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What is Remort?

by Natalia

Remort is another one of those jargon words in the mudding community. This short article is of course intended for those who don't know what it means and to provide a short overview. We've had any number of people who have asked what the term refers to, and about 80% of the people who submit a new listing to our game list leave the remort question as "unknown", even though it should be a simple yes/no question.

Overview Definition

An old tractor

A nice old tractor, for John.

Once your character has reached a certain level and often a certain experience point value, you can have the character "start over". For example, on muds with 50 levels they may require you to reach level 51 in order to be able to remort or they may require you to be 1 experience point away from level 51. Occasionally, the requirement is to reach a particular level (e.g. 50) and attain some additional experience point amount before you can remort. Finally, remort is sometimes given as a reward for winning a certain number of quests or as a purchase with a large amount of money.

There are many, many different ways that remort is implemented so I'm just going to cover some typical examples and ways it is used. Just to avoid confusion, perhaps 1 in 100 games refer to this process as "rerolling". Just about everybody else uses "rerolling" to mean a chance during character generation to change your starting stats or when a player suicides/deletes a character to "reroll" them with better stats. For the rare game that uses "rerolling" instead, you'll know that it's just a different name for remort.

Typical Remort Systems

Remort can occur at different times:

a designated level, such as level 50 out of 100, where you have the chance to add a second class to your character to expand on his skills and spells
at Hero or Adept level (that is, when you have gone as high as you can without becoming an immortal) you are often given the chance to start again
or only after you have passed a designated quest point limit, or have earned enough money, or other similar systems

Remort affects your stats and equipment differently:

you almost universally keep your money and equipment, even though you have started back at level 1 or 2
sometimes you retain your current mana, hit points and movement
at other times you only get to keep a percentage of your current values (e.g. 50% of your mana, hit points, movement)
occasionally you start with your stats completely back to "raw" format, stripped of all level advantages
almost universally you retain the skills and spells you have already learned, at the level you have learned them to
on some games when you have reached a stage where you can remort, you are often asked by the game system ("You may remort now. Would you like to?") to remort; you can always say no and continue the way you are going currently
on many games you have to type in a special command ("remort cleric") in order for it to take effect
on a few games you have to ask a Wizard/God/Implementor to do the actual remort
finally, on a few games remort is a reward earned through a certain number of quest points or as a reward for a particular kind of gameplay

Remort can offer certain advantages:

maybe in choosing a second class you have retained all the skills and spells you learned and a portion of the hit points and mana goodies
sometimes you gain access to special classes with different and unique skills and spells
on some rare occasions you get to remort two or more times, and each different time through you have access to a different set of classes (all with their own skills, spells, and other advantages)
from a player's viewpoint, you have a better idea of the world and now have the advantage of actual skills or better equipment than you had the last time through; you are less likely to die as often and better able to handle the game world.

Why Have Remort?

There are many reasons for having remort, from an admin perspective. Most importantly (in my opinion) is that it gives your higher level players something to continue to work towards or for. It's frustrating having a bunch of really bored players who loved the game when they started (weeks or months ago) but now have nothing else to do. Obviously there are other things you can have them doing besides remort (special high-level quests, special areas just for those of that level, access to being guild leaders if they have made a certain level only and so forth), but it is another option you can offer them.

You can reward your long-term players with some nifty new classes or special skills and spells. Those that are willing to play your game long enough to earn the right of a remort will often continue playing longer and have more loyalty to your game. After all, they've worked hard to get where they are! These classes may be considered more powerful and hence more desired than the initial starting classes that everyone chooses from. They may have new spells or skills that are unique amongst the different classes. Finally, on games that use class-based equipment, adding equipment that only the remort classes can use is also a draw for players.

Finally, on some games the only way to have multiple classes is through the remort system. That is, you have to start over again if you want to have access to more than one class and one set of skills. On games that start out with multi-classing from the beginning this is probably not nearly as novel, but it can add some spice to those games that do not have multi-classing available any other way.

Ending

There are tons of games that have remort systems already in place. I highly encourage you to go check them out, if you've never seen such a system. I've had tons of fun actually getting a character to remort and enjoying some of the advantages of it! Obviously it works better on some games than others but there is a huge diversity in how the systems work so you're likely to find a game that is fun for you.

Natalia helps run Game Commando's with her husband Ilya.