The Wheel is waiting for your thread.

So here we are, working on a resurrection of the MUD that most of us have put significant portions of our lives into. This is a labor of love for those of us who do it, not exactly a job even though it may feel like it at times, but it is something that we come back to because of our memories from our time here. We look back on to those memories and smile, the great times that we have had coming back, the comraderie of being in a guild and meeting new people, the thrill of combat against both NPCs and other players, the glory of being the best at the moment of your particular talent or trade, the friendly competition between fellow players, and most of all the escape from reality into a world of your imagination. As the staff here at the Sea of Storms we also return so that we can help another generation of players and their characters through these same experiences and hope that they will find as much enjoyment from them as we have.

We have a multitude of things going on right now, mostly behind the scenes. Our lead coder, Kimadi is currently working hard on Project Soulcage. This will give our mud the stability and features that we need to continue evolving into the future. Once this is completed we will begin working on several new features and updating a few things from our current systems. These are not easy things to accomplish and will take a couple of months before you as a player see any difference.

Fortunately though, you do not need to wait for any of this. These are things that we have in store for the future, but there is plenty for you to day today. We are on the precipice of all the excitement that Robert Jordan's world can entertain.

The real question now is: what is your role going to be?

You are the player. You are the reason why we are here. You are the reason that we work so hard fixing our code. You are the reason that we run these events and put together plot lines and story arcs. You are the lifeblood of our MUD, the future of our universe that people will speak of doing amazing things and the role models that people strive to become.

We are currently putting together two story arcs that we will run together, one building off of the other. These arcs will be all inclusive. Everyone will have the ability to participate in one form or another. It does not matter how high or low you are in skill in any particular thing. All you have to do is show up and get involved. You will be included no matter your strength, skills, anything. Everyone is important and we want everyone to get involved. This is your chance to get involved in the history of our MUD, where down the line you will be able to tell people that you were there when amazing things happened.

We will be continuing this with another overarching storyline after this particular thread has reached its end and it is time to weave another into the fabric that makes up the Sea of Storms. But, this is not to say that your experience here has to be limited to staff ran events or our plot lines. This is your world. Go out there and interact with others. Have aspirations and go after them. Go on a journey with your character and see how it turns out. Get involved with other people. Create your own story lines. This is your story, as the staff we are here to help you and all the other players enjoy your time here and create that story.

So, don't be afraid to reach for something, to have aspirations, to build your own story line. That is what you are here for. Go for it, it may work out just as you have envisioned or it may not, but the fun is in the journey, not the destination.

Its time for your thread to join the rest of those in the Pattern.

The Role-Players New Groove

Here on the Sea of Storms there has always been a strong culture of quality RP since the very beginning. The majority of newbies are inducted into RP by senior players wielding emotes and poses that are often well written and highly descriptive. Another mainstay of RP on our MUD has been posting length. The standard to which most players hold themselves is about four lines at a minimum. Anything less than that has often been considered lower quality, while anything more than four has been considered higher quality (up to a point at least). In pursuit of this 'higher quality' RP, styles like turn-based role-play were born to enable longer posting length and mitigate the problem that can arise with players interjecting themselves repeatedly when another players long posts. Turn based role-play has never been a policy of the MUD, far from it! It has, however, been encouraged by many players and staff  through personal preference as a way to manage larger RPs involving more than two or three people. The downside of this has been a rise in scenes which are  beautifully written, take forever (and a day) to play out, and have very little happen in them because the players zone out due to the inevitable 15 - 20 minute wait times between rounds.

The Staff is, of course, dedicated to quality RP, and we're always on the lookout for areas where we can tweak things.  Part of our recent batch of improvements is to add several new RP commands to be used in  harmony with emote and pose. These commands are whisper, think, and feel (along with some changes to say and sayto). Some players who have been to other MUDs, may recognize these as commands often seen on RPI MUDs. This is no accident, as these commands are inspired by good experiences staff members have had over the years playing on other RPI MUDs.

Enough build up though, lets get into the nitty gritty! These new commands are often used in something called real-time RP. This style of RP is one where no order exists and characters/players react to the posts of others as they come. Length is not a focus, but descriptiveness is. An easy way to look at the difference between turn based and real-time is this: Instead of writing a large post with several actions and segments of dialogue, players will instead write smaller posts with less actions and more immediate dialogue to which the other players in the scene can quickly respond to. This allows for the flow of RP to be fast paced and immersive. You know, for things to actually happen in a reasonable amount of time.

