Barren Realms MUD

Welcome to 2005!



Since the haven of Barren Realms MUD was established, shortly over ten years ago, the sands of time have shifted to prove it…well, a lot more barren than it was. The gods, with their ever-watchful eyes, have learned that only the most hardy, clever and resourceful can survive with limited resources to make their community thrive as best they can. And thrive it does: the friendships, romances, adventures and support they provide each other is evident from conversations overheard in taverns and the square of Calathar, as well as seen in the local newspapers and public fora.

The gods, as much as any non-corporeal beings can, met to discuss this predicament. How to honor those who stuck through the thin times and attract new blood to worship them at the same time? The answers were not clear, but some decisions had to be made despite the fact that though immortal, the gods could not see the future. They had to, much like the mortals and heroes, decide with their hearts.



So, as your leader, I pronounce 2005 the “year of shifting sands.”



What does this mean for you in your daily MUD life?



· Kiri has a plan to reward all players who are “So old no one knows when they first entered the Realms” with special veteran prizes, as well as different prizes for those who have spent less, but yet significant, time in the Realms.



· Heroes who wish to run quests will now be rewarded with stars for quests successfully run with more than 8 participants (or 5, if none of them are hero alts.)



· Anyone who submits an article to the newsletter about any mud topic and has it published will receive a proportional to their level slight stat raise.



· The typo monthly quest is being resurrected. He who gets the most reported typos in one month gets a 500/500/500 stat raise. Go explore, find those typos!



· Expect, in the next couple of months, to see Barren Realms advertising. Hopefully you will see new players, so when you do – greet them! Say hello! They are your friends and neighbors to be!



· Anyone who brings in new players (actual real players, not alts or bots) will have it be considered in their chances to immortal. Mortals who do it will be loved and adored and treated like Adonis.



· Kiri hereby vows to run 12 potion quests, one every month this year. These will not be T-Games but quests anyone can play, probably on Friday nights. So join in and try to win as many potions as you can!



· If you want to join in the fun of promoting us, contact Kiri to ask how. Right now I need as many links to mud-related and game-related sites I can list us in as possible. In 2-3 months (whenever I get a job – cough cough – sorry for the reality there) I will start once again paying for advertising. But for now, it has to be free.



· Have any ideas on how to attract new players or do fun things for the old? Write it to me at the newsletter! Just hit reply!



Now back to your regularly scheduled newsletter.



IDEAS:



Tea: make mobs agressive according to the room they are in. For example, bees would attack you outside the hive but not inside as they accept your presence...



Xer: To have a Demons Donation - mabey a guardian teleports you there like the Revenant ppl...



Xer: To have Demon Shop - same as above for getting there... unless ppl can think of better ideas



Xer: can you make some items instead of nodrop, can they be 'Nodrop under lv30' so u can drop them at lv30, or something...



Kiri – this is interesting, but I would suggest it in addition to, not instead of, current nodrop stuff.



Tea: if this is not already the case, have new poses every 5 levels or so... it would be interesting, at least...



Solkanar: when sleeping make prac show your available spells and how much you have practised them



Birdseye: peek should either not work when drunk, or others should be able to see the attempt



Birdseye: make tanned items a little better so the skill is useful... or make avian-wearable eq like wing covers, talon sheaths, etc



Dismay: a new spell (for a reworked race/new race?) that increases the difficulty class of a casters spells, making it harder for mobs/players to make their spell saves against them



Xer: a new lavel above avatar - not sure about name - going up to level 500 - this also means the game is bigger, and there will be a need for areas... so loads of people can make them - probally will be declined - but just an 'idea' lol



Xer: when your mortal, stats can go up to (18), when your hero or avatar, can they be

(20) to have another advantage of being a hero?



