I am actually not very fond of MUDs, mostly because I find their interfaces clunky and much much prefer browser-based non-MUDs. And Dark, you hit precisely on the thing I wanted to avoid. I have high standards when I write/create, and it would bother me (foolish as that may sound) to see lower in a game over which I was in part presiding.

Heh heh. I'm about to get the writers inputting tiles soon. There are already lots, but we lack lots as well.

There's a browser-based game I tried awhile ago, where you spend the game locked in an asylum. It's one of those which requires payment after x amount of time so I didn't stay long, but it's got an area for user-based contributions, and I found it shotty. No offense, if any of you know the game, submitted to it, and take offense (though I don't really think that's the case).

On the game I'm creating, BTW, staff positions are not specifically open/needed to be filled, but they may be. Anyone interested will definitely wanna keep posted.

Oh and...recently, I've gotten back into an online RPG called Hollow, I know it's been mentioned here before. It's extremely easy to navigate, and it's very RP-heavy. Only problem is that there's also a huge stat-training template behind it where the poor are really dirt poor, and the only way to get money fast (mining) is damned difficult to do (Jaws doesn't like the .png they use). Thankfully, many players are nice enough to get you on your own feet, and every class gets one skill for free (almost always a damage skill, I believe).
Hollow started out as a mud (you can tell by the way it's written) but was either ported to a browser-based interface or a browser-based interface was added alongside the original MUD.

Not really. There are lots and lots of muds in which you don't have to fight other players, but there is one thing. In muds, there's an easier way to interact with other people and I mostly play games to meet new people. Not only me, there are lots and lots of people playing games just to meet new people. From those who start up World Of Warcraft in their high-graphical computer and play online, to those who enter muds and such. The other thing is, it can be more detailed and easier to navigate, because you don't have to use links always, and, it's more realistic. like, you go 2north, 3east to get to a shop, but on the other hand, in a browser-based game, you click on "shop" and you're there. And there are a lot of other differences which mostly make actually interacting with other people harder and harder. Even in HogwardsLive and Legend Of The Dragon, that are killing themselves to say that you join and can interact with other people and such, since you cannot see whether someone's online or not, it's nothing actually. And you have to use mails!

Agreed Jayde as to the shoddiness of writing, apart from being extremely dull stat crunchers, many brouser based games I've tried have been badly written.

Personally, I don't particularly care about interacting with other people in games, ----- especially as the majority of people I've come across in games like the Logd alternatives wouldn't know Rping if it bit off their legs and stole all their treasure!

Not sure about muds in this case though.

I'm interested in interacting with the plot, world and setting of the game, exploration, quests, and combat as a plot element rather than for it's own sake.

One of the things that very much would attract me to World of Warcraft if I had the site for it is the shear size of the game world, and the fact that new single player quests, ----- instances as they're called, come out weekly.

As to maps Parham, I think the lack of direction in quite a few brouser based games is more a matter of bad game design than a standard of the genre. Muds, just about all Brouser based games and interactive fiction all use a similar map system of separate, descrete locations with various links betwene them. you could effectively draw a map of this sort of system by just linking together lots of squares.

In most brouser based games though, the authors are usually too lazy to create particularly large maps, much less write interesting descriptions of the locations, hence the short hand for going to places.

I'm sorry if this is a litle incoherent, I'm sure there's a more technical way of explaining what I mean, I just hope people can follow what I'm driving at.

Also, I want to add that not every MUD is well-thought out or well-written. Some of them flat-out suck, if you ask me...but then again, I do agree that many browser-based RPGs have shotty writing. Here's to putting that at nines?

Oh, Dark? It doesn't exactly bother me, per se, but I notice certain things Jaws does when you (and you alone) type, and I've gone looking, and you've got some odd spelling, dude. It's "c-h-a-r-a-c-t-e-r", "b-r-o-w-s-e-r", and "r-e-g-a-r-d", for one thing. I'm not trying to be mean, but it's a little odd hearing Jaws pronounce things just that little bit off.

Dark, perhaps a forum or mailing list based role play group would be up your street? I seem to recall you expressing interest in the audio tips D&D group so maybe this would be the nearest thing you can get with the draconian rules of an educational institution's firewall involved.

On the other hand if and when you leave those confines, and if you play any muds, I hope I'll run into you. You sound like you would be a lot of fun.

well Jayde, even in matters of spelling I'm not easily offended, though my opinions on bad grammar are slightly different.

