The Song Dominion

Just finished setting up a page on the Song Dominion, the second of the player-inhabited civilizations we’ve announced!

You’re probably wondering what a player-inhabited civilization means in practical terms. If you’ve played our existing MUDs, they all have some version of player civilizations, usually expressed as cities or city-states. These are initially admin-created areas with player-run governments that exercise control over those areas. They’re the most important of the types of player organizations in our fantasy MUDs, and there are only a handful in any single game, since we want some player density in them.

Obviously, we’re going to have player civs in Starmourn (see the first line of this post!), but how they’ll be expressed will differ a bit from our existing games. You’re going to have to wait to find out how, but one thing we’re going to be experimenting with is a civilization that is basically for people who don’t want to deal with other players telling them what to do. In other words, though it – Scatterhome – will be a player civilization, it won’t really be ‘run’ by players, since that entails having control over your fellow players, which has both pluses and minuses.

I suspect it’ll end up either being an immensely popular option or a big failure, without much room in between. We’ll have to wait and see, though of course if the experiment is a failure it’s not too hard to fix.

Song City.

Song City.

 

6 Comments

  1. Andrew on October 25, 2016 at 12:57 am

    Oh man! I’m pumped!

  2. Becky on October 25, 2016 at 5:06 am

    I am so excited for all of this, and I love the concept of this experiment!

    • matt on October 25, 2016 at 5:07 am

      Me too. Having a new game that’s a blank slate to work from is exciting.

  3. Sairys on October 28, 2016 at 5:45 am

    Orgs that are functionally different would be pretty cool. It’ll be interesting to see how certain things are tackled in Scatterhome with regards to those aspects of org management that kinda need someone responsible taking care of them.

    The main thing which is awesome for me is that it seems like this would really mechanically introduce a different feel for each org. Standardisation is handy in some aspects, but having things function so differently means moving from one to the other is an actual transition. Someone who likes law and order may not really ever fit in in Shatterhome, nor in a civ that controlled by corporations where laws might only apply to those lower down the ladder. In turn it reinforces rp around that org which is even better.

    >_> Flexible guild/org design has been a dream of mine for a while. This would be even better if guild equivalents (if they exist) also get functional differences and purposes.

  4. TA on October 28, 2016 at 6:22 pm

    In regard to Scatterhome- So what like a common defense pact with an internal conflict exclusion?

    • matt on October 28, 2016 at 6:24 pm

      We’re not actually sure how it’s going to play out yet tbh.

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