COMMAND COMMANDS
COMMAND SYNTAX COMMAND RESULT
redit room.vnum ---enters the room editor for specific room
rcreate ---creates a dummy mobile
rclone room.vnum ---clones a room to your default zone
saverooms ---saves your default rooms
show rooms (zone.number) ---lists rooms
medit mob.vnum ---enters the mobile editor for specific mob
mcreate ---creates a dummy mobile
mclone mob.vnum ---clones a mobile to your default zone
savemobs ---saves your default mobiles
show mobs (zone.number) ---lists mobs
oedit obj.vnum ---enters the object editor for specific obj
ocreate ---creates a dummy object
oclone obj.vnum ---clones a object to your zone
saveobjs ---saves your objects (obsolete command)
show obj (zone.number) ---lists objects
zsave mob.name [or] obj.name ---creates a zone setting
show zone (zone.number) ---lists zone settings
show zone about (zset number) ---lists zone setting around number given
zset zone-set.num <value> ---sets the zone setting to specific value
savezone ---saves your zone settings
zpurge zone-set.num ---deletes specified zone setting
save all ---saves everything
ARMOR/ARMOUR
Armour should be consistent with its description, meaning an item such as
a cloth shirt is not expected to be good armor, therefore it shouldn't be.
Similarly, a tempered meteoric steel breast plate sounds rather impressive
and should be.
general type AC/stop weight(lbs) weight (mud weight unit)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
cloth: 1-10/0 1-15 lbs 10-150 mwu
leather/fur: 11-20/1 16-30 lbs 160-300 mwu
mail: 21-30/2 31-40 lbs 310-400 mwu
plate: 31-40/3 41-50 lbs 410-500 mwu
No armour class location should have more than 35-40 armour class
adjustment by any one item. Also, no armour class location should have
more than +3 stopping from any single item. If an item affects multiple
areas, the total armour class modification should not exceed 60 and the
total stopping should not exceed +6.
Equipment locations like ears, mouth, and eyes should in general not
modify armour class in anyway. These should be considered as locations for
jewelry and other accessories.
WEAPON/WEAPONS
SWORDS OTHER WEAPON MISSILE WEIGHT RANGE MAX DMG
pixie sword dagger/knife sling up to 8 lbs 10
short sword axe short bow 8-16 lbs 15
long sword hammer/club light crossbow 16-24 lbs 20
broad sword mace long bow/heavy Xbow 20-30 lbs 25
2H sword 2h weapons/polearms catapult/trebuchet 30-60 lbs 35
Note: The maximum damage clearly corresponds to weapons at the upper end of
the weight range.
No weapon should receive more than +6 total bonuses in +hit and +damage.
Examples: +5 hit and +1 damage
+4 hit and +2 damage
+3 hit and +3 damage
+2 hit and +3 damage
+1 hit and +5 damage
Also note that it is not necessary to use the total +6 in bonuses on
every weapon. This means that it is perfectly acceptable to have a +1 hit
long sword or a +3 damage club.
FYI: a training dagger: 1d3 damage
a training club: 1d4 damage
a training sword: 1d4 damage
SWORD/SWORDS
Basic Parts of a Sword
/ \ /i\ <--- point
| | |i|
| | |i|
| | |i| <--- foible (blade's weakest part)
| | |i|
| | <---- blade -----> |i|
| | |i| <---- fuller (the groove in some blades)
| | |i|
| | |i|
| | quillions (x2) |i| <--- forte (blade's strongest part)
| | / (forms the guard) |i|
| | / |i|
_|_|_ <--- guard |i|
||| V
||| <--- hilt (or grip) | <-- tang, the metal part inside
||| | the hilt
(_) <--- pommel
TSR
During the summer of 1994, TSR (tm) the makers of the role playing game
Dungeons & Dragons (tm) appeared on the internet and promptly began to
threaten anyone caught 'violating their copyright' on their products
(basically using their products over the net) would be promptly sued.
Therefore do not use any material from TSR sources. It is also a good idea
not to use any material from copyrighted sources directly because that is
plagiarism and a no-no also. If you can find the word in a standard
dictionary (single word and names, not phrases) it should be safe to use.
Names like ogre, orc, elf, dragon, giant, kobold, vampire are ok since
they are from folklore and mythology and have existed way before TSR (tm)
used them in their books. Remember, the word on the net is that TSR stands
for They Sue Regardless.
