Shattered Kingdoms

Agreed, and agreed. I am really considering a checklist for the current game, so newbies have the ability to look at it, and mark off the things they know they know / understand, vs just scrolling through and not actually remembering. I may just casually/in the background make a one-off to try and develop something. I do want my friend's playing, and it's been so far like pushing a square peg to a round hole. Not working.

I like that idea. Having a newbie room interactive to help people learn the basics of the game rather than reading a long paragraph on how to play the game.

For example,

Have a room to learn scrolls called "Combat Basics 101 - Scrolls"
- Scrolls in cabinet. On the cabinet engraved ancient runes saying "get scroll cabinet"
- Have an echo when holding scroll - "As you hold the scroll, you feel a rush of energy flow up your hand and have the urge to 'recite' it"
- Make it fun by having it generate a gate to the next Combat Basics 101 room. Echo "Travel safe young one. May the next door you enter lead you to wondrous adventure."

Have another room for equipment called the "Dressing Room"
- Have a dresser full with newbie gear
- When you first wear the gear, have it echo "You feel the urge to -wear all- of the equipment."
- An usher walks into the room, and ushers you to the weapon room

Have another room called "Looks and Imagination." When a newbie his apprentice with no adjective nor desc. They get transferred into a place while they are sleeping...
- Shadows echoes "Who are you?"
- Shadows echoes "What do you look like?"
- Shadows questions "Whats characteristic is different about you?"
- Player enters their adj and adjective
- As you form your soul, you become the <RACE> you've always wanted to be and the <PROFESSION>
- Now your soul is complete, you are ready to fulfill your life mission.

Something stupid and fun like that to draw new players in.

It is my opinion that in recent years IMMs are just jaded and lazy about creating RP interactive content to make the game more fun rather than having a builder's mentality of thinking "if you build it, they will come."

If I understand what you're saying, this was a consideration when designing the new/current newbie school, redesigning it to be a little more immersive, better grouping of hints/tutorial and providing of the 'must-have' information/commands.

I can relate to the comments in this thread. In almost 20 years, I've only been able to introduce a couple of people to the game who were interested in such a text-heavy game environment. In my experience, it's much easier to bring somebody into a text-based MUD when their gaming history leans heavily on dice + paper gaming like old-school D&D and that focuses on character roleplay. It's much harder to bring somebody in who is used to graphics-gaming. The prior is very individualized, story-driven, starts more slowly, and takes more preparation to get started, where more modern graphics gaming is much easier to just dive right in, immersive where visual cues can guide the player much more quickly and easily.

Being a text-based game, means at some point in time, any player who wants to play will have to read that wall of text. The challenge is in feeding just enough of that text to get people started without being overwhelmed or bored by the reading; hone the balance between 'doing' and 'reading', communicating & reading necessary cues, making them visually accessible without getting lost in excess text. And doing it in 2019 with text-based early-1990's technology. The current staff may not have a lot of time to redesign the newbie area, but I'm curious what more could be done to improve the learning experience there. I like the idea of a 1-page newbie cheat-sheet available on the web-site that can be used as an easy reference for the most-used/most-needed commands for the newbie diving in.

I will make a character if you make general discussion viewable.

That's an easy change that will immediately increase your pbase by like 25%.

This is fair. An increase of 2 players would be about a 25% increase.

The Gods are not amused that a mere mortal is trying to leverage them in any form. You sir are beneath them.

Serious note with a dash of trolling/sarcasm:
SK has 3 active players makes up of 75% of the pbase? SK is moving up in the world.

I saw 9 the other day. I was both excited and sad. Lol
...still waiting for an update. Was hoping a Christmas present or a New Years present. But I’m starting to think we need to just eat our Holliday ham and like it.
...and now we don’t even have our Holliday Ham.

Be patient padwan.

Or they are just dangling the carrot... but I'm sure its on the IMMs to do list. Dulrik usually have final say, and IMMs meeting are very private, so you wont know until it happens. If Dulrik shoots it down, you may not never know.

Right. That’s what I’m saying.
I’ve been checking the forums every day to see if an announcement for an update drops. I’m hopeful. But at the same time, I’m not even co dude that’s that anything is being worked on.
I’m half convinced that with the numbers dwelling, the Thuban bans, the Finney “let me take over for six months” rant, and all the other turmoil that has happened in the last year or two... does Dulrik even want to put anymore effort into this game for us?
I had an imm reply “Dulrik is aware of this.” But that doesn’t mean he’s wanting to do anything about it.
To have him say “I’m working on an update and am considering some of the things mentioned” would be encouraging enough. But as it stands for me, I’m unsure if we’ll ever get another update. I’m wondering if he’s just watching the game burn out.

Maybe I’m just too pessimistic sometimes. Who knows.

Hi Yed (and BAI7l7) (and all) -

To try and review/summarize -

The history of the people I'm trying to get in the game -
1. Yes have table topped, but actually have some other MUDding history in them.
2. My fiance and his friends WANT to dive in (they loves the culture/history/depth of the game) but got overwhelmed with the disorder of information, and lack of priority, and actually learning what makes SK SK as far as getting off the ground effectively.
3. There are definitely ways to make the newbie school more immersive. SOME of the rooms in the newbie school I have noticed actually do this. Others (such as the room with Stella, and perhaps before) are lacking.

To staff and whomever else - I would rather invest the time into assisting with this project than my next character, because I want more people to play the game with. And, I have a good half dozen or so folk who can test the progress, as they are truly newbies to the realm of SK. I think some of what got lost in translation with the latest newbie school upgrade, is how it effectively turned into a reference guide, more than a fun way to delve into a game. Don't get me wrong. It is a good reference guide/refresher to those returning to the game, and perhaps people who learn most effectively by reading alone. I've created a new character to more or less sit in the school and (re)take it in. BAI7l7 gave some good examples of improvements.

The question is on the table how to save SK. Some comments mention inactive staff. I think if we have a few veteran players working with the staff that is active, we can get this done sooner than later. At least, I am hopeful. Happy 2019.