SmartMonsters' Bulletin Boards
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This is SmartMonsters' Occasional Newsletter
Volume 20 Number 3
[December 24, 2019]
New World for the Holidays Edition

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A NEW WORLD FOR THE HOLIDAYS

It's a whole new World!
Or quite an old one, depending on your point of view.

Our new game Midgaard is an homage and a throwback to the textual MUDs of decades past. Running on the TriadCity platform, it's an emulation of the core World of the old DikuMUD / CircleMUD adventure tradition.

Midgaard is a classic medieval-themed World derived principally from Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons. There are castles, dragons, Inns serving ale, magical fireballs, dwarves and elves and Warriors and Clerics. You go there to kill the monsters — although the monsters have a good chance of killing you. It's classic retro fun!

Our Midgaard is impressively close to the original, granted it's constrained by the TriadCity server platform to impersonate something TriadCity is not. Veterans of the original will note differences in small details. We're dead chuffed to have got it as close as we have, and, as we tweak it, those visible details become fewer and smaller.

Midgaard is a labor of love for us. It's where many of us first encountered MUDs as a medium and were astonished by their engrossing play and extraordinary potential. It's full of clever ideas, many of which became standards as the tradition evolved. Most importantly it's fun!

Midgaard is a completely stand-alone environment. You access it from The SmartMonsters Web site, or by pointing your favorite MUD client to midgaard.smartmonsters.com, secure port 9195, insecure port 9194.

It's also a component of the evolving TriadCity Universe. As a TriadCity player you can reach Midgaard through a portal inside the Museum of Tech and Industry in the Southern Third. As a Midgaard player you can reach TriadCity though a reciprocal portal inside the Reading Room at the Temple in Midgaard City. Which World you "belong" to and which you visit as an outsider depends on your perspective. Technically it's all one complex distributed server environment under the hood.

We look forward to meeting you there!

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NEWS OF THE WORLD

Prompted by this forum thread, TriadCity's implementation of ritual magic has taken a great leap forward.

Certain types of magic users - Healers, Malopaths, and Magicians - now have the ability to project their disembodied consciousness throughout the game World. This enables them to explore potentially dangerous areas without risk of physical harm; and it allows access to rooms beyond locked doors or exits guarded by sentries — one's Astral Body simply passes right through.

High-level magic users can additionally perform certain operations remotely through their Astral projection. Healers can remotely Heal, Malopaths can remotely Harm, and so on.

Magic in TriadCity isn't the "cast fireball dragon" variety from D&D or earlier MUDs. We model the western ritual magic tradition descending from Neoplatonism through the Renaissance Mages to the Golden Dawn and its descendants. Ritual is required to achieve necessary states of consciousness. Robes, magical implements, incense, magical circles and so on can contribute. Practitioners must be very highly skilled. Achieving the necessary level of ability is difficult and time-consuming.

Astral projection enables a form of player-versus-player conflict. Characters with the Magician Role can detect projected Astral Bodies and repel them. Characters at extreme skill levels can potentially send harmful spiritual charges via the practitioner's Astral connection which can cause physical harm to the magic user.

Our players who've helped test these new features tell us they're really fun.

We hope you think this is as cool as we do!

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NEWS OF THE UNIVERSE

Midgaard is the first new World on the TriadCity platform; there will be more. The two which are next on our radar are:

Zork! The classic single-user text adventure dating all the way back to 1977 on the PDP-10. Our version will model the refinements introduced by our own Gary Smith< - he's the guy who ported the original Zork from MDL to C back in the day. We're bringing old school to Generation Z via the TriadCity game platform.

Colossal Cave Adventure! The granddaddy of computer-mediated text adventures, from which all others ultimately descend.

We're not sure of the release dates. Watch this space!

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MILESTONES

Pushing 6,000 Likes for the TriadCity Facebook page. Holy moly! Our little page, all grown up!

And: nearly 1,000 Followers on ="https://twitter.com/TriadCity"]Twitter. Nice!

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Thank you for following us on social media:

TriadCity on Facebook
TriadCity on Twitter
TriadCity on Wikipedia

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Experience is 25% higher all day Saturday and Sunday Pacific time. Health and energy regeneration is also faster. Come join us then and rack up those levels.

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We'll spiff you if you refer a friend. Click for details.

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Thanks! Meet you in The City!

- Gary, Mark and friends

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SmartMonsters' Bulletin Boards
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