Have you ever wanted to work on a professional MUD?
Iron Realms Entertainment is looking to hire a new part-time coder for Starmourn. In this position, you would be working with Eukelade (Laura Lindborg), the lead Producer for Starmourn. Even though your primary job revolves around code, you would be part of the visible face of the MUD to the players. Applicants need to enjoy communicating with players in addition to being a skilled programmer.
While we don’t expect you to have all the following skills, the ideal candidate for Starmourn would:
- Be a coder. You don’t need to be a Google level engineer, but you do need to be good at programming.
- Be currently working or running an active MUD. If you don’t work on a MUD, you’ll definitely need to be someone who loves to play them. If you stopped playing or working on them years ago, we’re not interested. We prefer to have someone with significant MUD experience and being part of a team, whether commercial or non-commercial.
- Be a fan of MUDs. That doesn’t mean you played them for 2 months six years ago.
- Be a creative, disciplined, and logical thinker. Even as a coder, you will be part of the Starmourn development team. You must be able to code game design systems and also assist in creating logical systems. You need to be able to see the big picture as you add these features to a game with hundreds of intertwined skills.
- Be a people person. Our players are very passionate about their games. You must be able to communicate with them in a calm, collected manner when they are upset about the latest nerf to their favorite class or system.
- Be self-motivated. You’ll be working from home. You must be able to focus and get things done in that environment. We don’t care where you live and we won’t be telling you what hours to work. We have a couple of weekly meetings that you are required to attend with set times. Outside of that, you can plan when to meet with the producer and what times you would like to work.
- Be familiar with Starmourn or even other IRE MUDs. This would be great, and it will make getting into the code much faster. It is much easier to know what parts of the game need balance if you’re familiar with all of the intricacies.
This is a part-time position and compensation is based on the candidate and their qualifications. There are opportunities for raises and future full time employment. Employees will receive a quarterly bonus based the performance of the game. Just to reiterate, this is a part-time position and the pay will reflect that.
If you think you might be able a good candidate please send an email to resumes@ironrealms.com with the subject line “Starmourn Coder”.
Discuss this post on our forums or on our official Discord channel.
For several years, our enthusiastic playerbase has been discussing Starmourn in an unofficial, fan-made Discord channel. In fact, the community has grown to such a great size, and has such a great moderating team, we’ve decided to take steps to improve the Discord experience and integrate it more fully with our game. Starting today, the Unofficial Starmourn Discord will now be known as the Official Starmourn Discord!
Here’s a few questions you probably have, and, hopefully, answers to these
questions.
Q: What will this change for people who are already active participants in this online community?
A: The biggest change is the presence of the #newbie channel, which is a mirror of the newbie channel in game. That means people on the discord can talk to people currently in the game, and vice versa. We hope this will increase the pool of available people new players have to talk to. Note that #newbie will have some mild slowmode features enabled to prevent spam, and we expect all chatter taking place on it to be discussions and answered questions that serve to grow and support a new player’s journey.
Q: Ok, anything else?
A: We’ve integrated the in-game Conflict and Deathsight channels to display on our Discord. Other things that have changed are the links to the Discord channel on our website, Facebook, and forums. We’ve also brought Bandus, our hardworking Discord moderator, into the ranks of the Starmourn “Storytellers” (though he’ll continue to just do what he does best and run our Discord, unless he wants to do more!)
Q: Does this mean I can file issues and bugs in the Discord?
A: Nope! Issues, bugs, and other things will continue to be filed through all the regular in game channels. Talking on Discord about changes you’d like to see is also not guaranteed to get a response from the development team – use the IDEA command, or start a new thread on the forums, for a better chance of a discussion that sticks.
Q: Will the Starmourn staff be actively moderating the Discord?
A: Because of the ever-scrolling nature of the Discord, it’s impossible to enforce the rules from our forums and game there. We are going to continue to enforce good behavior in both areas with seperate moderation strategies, but because it’s currently impossible to link game accounts and discord accounts with any consistent accuracy, consequences for poor Discord behavior will be limited to Discord, and consequences for poor game behavior will be limited to the game.
Q: Will the regular community question and answer sessions continue?
A: Yes!! We love those!
We want to thank Bandus for all his hard work over the years. Without his efforts (and the supplemental efforts of player moderators like RocketCat, Chimera, and Ordarris), we wouldn’t have been able to do this. So thank you, Bandus, and welcome to the official team!
Interested in joining the Official Starmourn Discord community? Click here to start chatting!
Discuss this post in our forums!
Over the last week, millions of people have protested the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. Citizens of the United States and other countries are demanding justice and equity. We’re seeing a movement for change that hasn’t been seen in our lifetimes, and it’s long overdue.
First, we stand with the Black Lives Matter movement. We stand against racism. We stand against police brutality. We stand against systemic injustice.
That said, what are a bunch of words from our little company going to do in the grand scheme? Not much. Real change doesn’t come from making posts on social media and sending newsletters. Real change comes from taking direct action. Real change comes from replacing ineffective and bad leaders and changing harmful laws and procedures.
