Designing for ScryMUD

General Design

  • Be original in your writing; do not rely on cliches to write your descriptions and scripts. Scry is an all-original world with influences in some ancient philosophies and mythologies. Zones, mobs, and objects should not be taken directly from anywhere else.
  • Trust that the player is a little clever and make them think a little, particularly for quests.
  • Mobs are literally the life of the mud. At least as much time should be spent creating and placing mobs as doing any other part of building. In many cases, the more mobs the better. Identical mobs walking the streets is less desirable, but with several different types of a common mob, the streets seem to bustle, which is exactly what they should do.

Zone Design

Types of Zones

Towns and cities should have a lot to do in them. Fountains and other water sources, as well as lanterns, bags, food and other shops should be available. Forests and other wilderness zones should have lots of small, food-giving small animals, as well as some larger, experience-giving animals. Connecting zones (as well as larger cities and neutral areas) should have inhabitants of multiple cities mingling. In a large enough city, it should be easy to find non-natives and immigrants to the city, much like in a real city.

Room Design

Layout

Be spacious with rooms, and let each room have its own function. Don't combine the kitchen, dining room, and foyer in a moderate-sized house - make each a separate room. Also consider if rooms should be next to each other, or if a connecting room would help the player see the size or feel of the zone.

Distances between rooms should be based on their geographical features.

Type of Room Distance
City/good road 1
Land - grass, dirt, or path 2
Land - mountain or swamp 3-5
Water or underwater 4-10
Flying in air 6-10

Scripts

Be careful with room scripts - remember that they will be there the first time a player ever walks into the room, and every subsequent passing through on the way to something else. With ambient scripts (waves crashing on the shore, boards squeaking), add a percent chance that the script will trigger, or add a significant pause to avoid spamming traveling players.

Mob Design

Descriptions

  • Avoid creating a city full of simply "citizen" mobs. Model cities (and the mobs in them) on real-world cities in terms of diversity. Some mobs shouldn't have a clear purpose walking down the street, just as some people don't have a clear purpose.
  • Try to give names and stories to a few mobs in every zone. Stories can be as simple as being able to explore their house and talk to their family, or it can involve town records, or talking to other members of the city. This can be an indication that a mob has a quest, as well - if the mob is easy to find, and stands out, then it is probably special in some way.

Flags and Attributes

Animals should be skinnable and shold not have gold or armor, obviously.

Consider the mob to determine the appropriate attributes. There should very rarely be a mob with more than one resistance (i.e. cold_resis, heat_resis, etc.) at a below-normal level. Intelligence is an attribute that must be considered carefully - A mage of level 30 will take different actions if his int is 10 than if his int were 21. Additionally, special attributes like bad_assedness should reward the player for a hard fight by giving increased experience for killing the mob.

A player should be able to discern the ballpark level of mobs because it should be universal across Scry. These are some guidelines for choosing levels of mobs:

  • Level 1 with 0s and 1s for stats: 'decorative' mobs like fish and rabbits
  • Levels 1-5: Most experience-giving animals, crippled/weakened people
  • Levels 6-10: Extremely large/strong animals, people/citizens, SHOPKEEPERS
  • Levels 11-15: Town militia, skilled of the populace, minor monsters
  • Levels 16-20: Guardsmen, tough monsters
  • Levels 21-25: Elite guards, powerful monsters, lords
  • Levels 26-30: Great beasts of destruction, monolithic creatures
  • Levels 31-35: Great dragons, lich lords of the underrealms
  • Levels 36-40: Deities, practically gods
In general, do not make mobs greater than level 30.

 

Object Design

Placement and acquisition

Avoid just leaving objects lying around, particularly important ones. Try to put them in boxes or drawers, give them to mobs, or hide them in secret rooms.

Pricing of objects should be comparable to other similar objects already in game. Common items (small bags, bread, etc) should be under 50 gold. Decent weapons and armor should be between 500 and 5000 gold.