Black Sands MUD

@oldtwink - Have you read the history/about the game? We aren't an arm clone.

Some of the syntax and such may be the same, and currently some of the classes are alike, but a clone, by definition is a person or thing that duplicates, imitates, or closely resembles another in appearance, function, performance, or style: All the fashion models seemed to be clones of one another.

While we have -some- nuances akin to Armageddon, I did not set out to clone them. You won't see dwarves, muls, half-giants, tuluk, allanak, etc.

Our version of sorcery is vastly different, so is our elementalist system, among other things. I'm happy to discuss what aspects you view as being cloned though, should you wish to discuss them here.

So because we have elementalists and magick we are an armageddon clone? What other elements could we use? Those are kind of the only ones out there.

Also, unless you have played a sorcerer, you wouldn't really know the difference. There is a lot of backstory and thought put into them.

I'm not trying to argue, but I refuse to let my work be called an arm clone by anyone who hasn't really put much time Into it.

It's just eerily similar on many fronts. Despite the lore, sorcorers are all treated as evil bastards that must be killed on sight and just make a mess when they do their thing. Water mages make water and are healers. Air mages can travel fast and presumably make themselves invisible. Void callers are "anti-magick" and everyone hates them because they make your dead auntie do stuff. The Archons are basically templars-- but I will give you props for nixing the nobility requirement. Even though they're treated with fear and respect as nobility, and are prone to taking bribes and demand bowing "or else". They still totally use magick, but nobody calls them out on totally using magick because they rule all of the everything. Half-elves are outcasts. Elves survive by wit and cunning-- though thank you for not giving them some mythical running ability that makes them too proud to ride mounts because reasons. The Sunder appear to be a more interesting re-working of half-giants. All magick users (the ones that aren't killed on sight) must register with the gub'ment. Failure to do so means death. Telepathy is a thing. It is commonly believed that sorcery is what fucked up the world to begin with. Psionists are labeled as criminals and killes ASAP if discovered.

You're right, I haven't exactly put too much time into it yet (which I eventually will, surely), and I'm not trying to argue either. Just pointing out a number of things that make me think I'm playing an original attempt at 2.Arm, ya dig?

Also, I noticed the Mora are a playable race?

Just curious as to how that would work out.... Would it just be PK city? Or like... Are PC Mora "special" in some way, as in, not totally braindead murder machines?

Mora are most definitely playable. Basically what I envision for anyone wanting to play one is that they would be one of the more sentient types (I can't go into too much detail without revealing IC specifics), but there are more than just the brain dead fodder (zombie types). I wouldn't see a player being the zombie type, in that case we'd make their PC and NPC and store them/kill them. They can definitely be an isolated role, if there are not any other players that are mora. They are more or less intended to be available once we reach a certain number of players where we can support them.

Plus, in the future, there are going to be plot changes that change up the lore a bit and some things will be more readily available such as other cities, outposts/etc and a possible reclamation of the desert.

With regards to the Archon, don't expect to see much magick out of them anymore, I picked up on your sentiment long before, as well as psionics, the majority (and all pcs) are going to be fighting/combat oriented only.

In regards to elementalists and registering, that was prompted by the playerbase we had out of a fear of them retaliating towards the city in some fashion. The populace as a whole has a hatred and fear of magick and trusts the 'all mighty barrier' to protect them. The cross was a way to mark any known elementalists who they could stumble upon in the valley/other areas so they would quickly know they were an elementalist.

The elementlist system itself is based upon weaving. You perform a series of complicated movements (much akin to avatar, the last airbender) to perform your magick. You don't speak words, nor do you channel anything.

Sorcerers are evil, yes. On the flip, there's good magick and evil magick. Evil magick causes the tar you have talked about, being good has its own perks/etc. As a player progresses with a sorcerer, if they use evil magick, they start to take on those traits (codedly) and vise versa. Once someone has become evil, it's near impossible for them to go back to being 'good' but it is possible.

Sorcerer's magick revolves around sucking (something) out of the world and there are no stigmas about relationship to the land/etc like armageddon.