We recently watched Barack Obama’s speech about the George Floyd protests. We’re not going to pretend everyone shares his political views, but we feel Mr. Obama made good points that transcend our differences.
His main point was that while the protests highlight problems in our society we need to combine protests with action and create realistic solutions based on research and data shown to effective. We need to make local leaders put evidence-based procedures in place that we know work. If you haven’t watched this presentation, here is a link:
In short, protest if you’re willing, and then take other action as well. What action can you take? You can call local and national leadership, sign petitions, and donate to charities and programs. And, of course, you can and should vote out those who act as impediments to change.
Many of us at Iron Realms have been out protesting and making donations to a wide variety of groups related to Black Lives Matter, and we strongly encourage you to do the same. Here are some of the groups we’ve been giving to, in case you’re looking for somewhere to give and aren’t sure where:
- https://blacklivesmatter.com
- https://www.restoringjustice.org/
- https://www.knowyourrightscamp.com
- https://www.naacpldf.org/
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
- https://action.aclu.org/give/now
- https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory
- https://www.nlg-npap.org/donate/
We’ve also found this to be a useful top-level resource for all sorts of info and resources around BLM:
We’re living in historic times. Let’s all work to make sure we come out of this better than we were before.
In solidarity,
Jeremy Saunders, Matt Mihaly, and the Iron Realms team.
Starmourners, for the past two weeks, our game, and the rest of the Iron Realms games, have been raising money to donate to a special charity. Here to tell us how we collectively did (spoiler: amazing, and I for one am so proud to have been a part of this) is our President, Jeremy Saunders.
Iron Realms Entertainment is excited to announce a donation of $15,000 dollars to the Covid Heroes Fund from RIP Medical Debt. This is a direct result of your credit and pet purchases. Everyone at Iron Realms would like to thank our players for their generous donations. The support and response to this effort was amazing. Players purchased over 500 pets in the last two weeks.
Your donations will help American first responders and healthcare workers by purchasing and abolishing their medical debts. Healthcare workers around the world have been laboring nonstop to assist the sick and elderly during the global COVID pandemic. Many of these people have struggled with inadequate safety equipment, protection, and wages. Combined with the financial stress of job loss and medical debts, many of these families are struggling to survive while continuing to help others in their communities.
Your purchases help relieve the pressure on these families.
You can read more about how this money goes to work on their website. https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaigns/
RIP Medical Debt will make a purchase of debt with your donations later this month. The moment we receive the details about this purchase, we will share the details with you.
I want to thank you for helping make a positive difference. Your support encourages us to continue finding ways to help our local and global communities.
Jeremy Saunders
To put things in perspective for everyone, $15,000 in donations will purchase a substantially larger amount of medical debt – it could be as much as one hundred dollars per dollar donated. That’s incredible, and will make a huge difference to people who really, really need help. So from everyone staffing Starmourn to everyone playing Starmourn, thank you for your part in this. We could not have done it without you!
Dynasties have been a unique feature of Starmourn since launch, and they’ve been well overdue for an update. That update has arrived – along with some bonus changes to how player factions are run! Let’s go over what’s new when it comes to dynasties and factions in Starmourn.
Dynasty Changes
Complete Customization. Rather than relying on the number of members in your dynasty, you can now simply purchase upgrades to your dynasty with marks – which will be subtracted from the dynasty account. So start saving, and get your family running exactly the way you want it to.
Secret Societies! Ever wanted to make a secret club with a cool name like the Order of the Faceless, the Tenth Shroud of Gallen III, or the Black Hats? Anonymity is now among the many perks you can purchase for your dynasty. When purchased, the leader can toggle secrecy on and off, and member identity will not be disclosed when speaking on the dynasty’s channel. Dynasty info will no longer reveal the leader or who can induct, and dynasty logs will also be shrouded in secrecy.
Quality of Life Changes! A whole bunch of tweaks and changes have been implemented to make dynasties easier to navigate and more pleasant to be involved in. Among many other things, leaders can now mute troublesome dynasty members from talking on the dynasty channel, anyone can RENOUNCE their surname if they tire of wearing it, and, long requested, dynasty members will at last be able to see their designs.
More New Perks! Dynasty members will now be able to purchase the STORAGE and SHIP perks. The storage perk works identically to faction storage, while the SHIP perk transfers ownership of a ship to a dynasty so that everyone can use it.
Faction Changes
New to factions are a few tweaks to how leadership works in the Celestine Ascendancy and the Song Dominion.
Automatic Rank Gain for Leaders: People in leadership positions (Leader and Council) will slowly gain rank over time as they stay in office. To go from rank 1 to rank 6 through this process will take a few months, but will allow leaders to focus on actually leading, rather than grinding rep! The rank stays if that person no longer holds office.
Leader Honors: HONORS <person> will no longer display their faction rank if they are part of leadership but will rather indicate that they are in a leadership position
Whether your goal is to run a whole system of government, start a secret society, or just have a small, cozy family, there’s something for everyone in the dynasty update. We hope you’ll log in to check it out!