Link: https://docs.google.com/a/tsosmud.org/document/d/16nor8LTqfrlTepST4yOflX63kuWqWrRrE_ZTs0VBHH4/edit

The link above shows a brief RP where a staff member used the new commands to animate both Master Varian of the Feast of Lights Inn and Lord Kiriak Riatin, a member of a leading Cairhien house. This scene took very little effort to run and moved at a very fluid pace. One can easily see the way pose/emote were used in conjunction with the say and whisper commands.

The last two commands, think and feel, are primarily for individual players to deepen their own role-play experience. The output from both of these commands display only to the player using them, along with any staff member that happens to be in the room--allowing them to have a better understanding of the characters and motivations if they are running an Event (for example). Players might be surprised how occasional use of these commands can change how they role-play their characters. I highly encourage everyone to give them a try at some point.

Winds of Change are Blowing

I'd like to welcome everyone back to TSoS's Developer blog. It has been awhile since any posts have been put up here, but that will change going forward. In fact a lot of things on TSoS have been changing lately (albeit, lots of them behind the scenes) and thus we have our theme for today, change! We would like to let all of our players know what we have recently implemented, as well as give some idea what is still on the docket going forward.

All Things Cairhien

First devblog of the summer for me and hopefully not the last. Coming back from my hiatus slowly in all areas from logging in, events, now finally to PR and communication with the player base. That being said lets get to the meat of this devblog.

This summer Cairhien is our big theme. Last year in the fall it was the world and the tensions and eventual wars brought on by events and the players chance to participate in those. We had some really fun world events such as Malkier, The Horn of Valere, treasure hunting in the Caralain Grass. Now however it is time to deal with the repercussions of these wars and chaos in the world. What better city then Cairhien to do this, besides maybe Caemlyn. With that in mind the story arcs all revolve around the city of Cairhien and how it is being affected by the refugees, war to the south, and constantly dwindling trade.

The player base will be able to help or hinder Cairhien, form loyalties with noble houses or foreign powers, help the refugees or remove them. The opening event for the summer story arc is on May 20th at 3:00 pm PST and is the grand reopening of the Silk Path inn which if you are new, was once the Cairhien headquarters for the Children of the Light within the city. It was destroyed late last fall by two male channelers. After the destruction several player groups decided to rebuild it ICly and we are proud to be bringing it back with updated room descriptions, a memorial plate, and possible a new owner!

After the kick off event on May 20th, I will be running two public events a week and 2 semi private or private events as well. These will range from event chains to one shot mini events. I will be keeping track of all the interesting bits through devblogs and schedule event times and dates on the forums.

All that being said, I am glad to see the MUD thriving again and promise to remain active until at least the end of the summer to entertain everyone with stories, events, and the occasional contest!

~ Jeshin

Why Avoiding RP Makes You a Wanker!

Another devblog and another week on the Sea of Storms. In keeping with my original intent of these devblogs to be something informative and relevant, I will be addressing some annoying role-playing tendencies. The chief amongst them being when someone avoids role-playing with others. It’s really simple, when you log onto the Sea of Storms you should, hopefully, be logging on to role-play.

Now, I realize that some people play the Sea of Storms and enjoy some solo play. I enjoy quite a bit of solo play myself, as do channelers, shady types, and older players with thousands of hours logged. So a good rule of thumb is, if you remember your last role-play in detail and had fun, then you’re doing fine. Normally this equates to something like one role-play a week, which is a fair number with an active schedule in your daily life.

Logging on to the Sea of Storms with the intent to role-play is important, since it’s the basis of the game. However, logging on with the intent to role-play then turning down role-play with certain characters is what turns you from a misguided player into a wanker.

The crux of this problem is set firmly on the player's shoulder. When someone asks to role-play it’s not your character saying no, your character addresses a role-play situation after you’ve started to role-play. Players avoiding certain characters is improper use of OOC/IC information, but it’s one that we typically let slide. Still, when a mercenary, whitecloak, male channeler, or Aes Sedai asks you to role-play you should never turn them down simply because doing so would threaten your character in some way.

