This project is an attempt to design a game that takes a radically different approach to gaming than the usual DikuMUD derived game. No longer is fighting and killing monsters to be the central aspect of the game. Hopefully you are willing to contribute to the design as well. If you have remarks, ideas, doubts, anything really, don't hesitate to share them with us. However until I can get somebody to program something automated to deliver the contributions to me I'll have to ask you to write a short email to me with your additions. Please state in your subject that it involves the Overlord project, and start the mail with a line saying to which tag you are responding. I'll give your contribution tags too so as to make it easier.
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To avoid confusion. I (Marian) have neither the ability nor the ambition to do something like implementing an actual game. What I hope to achieve through these, and other pages (try following the links at the end of this page) is to provide a place for people who, like me, enjoy to take the muds beyond the obvious limitations of the current games. My personal interest in this is for games that not simply encourage roleplaying, but that actually make it a natural part of the gameplay. I clearly hope to see that others use the ideas they find discussed on this page and on the newsgroups and incorporate them in their games. But even if you, like me, feel unable to do anything serious about implementing I do hope that you enjoy the read.
Marian

On the alt.muds.diku group this thread was started a while back and at some point I tossed a couple of ideas how to shift the focus of a mud to other things.

1. politics -- some way to achieve ascendance over and control of an area or region. The game could include taxes, pay for and control guards, roads guilds and religions that each have their own agenda in the struggle for power. Players can have particular skills that may be usefull in their own attempt to rise in rank and power within the institution of their choice.
   Naturally there has to be competition from other countries and other institutions or there is no need for politics.


2. Level becomes a function of guilds, rather than something that automatically happens whenever enough experience has been collected. Players have no great reason to go out and kill things, unless it advances the agendas of the guildmasters.


3. The resources could be limited. Players could not have money, food, water, clothing, weapons and so on in infinite supply as is usually the case in muds. The first objective of the game would then be to collect enough money, or power, to prevent your character from starving, freezing or all other unpleasant things. Players could form clans or guilds to make sure that their members would never die of such desperate situations. And of course skills to actually produce those limited resources are going to be quite usefull.


4. Skills could be made purchaseable rather than handed out for each level gained. That way a player's ability would be expressed in the expertise in skills and levels could be done away with. And it would also make money (or whatever else is needed to purchase training) the primary motivating factor.
   
5. By Pier Donini (infocoatings@planet.ch): On Mume, and on other muds, there is the concept of travel points. These are awarded for entering certain rooms. As a certain amount of travel points are required to level this forces players to wander, rather than kill the same monster over and over again. Also, on Mume, as you kill the same monster over and over again the experience you get for it is lessened.
   
6. Example from a skill oriented game: Ursus, by Markku Nylander. This mud attempts to reduce the importance of equipment and stat hunting. The game further focusses on achieving a balance between the various classes, such as there are. Most importantly it means that the game is not allowed to define the character for the player. It also aims to support roleplaying
   

I hope you are willing to add your own ideas to this list, or to the discussions on each topic that branches from this page. Feel free to comment on how a particular aspect might not work, or how it could be made to work or why it should be used, or not used. And if you have ideas of possibilities that I haven't thought of yet and that are not in the main, or subsequent list you can do so as well. Just make sure you state you want to add after a tag rather than respond to that tag. Or use the icons in the discussion.

Marian