…
Oh, and, before I forget, a quick reminder! Until the end of May, Starmourn (along with the rest of the Iron Realms) is donating a portion of our proceeds to the Helping Covid Heroes charity fund. There’s just a few more days to help if you want to get in on the action or claim one of our limited edition charity minipets, so read the details here. Starmourners, we can’t thank you enough for what you’ve contributed so far. The response has been out of this world!
Hey Starmourners. Eukelade here, to introduce a very special message from our CEO, Matt Mihály. I’ll have more Starmourn-specific things to tell you after the letter, but for now, let’s read what Matt has to say! I think it’s pretty important!
Greetings, citizens of the Iron Realms,
I hope everyone’s doing as well as they can in these plague times. I feel like we’re living through a really badly-run event in one of our games, and whoever is running the event has completely forgotten that they’re supposed to be fun.
In any case, while people are being laid off left and right (my wife was laid off last week), Iron Realms is in a position where our work hasn’t really been disrupted. We all work from home offices anyway, and remotely working together is baked into our company’s DNA. We haven’t had to lay anyone off because of Covid, in fact, for which we’re all grateful.
So, we want to do something to help. We looked around, and decided that we want to support a charity called RIP Medical Debt. It got some fame a few years ago when John Oliver bought $14m in medical debt for $60k and gave it to them to retire.
What they do is buy and pay off the medical debt of people for whom it is a large financial burden, at 1 penny on the dollar. In other words, $1 can pay off $100 of someone’s medical debt. For those of you who don’t live in the US, our health system here allows people to go into crippling debt because they got sick or injured, to the point of financial ruin. According to one study from 2019, about 530,000 annual bankruptcies in the US are at least partly-caused by medical debt.
In this case, RIP Medical Debt recently started a fund – the Helping Covid Heroes Fund – that specifically buys up and pays off the medical debt of healthcare workers and first responders who are seriously financially burdened by the debt (so a doctor making $300k isn’t getting her student loans paid off by this, for instance).
I saw that and immediately thought, “This is what we want to support.” The impact per dollar is just so high.
We’re going to be doing two things for the rest of this month:1. Each game is creating a minipet that’ll be for sale on the website for $5. 100% of revenue from these will go to the Helping Covid Heroes Fund. https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaigns/
2. We’re going to donate 20% of our revenue (minus revenue from the minipets as we’re already donating 100% of those), up to a max of $12,000, for the rest of this month.If we raised $12,000 from #2 and another $3000 from #1, that’d pay off $1.5 million in medical debt for Covid heroes!
We’ll announce how much was raised after the bookkeeping is done in early-ish June, and donate the money raised then as well. It’s not a world-changing amount, but it could be life-changing for the people whose debt is paid off.Finally, we’re also going to increase daily free credits available each day until the end of the month – your game producers will post details themselves there.
Stay well,
–Matt/Sarapis/Aurelius
CEO, Iron Realms
Thanks, Matt! We at Starmourn are really proud to be part of this initiative. Let’s go over how this will affect Starmourn players specifically!
- As the letter said, we are donating 20% of our net revenue for the rest of May to the RIP Medical Debt Fund.
- For the rest of May, Daily Credits on Starmourn have increased to 30 available per day, AND the first two daily credit tasks you do a day will give you double the reward!
- Available for purchase on our website are two items – a HugTech Friend-o-Matic[R] and a miniature blood darter. Both items are exactly five dollars, and we will donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, as Matt explained. Here are the descriptions for both items:
The HugTech Friend-o-Matic[R]
Do you love your HugTech Adorabuddy[R]? Of course you do! Adorabuddiez[R] are designed by the finest Cuteologists in the galaxy to be as appealing as possible to everyone! But have you ever wished your Adorabuddy[R] was just a little more, hmmm…alive? You’re in luck, because HugTech Industries is proud to unveil the Friend-o-Matic[R]! Simply give your favorite Adorabuddy[R] to an unactivated Friend-o-Matic[R] robot, and watch it transform into a lifelike companion! Don’t worry, your original Adorabuddy[R] won’t be consumed in this magical process – after having its personality scanned and extracted, your beloved toy will be returned to you. Available for a limited time only. (HugTech Industries is not responsible for any psychological catastrophes resulting from damaged Adorabuddiez[R] or Friend-o-Matics[R].)
A miniature blood darter
Bred from the huge, aggressive flying insects found in the swamps of Ghenla, the miniature blood darter is the product of relentless experimentation by a Fantom Laboratories branch on Biloxan. Despite the many laws governing the export of blood darters off of Ghenla, this smaller, more docile version has apparently diverged far enough from its parent species (and, perhaps, enough money has changed hands) to make the restrictions and penalties of owning one decidedly murkier.
These are limited items, and will ONLY be available during this sale. We hope you’ll buy them – it’s for an excellent cause. Once again, if you want to read about the charity we’re supporting, heading to https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaigns/
Thanks for reading this far, Starmourners. Stay healthy and stay safe.
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