All you’re really doing is deciding that you know ICly that character is this or that. So based off that IC information you’re deciding as a player to avoid role-playing. Personally, I’ve always found it to be something of a self imposed handicap. Stories are born out of division and conflict, on many levels ranging from physical, emotional, and philosophical. By choosing to remove this conflict and division and waiting for event immortals to generate these situations you’re depriving yourself of superb role-play.

I’ll give an example in hopes it helps make my point. As Jeshin the mute, I role-played with Alisa Sedai every chance I could. She knew I was a male channeler and had told me that when my madness progressed that she’d either find a way to help me or gentle me. I knew OOCly that eventually I’d go insane as my taint went up and Alisa would do her thing. This didn’t stop me one bit; characters aren’t meant to live forever. They’re meant to exist as experiences and stories. If their story ends that’s just their story ending. To finish the Jeshin and Alisa example, she eventually kidnapped me to the White Tower when Samiel declared dragon. I managed to escape and join Samiel. The point is that it was a great set of role-plays and gave my character an amazing experience of nearly being gentled and escaping.

Chicken Soup for the Player Killers Soul

The truth about player killing is that, it’s good! You heard me, player killing is a good thing and is not only good, but a sign of a player who is playing their characters correctly. Now it’s time for the but part. Player killing is good, but when used improperly it is a break to immersion, a harm to the game, and basically a sign that the person who does it might be a huge jerk! I think today’s article will be interesting.

The first thing I’d like to explore is, why should someone player kill? Well, there are a few reasons as to why a character should kill another character. Notice I’m saying character and not player. This is because the first reason you should kill another character is because your character would, not because the player wants to. Another good reason is if they are a male channeler and you know this. Pretty much everyone in the Wheel of Time universe will either attempt to kill a male channeler or flee immediately. In all actuality, the best reason to player kill is if it’s something your character would do, makes sense in terms of a setting aspect, and progresses your story in a meaningful way.

The next logical topic would be when to player kill. The time to player kill is dependant upon two things. The most important of the two being, does killing this character have an extremely large negative repercussion if done now. The secondary concern is Does my character really care about this negative repercussion? If the answer to those two questions is no and no or yes and no then you have yourself the right moment to strike!

So, with those easy to remember and apply guidelines to player killing. We can now look at the metagame downside to player killing. For the most part a lot of players look down on player killing. This is probably because they believe that if you kill someone else’s character you may kill theirs. This is to be expected and hopefully overcome with time. When this happens you just need to continue to role-play your character the way you always have. Just remember that with time and patience most people will get over your player kill and move on, as long as you make sure it is 100% a character choice and not just a player one.

All seems pretty basic right? Make choices about player killing from your characters point of view, don’t worry if people get a little wary of you metagame wise, and keep to your guns regarding your characters actions. There are some some finer points to actually executing a clean kill, but those are for people who are brave enough to try a kill to learn.

Just always remember that role-play and story should be the thought that drives all your characters actions. Including the need or desire to kill another character. When you stop playing your character and start using them to satisfying players desires is normally when you’ve forgotten what makes the Sea of Storms great. It’s also probably when you’ll discover you’re a big fish in a small pond.

-Jeshin

I’m the Dude Playing the Dude Disguised as Another Dude

A hilarious line from the movie ‘Tropic Thunder’, where Robert Downey Jr. is playing an actor playing a black soldier from the Vietnam war. It’s also an oddly relevant line to most of us as roleplayers. I’ve seen a lot of players come to The Sea of Storms over the years, who have started characters only to meander aimlessly, further and further from any semblance of character concept.

The idea of a character concept can be a little tricky for the average gamer. In almost all cases, we never need one for the other games we play. A character concept is who, what and why our character exists. Each of these helps to provide a better foundation for roleplaying our character and having direction. I’m sure you’ve seen it before, people who have characters seemingly driven by metagaming goals such as level 2 channeling, level 7 forms and ultimate power. In most cases, these characters are poorly roleplayed because they have no concept, they’re just vehicles for the player to reach those goals. The biggest pitfall with thinking this way is that the Sea of Storms is centered on roleplay. So, to enjoy the game and fulfill your goals, a player needs to roleplay well and enjoy it!

