If in doubt, make good use of the HELP DAMAGE MESSAGES helpfile. The absolute modifiers will give a hint as to how much damage you are truly dealing with a weapon against a certain enemy.  Since all enemies have different resistances, keep in mind that one weapon may be better to use against one opponent and worse against another.  There are few absolute “best” weapons.

2) Misconception: The enrage, chill, and electrify effects change the element type of a weapon.
This is the belief that a weapon that shows the message “<victim> is struck by lightning from <weapon>” is a lightning-element weapon, and a weapon that shows the message “<victim> is burned by <weapon>” is a fire-element weapon.  These are merely bonuses that add a little additional damage and may cause an effect such as blind or stun.  A weapon’s attack type is still primarily determined by the hit message.  For example:

Your cataclysmic divine power scrapes a slinking red fox!
a slinking red fox is burned by a shining ivory rapier.
a slinking red fox is struck by lightning from a shining ivory rapier.
A slinking red fox has a few scratches.

The rapier is a divine-type weapon because its attack noun is “divine power”.  It has bonus lightning and fire effects, but it is not a lightning- or fire-type weapon.  Most of your damage with this weapon would be divine.

3) Misconception: Using a weapon with lightning makes the eel chain lightning more often.
It doesn’t.  The reason people say “Don’t use a lightning weapon” is because the eel is immune to lightning and you’d be wasting your efforts.

4) Little-Known: STARE
Afraid of thieves?  STARE will alert you to any movement in the direction you are staring provided you can see the moving character.  Since most thieves will be moving around visibly, you can often be alerted as to when one has sneaked into your room.

5) Little-Known: !
CoM will repeat the previous command you entered if you enter an exclamation point.  Some clients already support this, but you can make use of the in-game command if yours does not.

6) Little-Known: DISPLAY/CLEAR/=
These are fairly new additions that I included since many players are surprised we have them.  Commands such as CAST or KICK have a small delay, and if you enter too many of them at once, they get put into a queue to be executed one by one.  You can use DISPLAY to show a list of your queued commands and CLEAR or ` (below the tilde) to empty the queue.  If you have too many spells or kicks queued during combat and need to flee, you can hit ` and FLEE without having to wait out all of those commands to your death.  Another recent command is = , which adds a command to the front of your queue.  If you have many spells queued and are trying to RP with someone, you can simply use “=say WHATEVER” to talk to that person instead of having to wait out all of the spells.

7) Little-Known: SPLIT
SPLIT <SILVER> <GOLD> allows you to split a certain amount of money among your group.  For example, SPLIT 0 100 will split 100 gold between the present members of your group.

8) Strangely Little-Known: MEMORIZE #*SPELL
I thought every player who had ever played a mage knew about this one, but a couple of people said they discovered this only recently.  It’s possible to memorize more than one spell at once.  MEMORIZE 50*SHIELD will memorize 50 shield spells.

9) Little-Known: Targeting in the case of multiple objects or characters
This is something else I thought was well-known.  If you have multiple objects that respond to SHIELD on the ground, you can get the first one with GET SHIELD, the second one with GET 2.SHIELD, the third one with GET 3.SHIELD, and so on.  If you have multiple characters in the room that respond to the same keyword, you can KILL HUMAN, KILL 2.HUMAN, or KILL 3.HUMAN.  In the case of items, it may be necessary to turn off COMBINE so you can see each item separately instead of in the stack.

Corollary: One effect of this sort of targeting is the ability to use “a” as a general keyword for mobs and unintroduced characters.  Since almost all mobs as well as unintroduced characters have “a” as part of their short description (e.g. a tall and skinny human man, a red-headed johgo cook), they can all be targeted using “a” as a keyword.  This allows you to use “l a” as a shortcut to look at newly-arrived characters or CAST SPELL A, CAST SPELL 2.A, CAST SPELL 3.A as a fast leveling trick.  However, be warned that this may unintentionally hit players if they happen to walk into the room right as you are attacking a mob with “kill a”.

10) Little-Known: Doubly-trapped doors
TRAPSET can set 4 types of traps, two of which are two-sided and two of which are one-sided.  It’s possible to trap a door with two kinds of traps if you set a one-sided trap on one side and a two-sided trap on the other side.  For example, you can sneak into a room, trapset a door with needle (one-sided), then sneak out and trapset it with explosion (two-sided).  Anyone who opens the door from the other side will be hit by both needle and explosion trap.

Hopefully you found something to help your gameplay.  If you have other little thoughts that would be worth recommending to players, feel free to send me a message