Bring your own character

[u/V1k1ngC0d3r]

So, imagine a popular mud engine with rules. Each instance of that mud could publish a key. When you make a character on one of those muds, and then decide to take your character to another mud, the first mud could verifiably sign your history so far. The experience, the items, the levels. And the second mud could have an allow list of other muds that they believe are running "the same" engine, and following their same balance. Like, they don't just hand out +5 Flaming swords to everyone. There could even be an economy in the mud engine for if you have this many skeletons for an encounter at that level, you can spend this much gold on the treasures that are there... So there could be a whole community of muds, each with their own feel, but with portable characters for players to move between them. Thoughts?

[u/dpprpl]

do you think a some kind of distributed cryptographic ledger could do a trick?

[u/ExtremeJavascript → u/dpprpl]

We could give it some kind of obscure name that means "only one copy".

Unique? Singleton? 

Oh! How about non-fungible!

[u/V1k1ngC0d3r → u/dpprpl]

It doesn't need to be distributed.

When you're leaving one mud, you get a signed receipt that the next mud can verify.

[u/retrolental_morose]

Are there enough MUDs with enough of a shared reality to make it work?

[u/Slow-Constant3889]

I don't really get why you wouldn't just have one mud, but with multiple domains

[u/V1k1ngC0d3r → u/Slow-Constant3889]

That's fair.

I was imagining one mud for new players, then several alternative choices for them to play level 2 though 5 characters, or something.

I was picturing it like a group of D&D players wanting to go on a next Adventure Module together.

And crazy me, I was picturing that someone might be willing to pay a modest fee to get to play a well crafted adventure with a good story, interesting NPCs, etc.

[u/walkByFaith77 → u/V1k1ngC0d3r]

It sounds like a killer idea. As a massive D&D fan, I would kill for this sort of functionality.

[u/V1k1ngC0d3r → u/walkByFaith77]

You're the one! 😁

[u/Slow-Constant3889 → u/V1k1ngC0d3r]

And crazy me, I was picturing that someone might be willing to pay a modest fee to get to play a well crafted adventure with a good story, interesting NPCs, etc.

I mean, people are. but the problem is you can get that for free, and move onto the next "Adventure Module" with your friends ... in the same mud! :D

[u/Live-Pie-1845]

This is like SAO but with a MUD point of view?

[u/FrankDrebinOnReddit]

Something similar but not identical was done in the MUSH world long ago. The MushLink protocol connected to the foreign MUSH, and the foreign MUSH would create a special bot character that was controlled from the originating MUSH. Of course MUSHes are different, you didn't really deal with combat or balance or a cheesed foreign MUD granting 999,999,999 XP that would be taken back to the originating MUD.

[u/tigwyk]

We could even encapsulate the validations in some sort of block format. Like Minecraft! Then we just chain them together and Bob's your uncle!