Roleplaying

I’ve gotten the question, “What’s the roleplaying going to be like in Starmourn?” a couple times, and thought I’d clarify.

The short answer is that, like our flagship MUD Achaea, Starmourn will be roleplay-encouraged.

What does Roleplay-Encouraged mean to us?

It means that on the admin side we encourage roleplaying but we don’t force you to do it. However, we do ask that you not disrupt other peoples’ roleplaying, and keep OOC chatter to appropriate channels and places. It means that if you want to talk about last night’s League of Legends championship, you can, but we ask that you do it somewhere where you’re not imposing that on a lot of other players. It’s fine if someone overhears you talking about something OOC – we just think it’s reasonable to try not to shove it in the face of people who are interested in roleplaying.

We think that most players see the value in roleplaying, but that most people don’t want to roleplay 100% of the time. As such, the balance is what’s important, which boils down to encouraging roleplay, discouraging players from interrupting other players’ RP with OOC, and giving players the tools to roleplay. Fundamentally, OOC messes with some peoples’ immersion. That may not be you, and that’s fine too – many people play our games (like Achaea) and barely or do not roleplay – but it’s a matter of respecting other players’ experiences and not intentionally ruining them.

Will there be rewards for roleplaying?

From the admin-side, no. It’s not really possible for us to be anything remotely consistent in giving admin rewards for roleplaying, and there’s no way to do it automatically. We may consider a system where players can give minor rewards to other players for good roleplay though, with some light admin oversight.

Will there be admin-run, story-based events?

Why yes, yes there will be!

Will they be awesome?

Excellent, hard-hitting question. Yes!

Having said that, story-based events are a huge time and resource commitment and so in the immediate aftermath of Starmourn’s launch, we’re likely to prioritize bug fixing, quality of life improvements, and some features we’ll want to get out soon after launch, before diving into events too much.