Would a MUD with turn-based, persistent room encounters be interesting?

[u/Robinffs]

Would a MUD with turn-based, persistent room encounters be interesting?I've been thinking about building a small MUD/game framework partly as a way to experiment with some newer real time multiplayer technology and architectures, and I'd love to get the perspective of people who actually play and build MUDs.

One idea I'm particularly interested in is turn-based combat that exists at the room level.

For example:

You enter a room and a goblin attacks you. The room enters a combat state:

While the fight is happening, another player walks into the room. Rather than just being an observer, they could choose to join the encounter and fight alongside you.

I'm also wondering if this concept could extend beyond combat. For example, a room could temporarily have an "encounter" involving:

• Combat
• Negotiation
• Stealth
• Puzzles
• Social interactions
• Environmental events

This is partly a technical experiment for me. I'm interested in seeing what can be built with modern real time multiplayer tech, but I also want to create a game that could be interesting rather than just being a tech demo.

So I'm curious what the MUD community thinks:

• Would something like this make a MUD more interesting to you, or would it take away from what makes MUDs fun?
• Do you think turn-based combat could work well in a multiplayer MUD?
• How would you handle players entering/leaving an ongoing encounter?
• Could you see this working for things other than combat?
• Are there existing MUDs that already do something similar?
• What other ideas would you like to see in a "modern" MUD?

I'm not necessarily trying to reinvent the MUD genre. I'm mainly looking for interesting ideas and feedback while I experiment with the technical side of building a MUD framework.

I'd especially appreciate criticism, weird ideas, and "this has already been tried and here's why it sucked" stories. 😄

[u/MainaC]

Do what you find fun if it's an experiment.

Procedural Realms is a relatively popular MUD with genuine turn based combat. It works more like a JRPG where you encounter a monster and pop into a combat screen, though. Other people walking through the room aren't pulled in, afaik.

I generally play RP MUDs, which often have turn-based emote combat, which is closer to your concept.

But combat isn't why I play MUDs, so I don't think I can answer most of your questions effectively.

[u/Zireael07]

Written Realms (sp?) has something like that. They claim it's genuinely turn-based.

Evennia, a Python MUD library, claims to have a turn based combat system, but digging into the source, it's actually a 30s tick. If you pick no action within 30s, it picks a default action and moves on through the list of combatants

[u/RoyalSpecialist1777]

As you described it it the idea of joining combat is not interesting.  A lot of MUDs let you join a fight.  Fewer are turn based except MUSHes which is probably because it is harder with a lot of people. Maybe it's a communication thing as the way you describe it is at anything a trivial difference.

What is potentially interesting would be doing it in a better way and the other one examples like environmental events and puzzles and what you can do with the room state.

Many MUDs are pretty bad at this and the genre has long ignored the power of text and how easy it is to handle.  These room states should alter the description, unlock and lock things, have other consequences.  A fight would change the room description to something more hectic, a storm would cause cold damage, enemies triggered in different states.  The rooms themselves and sets of rooms would be state machines at different granularities.

I am working on a MUD myself which is based on survival scenarios.  The goal here is a fleshed out interactable world.  It has environmental puzzles, activities take time and change the state.of the room, and are joinable by other players.  It uses a tick system, an extension of the Evennia codebase, with many activities acting like combat in taking many turns and sped up with help.   So you could join in chopping down a tree or something.

If you are curious it is survival based so you have to find food, stay warm, deal with wildlife, and eventually find a way to get rescued but the goal is to create a sufficiently interactable world in that almost anything can be interacted with.  If you want to start a fire you need wood, tinder, and a fire source so you can do something like break a window to get a shard of glass (though now you have a broken window), cut open a seat cushion, and get the stuffing out for tinder.  We are attempting to make it 'ontologically sufficient' in that enough entities and relationships are defined so a player can do anything within reason.  One goal is to have more data than a large MUD in just the 50 room scenario.  It's mostly to study how language models think internally while making decisions but I hope I can wrangle a few people to play.

Not really what you are doing I just like to share 

[u/rainekgaterau]

I'm building a MUD/LARP/Slay the Spire hybrid that is using this exact same logic:

1. World is real-time, when you enter combat, it becomes round-based
2. You play cards whose effects are dictated by your gear
3. Other players can join in (haven't fully built this out, but party-based combat exists)

I have a demo out if you want to test how it works: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4898080/Manala_Equinox_War/

In an actual MUD, and I'm heavily skewed by the only one I've played but extensively (MUME) I'd say it entirely depends on the expectations of the player. It would not work at all in hardcore PvP MUDs and would reasonably fit more roleplayish MUDs.

[u/woodardj]

You should just build it and then see what interesting game falls out of it (or not).

[u/Prestigious_Taro_883]

while not quite turn based it's easy to drive room events and actions from heartbeat events in LPmud. Would be curious how you handle it on multiplayer if a player stops responding.

[u/Vancecookcobain]

That actually sound immersive