Tea: make bless eq cast the spell bless on you at the level of the eq

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Characters that need to login:



Alar, Atlus, Avangelis, Aviar, Bliink, Blueer, Boom, Brainiac, Chilari, Daezylo, Demandred, Dimmesdale, Elfman, Elwood, Felix, Freespace, Gallite, Gandhi, Gowild, Griz, Hack, Hapoom, Ironman, Irulan, Jag, Juggernaut, Jundao, Kade, Karoo, Kendall, Kenoi, Klez, Laike, Logain, Lucian, Madyson, Maelstrom, Misterman, Moopah, Nauseous, Neoneck, Nightwalker, Okina, Ovo, Phredd, Pioneer, Pixi, Pogzor, Polka, Pyrrhuloxia, Radagahst, Rage, Ramlok, Sakari, Scavanger, Shroud, Sunman, Thrull, Torsion, Totmacher, Tsaul, Tsunamis, Ujjib, Vanillaice, VictorII, Vingar, Walker, Weare, Wyldblade, Xeddicus, Xorfl



Kiri’s WWW of URLs:



From Amystery, The Tao of Backup



http://www.taobackup.com/



The Don Martin MAD dictionary. This is hilarious



http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/ ... tical.html





Responses by Disaster



Havoc: druids should have a spell called enhanced healing which makes the affected char heal more and faster per tick
-i like it, but druids already have far too many in-guild spells. maybe if it counted as an oog spell it wouldn't impact on balance too much, and possibly if it was castable on the caster only not on others?

Havoc: elves or illithids should have a spell called enhanced revive or mana which restores more mp per tick -maybe, but i'm not as much of a fan of this as of the healing version for druids. anything that enhances mana regen without some serious negative side-affects runs the risk of really screwing with game balance

Tea: add autopeek if you have peek, it's annoying to have to type 2 separate commands for what is essentially
the same thing. It'd be like backstab and kill having to be separate...
-peek used to work that way actually, but it was changed because it was bloody annoying that way, especially when looking at heros. i'd be in favour of a config option, autopeek, but failing that you can always just set up a poor man's version of this using aliases.

see: have chath1 chath2 chath3 etc. the higher the number the further back it goes, so you are not limited to the
last 10 things said.
-not a bad idea i suppose, but then again if you want to see 5 hours worth of conversations, you could always just make sure you play more without being AFK

Havoc: I would like to see a skill for kenders that is called Stealth, which is a combination of both hide and
sneak at the same time.
-hide is perfectly useless, why combine it with anything?

Xer: option config auto_save after fights
-why? to my knowledge the only way for information to be "lost" in such a way as to cause you to revert to your last save is for the mud to crash. thankfully, that doesn't happen much any more. if i'm wrong on this, please point it out to me, but as i see it this would be a total waste of time, and potentially worse if bringing in code like this opened up the possibility of crash-causing bugs as things involving saving of files are apt to do.

MindBender: allow people to change the colour of the damage others deal or receive
-sounds good to me. a different colour for groupdamageinflicted and groupdamagereceived for instance?

SoulReaper: make other peoples damage to mobs a different color so its easier to tell the difference - thanks
-as above

Tea: don't have the guardian as a teacher, move the demon guildmaster to opposite the druids, perhaps?
-wonderful idea. i believe it was a vnum numbering issue that was the original reason? i might be mistaken though.

Havoc: a spell for druids called feast, in which it makes you full foodwise and drinkwise both and it affects all
in the room
-no, bad idea. i don't want anyone messing with how full i am without my consent *raspberry* all group members, maybe, but definately not everyone in the room.

Solkanar: your first ever drink should make you very drunk so you realise the perils of alcohol...
-or, maybe, your first ever drink should be a gentle one, so that newbies don't get scared off by something they weren't prepared for and which makes playing much more difficult? also, (it's been a while, i forget if this already exists) maybe all the places in calathar where you can buy booze should have warning signs posted, for the benefit of newbies?

Solkanar: please remove kick for druids... Actually, has any druid ever used kick at level 25? Ever?
-well, you've gotta do something when the mana runs out....if you don't like it, don't learn it.





The subtitles won't help!!
The following are actual English subtitles used in films from Hong Kong:

I am darn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.
Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.
Gun wounds again?
Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.
A normal person wouldn't steal pituitaries.
Darn, I'll burn you into a BBQ chicken
Take my advice, or I'll spank you a lot.
Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?
This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your toenails and leave them out on the dessert floor for ants to eat.
Quiet or I'll blow your throat up.
I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out!
You daring lousy guy.
Beat him out of recognizable shape!
Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your doctor for a thorough extermination.
I have been scared silly too much lately.
I got knife scars more than the number of your leg's hair!
Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.
The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?
How can you use my intestines as a gift?
Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some but of the giant lizard person.
You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.