The first step to creating character concept is to take what you want to achieve as a player and put it into terms your character can understand. I think a good example is someone who wants to be in a lot of events, get forms, skills, and not be restricted to one city. These are pretty common desires from a player prospective. The good news is there are a lot of different character concepts that can attain these things. So to achieve these desires lets take a hunter for the horn, who has lived on the docks of Illian until he was in his early twenties. This gives us nationality, appearance, age, and a possible motivation to rise up out of the hard life of a dock rat. That is who our character is, a young man who worked the docks in Illian. 

Now what is our character? Well, having heard stories of glory and respect for the hunters of the past, he quickly drops his life as a dock hand when the hunt for the horn is called again. This gives us his view on his life. He finds the act of hunting for the horn a way to rise up out of his current life to gain fame and adventure. The character we have so far may have been thought of before, but just because it has been used before doesn’t mean the concept isn’t viable. You don’t need to break the mold every time and have a unique, one of a kind idea. In fact, you’ll probably come up with more bad ideas that way.

With our who and what in place we now need the why. It should be pretty simple with the who and what thought, we can surmise he had a boring life and wanted the piece of the glamour sung of in the stories. Maybe he had friends who joined the hunt and it goaded him into joining. Perhaps he borrowed money to buy gear and a horse to go hunting for the horn and now he has people from Illian looking for him to repay his debt. These are all ideas that give your character the why for his decisions and actions, such as learning forms to defend himself.

The above is a quick and dirty way to figure out a character concept that gives you as a player what you want in your character for roleplay. Another benefit of having a character concept is that Immortals love it. It’s so much easier to design events for people who have an established character concept that an event Imm can look at and understand. Character events also impress older players and make them more likely to give you those forms and skills you want because you’ve thought about roleplay not just code.

Everyone Hates Channelers!

Ok, so not everyone hates channelers. Everyone does, however, get tired of new players making channelers all the time. It’s not so much the fact that making a channeling character is bad. It’s really that so many people make them, and they don’t exactly always roleplay them very well.

The reality of creating a channeler is that it is really one of the hardest roles to play on the MUD. In the Wheel of Time setting, channelers are a very touchy subject ICly for people. For example, in the first book pretty much everyone in Rand’s village had a very strong and culturally driven view on Aes Sedai and channeling in general. Thus, it is natural to assume that our characters on the Sea of Storms would also have opinions formed by the fact channeling caused the end of the greatest age of the world. This means that not only do the players not like channelers, but that the NPCs of the world are also not overly fond of them… Everyone hates channelers!

So, what’s all this nonsense about people not roleplaying channelers very well? It's pretty simple really, there are a lot of common roleplay mistakes that lead to players approaching the character in a different way than is really logical. The first issue arises from the simple fact that in most cases the character wouldn’t want to be a channeler, but the player does. This gives rise to the cases of male channelers that are excited to be destined for insanity and death, as well as female channelers that don’t want to go to the Tower, because channeling is just too cool for school. While these character types are completely possible, albeit rare, the truth is almost every new player who makes a channeler falls into one of these two categories.

The second issue that comes up is absurdly knowledgeable characters. The kind of knowledge that an average character in the setting wouldn’t really have, but a player would. For example, most players will understand at least a little bit about subjects like (sa')angreal and ter'angreal from reading the books. However, almost every single person in the setting would have absolutely no clue what these were and would never have heard of them or even suspected that they existed. So we have the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge. This causes things like channeler level 0 people talking about angreals, knowing that a tingle means a female is channeling, and chatting to each other about what flows they’re skilled in as if they were trained in the Tower. This particular issue is annoying to me personally, mostly because it borders on a policy violation for using OOC information in an IC manner. I don’t really enjoy busting people, especially new players, for not understanding the role of a channeler very well. It’s not really their fault after all, the channeler is a harder character to understand and roleplay.

The third issue isn’t really the players fault, it's just something that becomes more and more noticeable over time. At certain points during the month, depending on the new player count and some other factors, we can expect the nonchanneler to channeler ratio to be like 1:2 or even 1:3. So with 10 people online, we can expect at least 6 of them to be channelers. The reason why this isn't a problem is the simple fact that people like to play this particular type of character, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that! Unfortunately, it means that the population imbalance becomes pretty noticeable. Channelers were a relatively small percentage of the population in the books after all. We've kicked around ideas like making the only options in creation random and non-channeler. That would certainly make things more realistic, but would also be a pretty big detractor from the 'fun' aspect of things (this is a game after all, right?). It's just food for thought to those of you who love to create channelers.

