Rather then pay the 10k for it spend years and years sucking up to the makers of Achaea become a divine and then offer an idea of a new Mud and hey presto you get paid and have your own Mud built in Rapture without the 10k price!

Personally, I think it's time Rapture was used to build a sci-fi MUD. That's a project I could get behind.

I always thought sci-fi muds were cheezy. Our beloved rapture would be best used elsewhere!

I've never played one so I wouldn't know. If I were going to make one based on Rapture, though, it wouldn't be cheesy.

I know, make a cheesy star wars IRE mud!!!!!!!

I think a sci-fi mud could be awsome, but dont make a lame starwars one.

Well, I was thinking more of transhumanist, or at most post-cyberpunk, near future. Maybe interplanetary at most, but not interstellar. Greg Egan, or Strange Days, maybe some high-tech espionage, maybe a bit of special forces military ala Tom Clancy, maybe some Philip K. Dick. But this is all neither here nor there.

problem I have with Scifi muds is that it seems odd that the lasers and guns arn't one hit kills.

Guns aren't one-hit kills now, due to armour (most of the time, anyways). I'd assume lasers would be the same way (if you were wearing the right stuff and they hit it... it also depends where they hit, if your arm is shot you're going to be in pain / maybe lose it, but you're not dead.)

I'm really not sure why, but scifi MUDs just don't have the popularity of fantasy MUDs. This is true in most RPGs too. If you go to a hobby store, you'll see a ton of resources for fantasy RPGs and maybe some old copies of Traveller (a true scifi RPG) or perhaps some Shadowrun (which is sort of a hybrid fantasy/scifi RPG) or a few lone scifi GURPS among racks of fantasy GURPS. For myself, personally, I prefer fantasy though I do enjoy scifi on occassion or (surprise!) horror. But fantasy is still my choice. Anyway, my point is that it is probably not financially feasible to invest your time and resources in creating a scifi MUD (assuming you want it to be a successful commercial venture). But, who knows, I could be wrong!

I also really like the steampunk genre (yes, Magnagora was partially inspired by steampunk!).

I don't think we need to worry about guns not being one-hit-kills when we come from a place where I can stab you twice every four seconds with a long sharp hunk of metal and continue to do so for literally hours at a stretch without you even feeling discomfort.

Estarra: I rarely think much about profitability of my ideas, which is most likely why I'm down here playing games and you're up there running a successful business. But I enjoy what I do.

So um, how do those of us with four-year degrees apply to be coders again?

Email Roark@lusternia.com.

One thing I have always thought would be interesting in a MUD is the concept of pain in parallel to the existing raw physiological or mental damage. That is, hundreds of splinters sprayed into your flesh might not do a lot of damage, but they damn sure hurt. If you're sustaining constant wounding and not finding a way to deal with the pain, wouldn't you reach a point where you just pass out? It always amuses me when its a few hours after a battle and I check wounds and go, "Oops! Silly me, I forgot my arms were mangled to a pulp."

Oh, and I'd like to see a good MUD based on the Thomas Covenant series. Rapture or not.

yeah it would be good for more reminders that your having problems, like when your clumsy it tells you every hit but others you dont notice untill you do diagnose

For the same reason smashing a flail into someone's face doesn't kill them. Magic.

While I would love that, I think that's another very difficult conversion to do in any half-decent way.

With swords and physical combat, you see plenty of movies, and can picture in your head one person's skills vs another person's skill and how they dodge a hit, or move so it just cuts them lightly, or a stab through the flesh misses a vital organ... and there is close and personal combat. (Even Starwars focuses the hero battles on melee)

But when it comes to guns and really advanced technologies, I just don't see a "battle" happening. Sure you can have people standing behind objects shooting lots of times, but once someone finally gets hit, its about over, or you can take a few hits. But is every fight going to be where your not in the same room as the person? And if you are, how big are these rooms?

The closest thing I've seen is in like deathstalker or dune where they have these shields and guns that take so long to recharge that you go in for melee combat anyways.

Yay! Someone who knows what I'm raving about!

It could be done I think, it would just require a rethink of traditional mud structure such as classes, growing by bashing, etc. The difficulty wouldn't be in the mechanics though I suppose, rather in trying to capture the very abstract spirit of the author's work.

It'd be particularly hard to figure out what the game would be about without Covenant in it -- the whole Land is what it is largely because of how we see it through his eyes. That said, even without Covenant, it'd be a cool world; my concern would be giving people enough to do in it that wasn't diverging too far from what the book felt like.