Tea: make mobs agressive according to the room they are in. For example, bees would attack you outside the hive but not inside as they accept your presence...
-if you're saying to change the way they currently act, i disagree. your own personal stylistic preferences shouldn't take precedence over those of the original area builder. if you're saying instead to provide a method for mobs to be selectively aggressive so that can be worked into new areas, that's different. of course, it's probably not easily done at all, and would be much much easier to use other builder tricks like stay_terrain and creating two different mobs that look the same.

Xer: To have a Demons Donation - mabey a guardian teleports you there like the Revenant ppl...
-i've always seen demons as rather antisocial creatures, i like the idea that items they donate just go poof instead.

Xer: To have Demon Shop - same as above for getting there... unless ppl can think of better ideas
-i think the RCs are probably enough when it comes to demon-only areas. if you REALLY want this of course, i'm sure you could write an area involving love_demon mobs

Xer: can you make some items instead of nodrop, can they be 'Nodrop under lv30' so u can drop them at lv30, or something...
Kiri – this is interesting, but I would suggest it in addition to, not instead of, current nodrop stuff.
-interesting. might as well go both ways, have it possible to create items that are nodrop (and by extension similar for noremove) either above a certain level or below a certain level, or for certain alignments? or races? i don't really think any of the above would be worth the effort, but hell ideas are ideas, so why not? *smile*

Tea: if this is not already the case, have new poses every 5 levels or so... it would be interesting, at least...
-i'm sure any suggestions for individual poses would be heartily welcomed, rather than just the solution that "someone" should come up with them *grin*

Solkanar: when sleeping make prac show your available spells and how much you have practised them
-this does work. UNLESS you're sleeping at a guildmaster, for example the demon guildmaster at recall.

Birdseye: peek should either not work when drunk, or others should be able to see the attempt
-i'd imagine it would be reasonable to see a message about someone peeking you always, not just when the person sticking their nose in your purse was drunk. after all, we get a message when someone looks at us, and peeking is a more intrusive version of look so it would make sense we'd notice it.

Birdseye: make tanned items a little better so the skill is useful... or make avian-wearable eq like wing covers, talon sheaths, etc
-makes sense to me, particularly with the low probability of creating an item usable on teh appropriate slot. not so much making better tanned items, but being able to temporarily use tanned items on slots that avians normally can't fill.

Dismay: a new spell (for a reworked race/new race?) that increases the difficulty class of a casters spells, making it harder for mobs/players to make their spell saves against them
-well, my idea so obviously i approve

Xer: a new lavel above avatar - not sure about name - going up to level 500 - this also means the game is bigger, and there will be a need for areas... so loads of people can make them - probally will be declined - but just an 'idea' lol
-file it in the "if wishes were nickles i'd own Australia" category? that's a TON of work.

Xer: when your mortal, stats can go up to (1, when your hero or avatar, can they be

(20) to have another advantage of being a hero?
-not that heroes really need MORE advantages, mind you



Tea: make bless eq cast the spell bless on you at the level of the eq
-you know i never have been PERFECTLY sure what bless, and some of the more obscure flags, do, if in fact they do anything at all. i haven't gotten around to reading the most up to date area builder guild yet, so i can't comment on it other to say that having bless flags give perma-bless could be rather overpowered. i realize bless is easy to get from other sources anyways and almost noone goes around killing without it, but i still think having it permanently from an item would be a bit much.

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Actually, I believe that's what the bless flag originally did. Either that, or the item provided a bonus to the player's damage against evil creatures. (My mind's getting fuzzy.) Most of the "unused" flags on objects actually do absolutely nothing as far as game terms on br. Dark, lock, evil and bless all have absolutely no impact on gameplay. (Although the evil flag will make whatever item has it show up with a red aura to people with detect evil on.)

Blessed (and evil, I *think*) items have a carry weight bonus (penalty) associated with them. It's really only meaningful on containers/quivers/vehicles/boats.