Despite these roleplay difficulties channelers provide a lot of benefits. They are good for players who like a little bit more solo play. They also have quite a bit of good roleplay potential. The channeling system on the Sea of Storms is pretty deep once you start delving into it. A channeler can easily spend a couple months reaching the second level of power, then several more months making themselves a force to be reckoned with. Some of our best roleplayers have been channelers. The concept allows for very in-depth roleplaying, along with some interesting interpersonal relationships with the non-channeler population.

Some of you may be asking yourselves, when is a good time to make a channeling character on the Sea of Storms? The answer is any time, as long as you understand the pitfalls of the character. If you’re not in the White Tower, then your female channeler won’t be to well liked by the NPCs of the world. If you’re a male channeler, then everyone and their mum will want you dead. A player should have an open mind about how they play their channeler and be willing to re-evaluate the approach they’re taking if someone offers advice. If a player can understand and accept these simple truths about playing a channeler, then they are well on their way to playing a great one.

On a side note, I’ve finally decided to write a how-to guide to roleplaying a channeler on the wiki. I hope that this will help new players and regulars alike enjoy their characters more. I also hope that this will prevent older players from seeing a bunch of misplayed channelers and deciding to off them!

- Jeshin

Events for Players by Players!

It’s a pleasant Monday morning with little to no chance of the Foregate getting any easier to finish. After mapping it for the last steps of the review, the staff discovered that someone managed to botch the layout. Clearly it wasn’t me! Regardless of which event immortal may or may not have caused the issue in layout, it is in the process of being fixed and will only add a few more days onto the release schedule at most. However that isn’t what this article is about, this article is about events. Not just any events, mind you, but events for players by players!

I am, of course, speaking of player events, those often mentioned and rarely seen set of circumstances where a player can run an event just like a staff member. As the only active event immortal on the Sea of Storms, I’ve often wondered what players want out of the game. At first glance I can surmise they want roleplay and story. With a second pass, I can determine that excitement and growth of power is important. On a final overview I can see that, despite the previous two observations, maybe I don’t have an inkling of what the average Sea of Storms player wants out of their gaming experience.

So the event immortal has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t actually know what the players want. Being in charge of creating an fun experience for players through story based roleplay, makes that a bit of a problem. Yeah, it was pretty jarring for me as well. I kind of sat around for a couple weeks looking at options. I could try to change how I ran events to make them less scripted and more reactive to players. When I tried that with my co-event immortal Orson a group of players ended up staring at a door for 4 hours in a roleplay. Clearly a disaster had evolved with the approach of reacting to players instead of providing plot and guidance. To be honest, I only really tried this before realizing maybe the best people to run the events are the players. The only problem with this approach is that players can’t be trusted with forsaken, shadowspawn, rulers of countries, captains of the guard, children of the light, assassins in the great game, etc. etc.

From this impasse with allowing players to run their own events arouse the current player event design. A group of players can join a roleplay and have universal control over non-restricted NPCs; barkeeps, serving girls, citizens, travelers, scholars, even Ogier on occasion. I thought maybe I’d discovered the key to providing the players with what they want. Giddy with excitement, I brought the Idea to Luthien and he quickly agreed. In almost eight months of being in place it has been used less then eight times!

I hope that the above explains why I created the player event system, if it doesn’t then here’s a simple version. I trust players to know what they want. I thought players would like to tell their own stories. I know the players on the Sea of Storms can be a creative and fun group.

With all this being said, I will be using this devblog entry to announce a new tool in the player event line. Hopefully this will help entice players to use it and grow comfortable with running their own events. Starting on 09.14.09, I will be providing player event kits. These kits will include NPCs with descriptions, motivations, and roleplay notes. In addition, they will include holodeck room descriptions and in some cases premade items.

It is my hope that with these easy to use player events, players will start to use the system. There’s a lot of really cool stuff that could be done on the Sea of Storms if the player event system was more widely used. In fact I’ve designed some storylines completely around the player event system. Which causes a bit of a problem considering it has been used only rarely. I can’t release these storylines until players have actively shown they can responsibly control NPCs and story first.

- Jeshin

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