Elementalists are similarly akin to armageddon because what else is there? Water, fire, wind, earth? I wanted more special magick as well, so I chose to put in my own anti-magick /void type magick as well as shadow/lightning. All of the spells have been handwritten by me. Sure, there's detect invis, invis, detect magick, fireball, shit like that, because well - that's magick. Then there's other stuff that I've written that armageddon only wishes they had. I've spent an incredible amount of time making sure that magick ties into every aspect of the code.

We've discussed nobility and we do believe it has a place in the game, we are however not going to come up with staff-made houses, rather we plan to let players who create their own merchant houses and gain an appropriate income become nobility through their money, because that's clearly where it starts. Then once that is established, we'll add it to the lore/etc.

Thoughts so far:

I'm about 3 or 4 hours into playing my first character, so I am speaking as a total newbie to the game there for the most part, so this may be subject to change later.

Good points:
The staff is pretty much actual wizards. You know the Harry Potter kind with the pointy sorting hat? Yep. A special app in a day, and the actually approved pc with all the changes made in less than half a day.

The rooms are really well written, it's enjoyable to go see new things and the city is fairly easy to navigate.

Within less than an hour, I had not only had an animation done, but also run into a pc and wound up having interesting interaction, despite the low playerbase. (This is partially because the Who list lists how many players there are, and I'm not sure about all taverns, but at least in the one tavern, it told you someone was there. 'Who' 'There are 2 players, there is 1 player in the Ryk' - kudos, that is beautifully implemented and a great way to assure that characters who want interaction can reliably find each other in a public place to socialize)

The forums and online site itself are linked, so you have your forum account, game account, and account for request tool (yes, they have one of those, but with different options, like you can kudos or complain about documentation even, as one of the differences), so you don't have to register a bunch of different places.

I -love- that you create your characters in your internet browser. Finally, I can format everything how I want and not have to worry about a text editor reformatting it weirdly. Did I mention that I love this?

There are active calls for player submissions even now. One of them is foodstuffs, one of them is tattoos. I submitted 5 tattoos and within 6 hours, they were already implemented. That is insane and awesome. It makes you feel like you are still helping write the story and world.

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Less good:

There are not many players, and as a Bartle ESAK, socializing is a close second to exploring on what I enjoy doing.
Counterpoint: The other players who -are- on and want to socialize are easy to find. Also, I'm hoping to snag some of you guys reading this and get more company there!

Some of the helpfiles don't point the right places (There's one, I can't recall which, which points to the game's forums as what I can only imagine are SOI's forums, middle-earth something), and some are lacking in that they don't really explain enough for a newbie to comprehend what they're looking for (This newbie, at least. I looked up the helpfile on literacy and, not realizing that if I was able to read/write it would show up in my skills list, spent a little under a quarter of my starting coins on book/pen/ink for writing).
Counterpoint: Every time I've spoken about anything game related that was for the general benefit of the game or had questions, etc, staff have been very quick to try and respond and in a helpful, polite, and informative manner.

Superficially, there are resemblances to Arm which might put off players who don't look deeper or actually get into the game before making up their mind.
Counterpoint: The resemblance is only superficial. There are no established noble houses, there is like one major trade entity and plenty of room for players to add their own. The magick helpfiles are vague enough to give people the impression that things are very much the same as Arm but actually seeing the other helpfiles in tandem, you can see that they are not the same, even if only in the way that it is treated. I would go so far as to say the magick is probably more like actual Dark Sun but keeping in mind that there seems to be a lot of distrust of magick in Dark Sun in general.

I can't really say anything about combat (I try not to deal with combat skills when I'm playing a game because combat is not interesting, see the K coming in last with less than 10% in my bartle test), the crafting system is something I have not tried out yet. I have explored some and enjoyed that, and interacted with 2 other pcs and found it was pretty enjoyable.

I hope this was thorough and detailed enough for you guys to have at least some idea what you're jumping into if you decide to join me in Bal Travas, yo.

I, for one, have no problem with this game being an Arm knockoff, considering that my dream game is essentially Armageddon without the Armageddon Staff. Will check this out tomorrow.

I like to play sometime between 10 pm and 3 am central time, or sometime between 6 am and 2 pm central time. Because between 2 pm and 10 pm my mother comes home and calls me afk constantly (living with a parent at 27 because my roommate up and fell in love with me, literally - not worth the ensuing homelessness, yo). But it will usually be only one or the other in a given day because... you know... sleep.