Shattered Kingdoms

I have seen a MUD or two as I've hopped from MUD to MUD looking for one that seems to 'fit'... where the staff are able enough, with the size of their playerbase, to monitor specific non-generic NPCs, so that if someone speaks to one, the NPC can respond appropriately, in a sort of spontaneous animation.

Then I've seen MUDs where you can contact staff via a command like 'pray', to request an NPC in the room be animated, with sufficient reason. "I.E. The NPC is an official you need to speak with, ICly."

And then, there's those pitiful MUDs, where the NPCs are just that. NPCs. You can't ask staff to animate them for any reason without advance notice and planning, and staff do not monitor them actively, or at least do not animate them much at all without an event being tied to it.


Does SK Fall into one of these groups? Or is it in a group on it's own? If I poke the Empire's magistrate enough times, will the magistrate react? If I talk to a named priest in a temple, how likely am I to get a response?

I would personally LOVE if SK fell into that first group, but I can understand how that's not always possible.

There are certain NPCs that have keywords you must speak to them in order to initiate a conversation. Typically these are ways to begin a quest. And occasionally an immortal with some time on their hands will animate a NPC and interact with PCs. But as far as animating any particular NPC for some sort of RP (like a ships captain to preside over a marriage or something), that's prolly not gonna happen. Unless you find a not so busy immortal and sweet talk them into it. Then again, maybe I'm stupid, cause I've never even had that thought. But I've also never heard of or seen that happen. Sorry. Its still a great MUD, tho. Props for SK.

The good news is that yes, you can use the PRAY command with the out-of-character prefix (ooc) to let any immortals online know something is happening.
HOWEVER, please understand that:

• you're chasing a very narrow audience with your appeals for interaction. Compared to the number of mortals, there are very few immortal players, so if you're hunting an admin you're hoping that there is one or more online at the time + that they aren't building (builders probably won't see your notifications) + that they have the time to assist you.
  
• There's no automatic mechanism for non-player-characters (NPCs) to notify immortals that they are being slowly poked to death, or any other kind of 'service please' bell. As a general rule builders are not allowed to put scripts on NPCs that spam notifications to the pantheon as it could easily get very annoying, very quickly. As the game has upwards of 50,000 unique rooms, we can't be everywhere. While there isn't an NPC in every room, I think you can understand why there's no automatic 'interact with me' button on them.
  
• There are probably only about 4 or 5 NPCs in the entire game that have custom made scripts on them to send up some kind of echo to the immortals, usually after the character has jumped through a few hoops.
  
• There are, however, hundreds of quests in the game where you can interact with NPCs - whether it be challenged and obtain rewards, information, coin, experience, etc. These all take place without assistance from an immortal behind the scenes.

While this may paint a slightly more bleak outlook that what you were hoping for, note that mortal player-characters wield quite a lot of power. There are law enforcement groups (leaders of which have the ability to pardon), as well as other powerful tribunals and cabals to discover.

I think it depends on what you're asking. From my experiences, the size of the IMMstaff over the years seems to wax and wane with time. Sometimes it's very difficult to get anything done. Other times, you might be able to push several things through at once.

If you're expecting NPCs to always be animated around you, then you are asking too much. Most times, however, an immortal is willing to animate a NPC on request. (Note: For scheduling reasons, this may not always happen the day you want it.) And there are times where a member of the staff will animate a NPC without being requested at all. Truthfully, it varies depending on schedules and current staff obligations.

Rest assured, the staff does try to create role play with mortals in a variety of ways, including the use of NPCs.

I remember my roommate was playing for his first time and was just having a great conversation with Seraniym, not realizing that she was an NPC. After a few minutes of the wonderful one-sided conversation, Seraniym started talking back. That was pretty cool.

I fondly remember the episode that made me really fall in love with the mud. Bren (old MC giant shaman) was hauling me around to visit trainers (way before the mentor system), and I decided to be "totally super awesome" and salute a legionnaire - who then mysteriously decided to salute me back and ask "Sir Bren" if things were alright etc.

Of course, it did take me a month or two to realize that it was tribunal powers in effect - I even think I still have the log saved.

Perhaps my favorite imm interaction was when I was playing Everika. I had a corpse of Varden embalmed and tucked away in the necropolis because...well, that's just how she rolled. Anyways, I was hanging out there practicing spells, and I guess I got snooped or something because I got this room echo something along the lines of "Did you just see the corpse move?" Well, I played along and it went on for five or ten more minutes and it really gave me an opportunity to explore and showcase Everika's personal brand of dementia.

I loved that interaction, and it didn't involve anything more complex than some room echoes. I re-read that log every couple of months, just 'cause that's how cool the experience was.