Why Immort?

Why Immort and how

There are many reasons to become an immort. Some are good reasons, some bad. The best reason is, “because you enjoy Sloth and want to give something back”. The bad ones are many more, but easy to list: because you want power; because you want respect (excuse me while I laugh, hard to type like that); because you want to write the biggest baddest mob with the neatest eq ever; because you think that you’ve got more ideas than every immort put together. Of those, the only one that’s likely to get you wiped is the first one; the rest will just get you frustrated very fast.OK, OK, it’s a free planet! You need to write a submission and send it to any admin for processing. Your submission must include:

  • Your real name, as well as the name of all characters you play. If you share characters, you must indicate with whom. Indicate which o­ne of your characters do you want to immort. Name changes aren’t allowed (they used to be, but not any more).
  • An area idea. A map is good but not necessary. The area must be 40-60 rooms big and fit within Sloth: no aliens, no requests for a new continent, etc. You have to indicate where would the area go, what kind of players do you have in mind (is this for huge groups of Lymers, or for soloing newbie druids?), any special information (for example, “the whole area will be nogate” or “this is based upon Aztec mythology and I used such and such place for reference materials”).
  • Samples of room and mob descriptions, about 10 of each.

The descriptions should follow the following guidelines:

  • Any area you submit to Sloth must be completely original. It must not exist in another MUD, it must not be a direct copy of a game module and the descriptions must not be copies from anything. You can use other people’s works for inspiration, but do not copy.
  • Avoid telling people what their characters do. This is usually known as the “no youses rule”. Telling people “it is very cold here” is correct; saying “you have never been so cold” or “you shiver in the cold” is wrong.
  • Do not assume that people move around the area in a given direction. Even if there is only one entrance into your nogate area when you write it, somebody else might put another area that creates a second entrance; also, people who go in do tend to come out.
  • Spellcheck it.
  • Descriptions should have 4-10 complete lines. They should be written in Courier or another fixed-width font, with each line between 70 and 75 characters long. The first line for each paragraph in a room description begins with three spaces (“indented”); paragraphs in mob and object descriptions should not be indented.

Indicate also what kind of work would you like to do. For example, if you want to be more of a writing imm, a coding imm or hold lots of quests.

The admin will check your submission, looking for any big errors. He may send it back, asking you to make some changes. Don’t send it again without making the changes! Once that first admin is satisfied with your submission, he will forward it to the rest of the admin. The submission will be evaluated taking into account: the quality of writing, how well you work with others, whether you’ve got a history of troublemaking, how do you respond to criticism and anything else they can think of. SlothMUD is non-discriminatory, but we also don’t have any quotas to fill: you will not be rejected on grounds of being from Kuala-Lumpur, but being from Kuala-Lumpur doesn’t mean we have to accept your submission, either.

You will have to move any equipment and gold from the character you want to immort to other characters. Equipment should never be moved between your mortal and immmortal characters. You will be given a range to build in. You will be asked to write your office, with the immort who has received you staying there to give you pointers with the commands you need to use. You’ll get all these nifty new powers (but maybe not as many as you’d like). You will be assigned a walker to work with you. This walker is a more-experienced writer who will review your rooms and mobs, promote you to 42 once you’re ready to start working on mobs and generally assist you. You should work _with_ your walker, not against. Walkers are willing to listen to reason, but things like “asking Mommy once Daddy said no”, trying to pit a walker against another, or refusing to make changes “because it’s my area and I’m sticking to it!” are a great way to shorten your life.

PLAY