As to combat, as I said, if the system lends itself to some appropriately atmospheric or interestingly strategical combat, then it would certainly be fun, it's just the  hole bog standard, you hit it, it hits you, you take less damage, it dies, thing that annoys me, especially when people palm it off as propper rpg style combat.

If I remember the 2nd edition Ad&d Dm guide properly (Though of course now we'd call said person the Gm), there are actually some suggestions for descriptions of combat actions.

As far as interesting strategical combat goes, I think there'd be a lot of mileage in roguelikes if a couple of the accessibility features introduced in Warprogue could be used in other games.

I'm experimenting with the Adom game which has lots of nice plot and considderably more quests than the average roguelike, however things like navigation, and talking to other charactors is proving slightly frustrating at the moment.

perhaps opening a discussion with the game's creator would be a worthwhile thing to do.

I was also recently having a chat with somebody who wants to create a full interactive fiction style display for Nethack, but how that's going to work I don't know at the moment.

I'm afraid Jayde, that I'm of the school that believes if in an Rp setting your wet behind the ears apprentice warrior char takes it into their head to pick a fight with something incredibly hard, they deserve whatever comes to them. Of course, in more freeform environments like Muds, the situation might be different, ----- especially if (as happens in World of Warcraft), there are specific areas in the game set aside for Pvp.

Cx2, I would certainly fancy running into you on a mud, or roleplay group. I'm in search of a flat at the moment, and when that comes up I'll certainly be looking into all of these things. sinse almost all of the roleplay in durham tends to be of the larp variety, I'd especially like to find a rping group over skipe, ----- though the audio tips one probably wouldn't work timing wise sinse I tend to work most week day mornings if I can (unless like today, I'm feeling ESPECIALLY lazy).

Well, the thought of associating that! sort of thing with dungeon masters just never occurred to me Cx2, ----- exactly what were you doing in these games of shaddow run? ----- on second thoughts, I probably don't want to know! ;D.

seriously, my brother, who has done a fair amount of tabletop roleplaying actually says it's now considdered quite rude to call said person the Dungeon master. I believe the term got changed when people actually realized that all Roleplay games didn't have to have to involve the generic dungeon crawl, ---- they might even hav no dungeons at all!

also of course, there are associations both with the wizard in the old Dungeons and Dragons Tv series, the bad guy in the Zork If games, and probably lots of other charactors as well.

Btw, like just about everything else, dungeon crawling can be great fun if done well imho. As a side note, the webmaster of the Chronicals of Arborell gamebook series has developed a card based tabletop system for solo gamebook adventures with advanced dungeon crawling (there are even rules to disregard the main plot of the book and play the game as a freeform, randomly generated dungeon if you wish).

the author's extremely amenable as far as accessibility goes, so I sent him a few suggestions about making the card game accessible which he's now developing, though anyone else's thoughts on the subject would certainly be good.

Well...I'm equally unforgiving when it comes to roleplaying, but my experience is markedly less than many. If some wet-behind-the-ears warrior-in-training takes it upon hhimself to insult a master mage, he's going to get it though. No questions there.

And yes, Dark...your grammar is fine enough.

I've always liked fights where enemies have special attacks and so do you. It still often comes down to who can hit harder in less time, but if you include status effects and the like, it can get really interesting. I'm afraid that in the game I'm making, there may be a good number of monsters with few to no honest tricks, but there'll also be some who do more than just hack, hack, hack.
For instance: I've developed one (I won't reveal its name) that can either attack you with magic (a weak ice spell, no added effect) or it can chime softly. If it chimes more than x number of times in the fight, your character will freeze (becoming helpless for awhile). Stuff like that.

...Well, I hope we meet or shatter expectations in a good way, though it's definitely a work in progress.
As to Sryth's attacks...well, I sort of like them, but the damage on a few needs to be toned down. I never liked that sometimes you can lose over 30 percent of your HP against a nonthreatening enemy because of something you can't help. I think the ratio of enemy special attacks vs. natural weapon special attacks has to be tweaked a little (I have the Howling Wolf Longsword, have for some weeks now on Sharvyn, and although some of its attacks are nice, they happen so rarely that I have to ask myself if it was worth 140 adv. tokens). Don't ask me how I got that many tokens either, because I just don't remember. I actually mailed the GM to see if he'd give me a list of where I could've found the bloody things and he didn't tell me. I'm not terribly surprised...people do have better things to do than answer the queries of the ignorant.