see also: MOB NAMES
MOB NAMES
The following mob names are traditional and should be safe to use:
ant, giant, afreet, alligator, angel, apparition, atomy, attercop*, banshee,
basilisk, bat, bear, beetle, behemoth, berserker, boggart, bogey, bogle,
brownie, bugaboo, bugbear, cacodemon, centaur, centipede, cherub, chimera,
cockatrice, crab, giant, crocodile, crustacean, giant, cyclops, daemon,
demon, deva, devil, djinn/genie, doppleganger, dragon, dryad, dybbuk, dwarf,
eel, elemental, elephant, elf, ent*, erlking, eoten*, fairy/faerie, fay,
fish, giant, frog, giant, fungus, fury, gargoyle, ghost, ghoul, giant,
gnome, goblin, golem, gorgon, gremlin, griffin, grimalkin, hag, harpy,
haunt, hellhound, hippocampus, hippogriff, hobgoblin, homunculus, horse,
hydra, imp, incubus, insect, giant, jaberwocky, jelly fish, kelpie, kobold,
kraken, lamia, larva, leech, giant, lemures, leprechaun, leviathan, lich*,
lizard, giant, lycanthrope (were...), mammoth/mastodon, manes, manticore,
medusa, mermaid/merman, minotaur, mold, mongrel, mummy, naga, naiad, nereid,
niebelung, nightmare, nisse, nixie, nymph, octopus, ogre/ogress, ooze, orc*,
ouphe, pegasus, phantasm, phantom, phoenix, piranha, pixie, plant, deadly,
poltergeist, pooka, rakshasa, rat, giant, revenant, roc, salamander, satyr,
scarecrow, scorpion, giant, sea serpent, sea lion, seraph, shade, shadow,
shark, shedu, siren, skeleton, slime, slug, giant, snake, giant, spectre,
spirit, sphinx, spider, giant, spook, sprite, squid, giant, succubus, sylph,
titan, toad, giant, triton, troglodyte, troll, undead, undine, unicorn,
vampire, virago, whale, wight*, will o' wisp, windigo, witch, wivern, wolf,
worm, giant, wraith, yeti, zombie
* are words or shortened words from Old English that have a very similar
meaning to the modern fantasy meaning of the word.
attercop = spider
ent = giant
eoten = 'ettin' = giant
lich = corpse
orc = demon
wight = man
FLAG/FLAGS
Flags with an asterisk after them in the online building editor are
either unimplemented as of yet or not usually settable for one reason or
another. Either way if there is a flag with an asterisk, do not use without
consultation with Ponder.
STYLE
o General Style: Indent all paragraphs three spaces. Between the end of
one sentence and the beginning of another there should be two spaces.
Small areas with well written rooms and unique descriptions are more
desirable than larger areas comprised of poorly written or cloned rooms.
o Room names: capitalize first letters of words in room names other than
(an, the, a, of, for, and) in room names, unless it is the first word of
the room name, then it is capitalized. Room names should be general and
vague in nature if they outside a town or city limits. Avoid room names
such as 'The Lair of the Red Dragon'. A better name would be 'A Cave
with Charred Walls'.
o Room descriptions: Room descriptions should be no less that three lines
in length and no greater than fifteen lines in length (unless the room
is uniquely special). Make sure no line is more than seventy-seven
characters in length and (if possible) no less than 70 characters in
length. Indent all paragraphs (including the first paragraph) by three
spaces. Between each sentence, there should be two spaces.
Refrain from placing in your room descriptions objects that can be
removed or mobs that can be killed. Since there is an autoexit feature,
it is not necessary to write obvious exits into a room description.
Closable doors, however, need to have mention in the room description.
Refrain from using descriptions more than once. This goes for
virtually every type of terrain: road, desert, forest, field, river,
etc... However, one exception is large expanses of ocean.
o Room extras: room extras are an important part of making a mud world
seem more realistic and divulging information about secret doors and
such. As a general rule of thumb, if in the room description there is
something that could be looked at mentioned in the description, it then
should have an extra.
With extra keywords, try to include both singular and plural forms of
the keyword. Example: wall walls, bush bushes, tree trees. Many
keywords can be entered in the same extra making it unnecessary to make
a separate extra for wall and walls, for example.
see also: SCALE
SCALE/SIZE
As a general rule, normal sized rooms used for roads (and roads only) is
one tenth of a mile in length. For hallways inside dungeons and other
buildings and roads within a town, room length should be figured to be about
ten to twenty feet in length. Normal "room" size is anywhere from 10'x'10'
to about 40'x40'. If your concept of the "room" is larger than this,
consider making several rooms to be that one "room". Example: the Storage
Closet is one room, but the Grand Throne Room is three (all with the same
name--the added two rooms implies a greater size).
see also: STYLE
OBJECT/OBJECTS
o Use the indefinite articles (ie: a, an) or the definite article (ie: the)
in your short descriptions.
o The name of your object is better known as the keyword. Since the mud
takes the first word in the name list for certain objects, please make
sure that the first word in your name list is the object's primary noun.
Example, the object: a red jeweled sceptre, name would be sceptre red
jeweled. If the the object name was red jeweled sceptre, in some actions
done with the sceptre, the messages to the players would be red, rather
than with sceptre. This is particularly important with food items.
o With food objects, please write an action description. The action
description is what the food object tastes like.
o Please take the time to write an extra description for your objects. On
most muds, you can look at 1000 objects and 'You see nothing special...'
all 1000 times. In an effort to make this mud different and better, take
the time to write a short extra description for your object. Think of an
object's extra description as the same thing as a mob's description when
you look at it, which it actually is. (For the extra's keywords, use the
same words you used as the object's name.)
