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As a result of discussions on the Bulletin Board we have several scenarios:

• Every new player must pass through the area.
• We have 2 of these areas, one for total newbies and one for new-to-Tharsis players.
• Players can opt to pass through these areas.

We have brought the discussion to the Twiki to complete the design and then split it up for Builders to produce.

Add your comments and thoughts to the Discussion section and completed design to the other relevant sections.

• Outline
• Goals
• Design the area
  • Suggested order of rooms in the area
• Discussion

Outline

We shall design this area in two discrete steps:

1. List the goals.
2. Design the area.

Goals

Basic training

• How to get help.
• How to move.
• How to talk to other people.
• Basic world-interaction: look, look at
• Inventory manipulation: i, get/give/drop/wield/wear

• Self examination: score, score quests, stats, skills
• Combat
• Exp, Skills, Levelling
• Quests
• Guilds
• Add more here...

Advanced things - Is this a third part of course that you dont have to take right away?

• buying/selling
• Auctioning
• Rearrange stats, response block/dodge
• Add more here...

Design the area

Suggested order of rooms in the area

1. How to look, look at, search (done in first room - look tells you to look at something, look at tells you to search and search finds a note telling you how to move into the next room.)
2. How to move (move into second room), can go back
3. How to talk to NPC (NPC in second room who you talk to and who drops a key when you do), can go back
4. How to get something (Get the key)
5. Inventory command (i)
6. Using items (use the key to unlock the door)
7. Give (NPC asks for key back and then tells you to go through into the next room), cant go back
8. Learn more about self (score, stats, skills. Each of these in a room of their own), can move around in these rooms.
9. Combat - (move into a room where an NPC tells you about combat then move into another room where you have to kill something to move on)
10. Raising skills (spend your exp - training room which will only allow training of one skill for gold found on corpse. NPC in this room will tell you go go back and get the coins from the corpse), can go back but monster won't repop.
11. Enter a grid of joined rooms which ultimately have one exit to the outside world. These rooms each describe concepts: Quests, Guilds (which has exits to the three guilds), Buying&Selling, Advanced Combat, Auctioning, GP, Alchemy, Gossip. Hide a key in these rooms which must be found via search to unlock the door and let you into the game. Unlocking the door completes a quest.

MISSING HOW TO LEARN ABOUT "HELP" & HELP rules

Lets give the drawing tool a try for the map:

• Room 1: Login room Welcome to Tharsis Gate......to do...

Discussion

• I don't think that the area should appear like a normal area, room descriptions should be talking directly to the player and describing game play. For example the first room could be like Welcome to Tharsis Gate. Tharsis Gate is a MUD. A Mud is ... In the MUD world you move around by entering the name of an exit. For example this room has just one exit called continue. Move through that exit now. -- FantoM - 26 Jan 2003
• Also a back exit in the tutorial. -- MikeBedlam - 29 Jan 2003
• Or have a talkative mob that follows you through the course -- PumaN - 26 Jan 2003
• Its important that the Tutorial Mob doesn't spam the screen while you're trying to read the room descs. There should be no other spam like gossip, or even any contact with other players through tells. Maybe other players get the message "Player is on the newbie tutorial, you will have to wait until they're finished to contact them." when they try to send the newbie a tell. Once newbie has gotten to the page that discusses the newbie channel then they can begin to ask questions there. The Tutorial Mob could be a mob that responds to various questions and only talks about certain subjects listed in each new room it follows you into (The back exit would allow you to ask about an older topic.) -- MikeBedlam - 29 Jan 2003
• I'm all for having a quest in here, which can result in the player gaining a little experience as well as being introduced to quests. -- FantoM - 26 Jan 2003
• At the end the newbie should be given a test. If they fail, they have to redo the whole thing (no matter what.)A fail would be answering any of the test's, say 10 questions, incorrectly. Upon completion the newb could have a message like: "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE PASSED NEWBIE SCHOOL!" Then the Tutorial Mob hands you a certificate saying you passed. Reading the certificate would talk about what you got as a bonus. The certificate would briefly describe quests, would list the small ammount of exp you just recieved, point to the 'score quests' command and note that newbie just recieved 1QP(Quest Point). At the end it could say something like "Type 'show certificate' to brag to other players." heh heh -- MikeBedlam - 29 Jan 2003

• 1. What are the 10 basic directions for movement around the MUD?
  • Suggest we only ask for some directions, not all. -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 2. What is the command that tells you information about your character?
  • score/skills/stats/etc? We'd have to accept several here or phrase it differently. -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 3. Which 2 commands show you the lists of players currently online?
  • Name 1 command which lists the players currently online? -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 4. Which command allows you to view details about another character?
  • "Look at" or "finger" ? Suggest this Q becomes more of a "how can you get more detail about an item" (look at/examine) -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 5. Where is Miguire's General Trading store from login?
• 6. Where is the First Bank of the Prime Material Plane located from login?
• 7. What help file refers to joining of guilds?
  • Suggest this becomes generic do they know how to use help. -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 8. How do you get to Ishtar from login?
  • Suggest this becomes something about teaching them to read books. -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003
• 9. Where is the Adventurer's Training Area from login?
• 10. What command toggles brief/verbose mode?
  • Not really something they HAVE to know. how about kill or something? -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003

-- MikeBedlam - 29 Jan 2003

• Further information would have to be set for the player to read. There are plenty of other help files they should familiarize themselves with. The Tutorial Mob should ask if you've read 'help newbie,' 'help guilds,' and all sub-categories under 'help.' -- MikeBedlam - 29 Jan 2003

• I'm actually against the whole concept of a tutorial mob that follows you round - maybe there could be several mobs that appear in different rooms to help you through different stages. -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003

• While I'm not against the concept of a quiz as the quest I think some of these questions are out of scope of the tutorial. I don't think learning the world map is part of it (thus axing Q 5,6,8,9). -- FantoM - 30 Jan 2003

• You (Fantom) mentioned a possible 2 seperate areas. I Think all of the things we've mentioned so far, including locations of basic places for getting started are essential to getting a quick-start into playing right away. And secondly, for the complete MUDs-in-general newbie to learn basic MUD commands. So we need to come up with what these 2 different areas would entail. Perhaps 1st = Intro to Tharsis Gate Newbie School, and 2nd = MUD Newbie Basic Training. More detail needed. -- MikeBedlam - 31 Jan 2003

• At this time I think that maybe we can get it all into one area with sections that people can ignore if they are more experienced. -- FantoM - 10 Feb 2003

• I think new players should start out at the login room and have a note pop up similar to the 'news' notification that says "Type 'ready' to begin your tutorial or 'decline to tutorial' to refuse it" so experienced players can skip it. -- AarDvark - 04 Mar 2004

• Add your comments and thoughts here.

Attachment:	Action:	Size:	Date:	Who:	Comment:
area-map.draw	action	1730	26 Jan 2003 - 03:34	FantoM	TWikiDraw? draw file
area-map.gif	action	991	26 Jan 2003 - 03:34	FantoM	TWikiDraw? GIF file