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Articles for Phantasmal and Innsmouth Developers

I've repeatedly recommended the various Skotos articles. Not only do I have definite personal favorites, there are also definitely articles that are more relevant to Innsmouth or just generally more informative and specific than others. But I haven't been very good about telling anybody which ones. This page is meant for articles, Skotos and otherwise, that I consider strongly relevant to Phantasmal's or Innsmouth's development in one way or another. Or, y'know, I just think they're cool. Whichever.

Don't take a column's lack of presence on this page as an indictment -- I haven't listed everything I care about, everything I liked or even the best stuff that's relevant to Innsmouth. But this gets something up that I can recommend to people.

From "Trials, Triumphs and Trivialities" by Shannon Appelcline

• Objectionable Economies, a description of object economies and what you need to do to make them work. Not yet relevant to Innsmouth, but eventually...
• Hobgoblins, Part One which describes global versus local verbs. Particularly relevent to parser debates on the Phantasmal bboards.
• Hobgoblins, Part Two on things like inheritance (multiple kinds) and consistency. Good stuff.
• The Dynamic Dilemma, Part Two discusses spawning. Note how Phantasmal doesn't do simple spawn points yet? Read this. Do it.
• What a StoryBuilder Can Do, a description of the basics of the Skotos toolkit. Probably outdated by now.
• The Power of the Medium: Individualized Output is chock-full of stuff that Phantasmal currently does nothing with, but eventually I'd love to.
• The Power of the Medium: Text! tells us yet again that Shannon Appelcline knows damn well what makes MUDs excellent.
• Building Blocks: Rooms begins the incredible Building Blocks series. Read them. Read them all.
• Building Blocks: Details. This one is extremely relevant as we sketch out Phantasmal's details, which are currently probably too much like Skotos'.
• Building Blocks: Names. Another brilliant article in the series.
• Building Blocks: Maps has some lovely observations on mapping and consistency.
• Building Blocks: Zones is definitely not the best of the bunch, but still quite valuable.
• Future Memes, Part Three: Settings and Physics. Shannon throws a lot of curveballs to get you thinking. This is one I consider particularly Innsmouth-relevant.
• Building Blocks: Portables is about a lot more than that. It explains some of why I've been merging so many types of Phantasmal objects with such zeal.
• Building Blocks: Data Inheritance explains data inheritance and why it's not code inheritance. What I'm planning for Phantasmal has a lot in common with this, though with some subtleties and differences.
• Building Blocks Examples: The Hologram Nexus puts all this Building Blocks stuff into practice. I recommend reading those articles first or it won't make that much sense.
• The Elements of Good ScaryTelling, Part One: Haunting Themes My experience has been that to deal with subtle storytelling in online games, you quickly start talking about horror games. Even if that's not what you're building.

From "Notes from the Dawn of Time" by Richard Bartle

• His article list is on Skotos. Mainly he writes long series of articles, so no one individual article is as satisfyingly linkable as with Shannon Appelcline.
• His early stuff, from about 9/20/2001 to 11/28/2001 explains a lot of why regular inheritance (not data inheritance) is nifty but works indifferently for MUDs. Worth a read if you're thinking that what we need is massive inheritance.
• After that, from about 1/2/2002 to 7/3/2002, he analyzes parsing in fearsome detail.
• And then he works on mobile AI and planning, including having mobiles figure out what they need and give you quests based on it. That's as far as he's gotten.

From "MetaStatic " by Sam Witt

• Sam Witt tends to briefly describe his ideas, with which I usually agree vigorously, but rarely goes into very much extra detail on them. So again, he doesn't have many articles that I find massively linkable.
• The Value of the Random Dungeon describes a basic approach to building vast expanses. Overall I agree with it. We don't have SAM (or Sam) on Phantasmal, of course.
• The "Death of a Thousand Cuts" series is more specific, though, parts One, Two, Three , and Four . I'm not sure if I'd take this approach, but I know I respect this approach to keeping player power manageable and the game running reasonably. It's the basis of a real object economy, among other reasons.

From "Storms on Cloud Nine" by Scott Holliday

• Despite the name, Evil and Wickedness is basically just a guide to creating decently believable NPCs within current AI constraints.

My stuff!

Since I've now got my own Skotos column, I may as well plug it. NeoArchaeology is me, and I'll put these up as they go up. Well, either that or I'll just put them up when I remember to...

• Toys in the Attic is my first column. It's a quick survey of free MUD development stuff.
• It's Based on Actual Math is a run-down of how object descriptions get big if you write very many.
• Got A License For That?, got posted to SlashDot (the commentary was thoroughly inane — did nobody read the article?). It's about license issues for MUD development, and how they're currently crippling it.
• Labor-Saving Devices is a follow-up to 'It's Based on Actual Math', and describes how you can avoid having to write quite as much prose and still get good descriptions.
• Real Innovation is about a whole lot of 'brand new' features that we don't need to see any more of, and a few we'd like to.
• Procedural Content Generation is about trade-offs in having the MUD randomly generate areas for you. Read it if you're thinking about doing a large algorithmic wilderness.

From Delphine T. Lynx's "Daedalian Musing"

The column isn't applicable to Phantasmal most weeks, but a couple of the articles are very good and all are at least tolerable.

• His article Boo? is a good explanation of how to start scaring players in your MUD. I agree with, oh, about 90% of it.
• Dungeon Crawling?: Caves is a summary of what makes caves interesting settings in a MUD. That's neither here nor there. But the same article has truly excellent unpredictable ways to get players into and out of MUD settings

Miscellaneous

• Mu's Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design hits a little of everything. Game balance, what you have to do in a fantasy game to keep idiots happy, everything about medieval and fantasy objects and their economy, game design wisdom... Pretty much everything's excellent, but do not, under any circumstances, skip the Food Basis section. It's probably the best article anywhere on how medieval geography and agriculture holds together.
• Uncle Figgy's Guide to Good Fantasy explores the 'realistic' effects of magic on a fantasy setting. It talks about various types and levels of magic, and the social effects that those magics would have on other professions.