The Dark Grimoire is another accessible RPG, and Dark, you might like that one. There is indeed statting, and levelling gets harder the higher up you go. What's more, there are quests as well (though most seem to center around killing something and getting a reward of an item or some such). The world is fairly big, and managed fairly well, but tile text is repetitive as almighty getout and after awhile the "thrill" of getting stronger to advance through areas wears thin. You can only level once a day after L10, I believe, and some players who are L40+ spend most of a week on a given level (and you have to heal after every fight, or you're dead meat). They've got a very solid RP community, maintained with ironclad efficiency by admins who, if you want my opinion, are far too restrictive to make their game worthwhile (go to darkgrimoire.com and read their forum, I'm not kidding)...but to some, it's paradise I guess. That is...if you haven't already gone there and dismissed it, of course. *lol*

DG has a few decent quests early on, but as I said...levelling is too much a bother, and unless you can kill stuff you can't travel (you can't ignore enemies on a map as you can in some other games, and running away won't help). Although I like this idea in theory, in practice it means that those who fight hard and get to high levels invariably grind, grind, grind, and for what? To travel to some new cities? Bah...I think it's pointless. I guess the only way to do it otherwise is to travel with a guide (which I've been on both ends of in DG, actually)...but it just didn't wash.
Their roleplaying really -is fairly good, at least sometimes, but their roleplaying rules (some of them) are foolish, and I think one of their game-builders, Ben, has a terrifically serious attitude problem. But enough about DG...I just wanted to bring it up as a viable, thought tight, text-based RPG.

There's a game called Gothador which is extremely quest-heavy but strongly caters to subscribers, and items are rather expensive there. There are ripoffs based on the Gothador engine, and the game -is quite accessible, but I don't exactly enjoy it much.

Heh heh...okay. I actually quite like KoL, and can get around with it just fine. Some hints, but no outright spoilers:
1. Pizza is good.
2. Getting drunk is 100 percent okay as long as you're done adventuring and has no drawback. The idea is to drink some, adventure some, then stop before you get drunk, push yourself to whichever limit. Depending on your class, some good drinks (you can buy from the mall) are: Papaya Sling, Fuzzbump (muscle classes), Old-fashioned, Horizontal Tango (mysticality classes), Fine Wine/Vodka Gibson and Rockin' Wagon (moxie classes). Of course, there are -all sorts of good drinks out there.
3. Find a vampire-hunter and skin a large lumbering omnivore in the forest for better resting.
4. Ever heard of Iron Maiden? Well, Meat Maiden is closer to the truth. Also...try horking some dude's watch.
5. Wark Wark! (that one's vague)

There you go. Hints, and a few very mild tips, but nothing directly spoiler-tastic. I think KoL is very cute, but I'm so used to playing it normally that I wouldn't dream of using contact mode. I like being able to see my stats.

And no, Gothador is not a fully graphical RPG. If someone could let me know whether or not it and Runescape are similar enough, I might try Runescape, but I played Gothador just fine.

Guys, there is also one other thing. Since I was away I could not actually keep checking and give your answers right away. The thing is, come on, what's fun about playing a game alone? And however fun it is, it's mostly, hack, and slash. No you can bring thousands of statements that this game is not, but unless there's some interaction with others, it's hack, and, slash. Even groupping, as simple as it sounds, gives you the impression that, someone out there, is assisting you. Even imagining that gives you energy. I don't know, it might not do that for you, but for me, it does. I even get used to a mud's spams, because I love it's atmosphere. Other thing is roleplay. From 1978 that actually Multy User Dungeon was created, and could only accept up to 5 characters, it was multy usered. And, a game, in my opinion, as long as is not capable of user-to-user interaction, is not worth much. Not that it's worth nothing, but come on, what's fun about going to rooms, clicking on kill, and killing? Or what's fun about logging in to a mud and just typing kill and "waw, I kill this, I killd that", what at the end? You gain nothing, I gain nothing. In fact, there's no impression that I also am playing along with you. So, it's why I said that. And, I don't say always RP, but sometimes RP. While I cannot talk to someone in a browser-based game, well, how can I possibly RP with? Whom should I RP with? Doesn't that sound a bit... Ridiculous? Or maybe I could be proved wrong if an example can be shown to me.
Sorry that was very long!