Danny:              00:02          Welcome Giants, Felar, Azure-Touched, Svirfnebli one and all to the Titans of Text podcast. We are your hosts, Danny "Austerity" Nissenfeld.

Eric:               00:20          and Eric Oestrich.

Danny:              00:20          And we have with us today, Rahsael, the God of Loss of Carrion Fields MUD. Welcome to the podcast, Rahsael.

Rahsael:            00:29          Thank you for having me.

Danny:              00:31          We're going to do a new thing, based on some, some listener feedback. I would like you to sell us on why I or anyone interested in playing a MUD should hop on carrion fields and start playing there.

Rahsael:            00:45          So basically Carrion Fields is vastly different from all of the other MUDs out there or at least many of the other MUDs out there. And that there is required role playing, deep role-playing and also a surprisingly in depth combat system as well. Player versus player with hardcore, mechanics and, and uyou know, the possibility of, of full looting. It's kind of Dark souls in text-based form, right? it's tough. It has a steep learning curve, but it's incredibly rewarding. And some of the, the best moments come from this, the sense of risk. The deep stories, the backstory is that the players have that the world has and that the different factions have. And I haven't found another experience like that anywhere else. Just the investment that you have in these, these characters that can die of old age. You know, essentially people grieve over their characters, they've spent, you know, 400 to 1200 hours in a character's skin and then the character dies and it just feels real. So again, I, I just, that's something that graphical MMO RPGs can't offer. It's something that the vast majority of other text based games can't offer. And it's something that's kept me around for over 20 years.

Danny:              02:15          So give us a bit of history of carrion fields. How did it get started?

Rahsael:            02:21          So essentially it was started by people who had come from another mud called Seas of Blood. And they decided they wanted to kind of make something similar, put their own spin on it. Back then, the 2400 baud modem was it was the standard and if you had a 14000, it was basically a, you know, you were really, you had a huge advantage. Add to that the fact that the server was based in Japan and it slow going, you know, as a, today's Carrion Fields is much faster and much more fluid if you don't have those kinds of issues. But there was also absolutely no role play required. There are people who are you know, where named things like truck, you know, or bolt thrower and, and ghost rider. But now those things don't fly. We are much more serious about the role playing and some things have persisted since then. Other things have have changed I think for the better. And differentiated it a lot from other MUDs that were around at the time and that are around today.

Eric:               03:30          All right, so let's get a bit more about you. So how did you get into muds and what's your history with them?

Rahsael:            03:37          I got into mud when I was pretty young. I was maybe 11 years old and I was looking for an online game that I can play and this is back in the days of like AOL and prodigy. And I remember I was playing a chess game online. It was a really simple chess game online. And I was just like floored by it. Like, Oh my God, this is so cool. And then I saw an advertisement for Gemstone. It was Gemstone III at the time. And I played that and I was so lost and confused, but the people are really nice and I just kind of realize like this is like, this is a ton of fun. I loved reading when I was a kid. So this was just, it's like being able to take part in a novel and it was just like the coolest experience. And eventually I think they started charging for that or I don't honestly recall the reason that I left gemstone, but know I ended up looking for alternatives and I played around on a few and then landed in Carrion Fields when I was, I want to say it like 13 or 14 years old.

Rahsael:            04:46          And you know, now I'm 36, so you know, I'm still involved and I'm not the only one. A lot of the people here have roots that run that deep in this game. You know, maybe they've left for a couple of years as I have at a time and then come back. But I do always come back because it just offers those, that the kind of deep nostalgic experience that I just can't find anywhere else.

Danny:              05:11          So you mentioned you've been on Carrion Fields for quite a while. How did you become involved as a staff member there?

Rahsael:            05:22          After while you know, I played and played and played and realized that, you know, I'd love to see the other side of curtain. Years ago, I had been on another project, another mud. I helped to found it and it kind of just like blew up. It was, it was called Rift Shadow and you know, it was really fun. It was really rewarding and I was thinking, okay, well, you know, I know Carrion Fields real well. I've, you know, I had all these ideas for like a religion that I'd want to run, you know, as a staff member and all these other things. And, and yeah, I eventually, you know, I pulled the trigger after a successful character and yeah, I just had a ton of fun. You know, it's much harder than I thought it would be. There's a lot of work, a lot of not fun stuff. Building areas sometimes can be really rewarding, but also it can just be agonizing. I haven't had this much fun with the games since I was pretty new and it's still like kind of like mystified by the whole thing. It's been, it's been like starting over you know, in a good way.

Eric:               06:27          What are some of the more interesting systems or mechanics that set Carrion Fields apart?

Rahsael:            06:35          So the game just celebrated its 25th anniversary. We've been around for a quarter century and start off as just like a ROM, you know, a typical ROM and people have just built on it. Many different people have built on it. Both in terms of story and in terms of mechanics over the years and in terms of mechanics, every single class has been just overhauled and customized. And so for instance, warriors are probably the most like customizable class we have. They can pick two weapons to specialize in. You pick a weapon to specialize in and you get a set of skills specific to that weapon. So you're kind of tied to using these two weapons with a maximum of 15 efficacy.

Speaker 2:          07:22          And then you pick two legacies. Legacies are like, you can think of them almost as martial arts disciplines or they're there in our game lore, they're taught by monks who are, you know, warrior monks who who teach you have to do special or extraordinary things. So some of them are offensive in nature, some of them are defensive in nature. Some of them are very flashy, some of them are very subtle. But you know, there are 36 legacies to choose from eight weapons and then hundreds of edges. Edges are extra little perks that you can pick up either through rewards from staff members or through exploring. And then you know, trading in points for certain edges that kind of give you, you know, a little bit of extra ability in some area or maybe covers a major weakness that your class might have.

Rahsael:            08:17          And then on top of that, there are eight cabals. Those are factions. And each of the factions give you different powers to accomplish the ends that the each cabal, seeks, right? So you have the, you know, the evil cabals have dark powers that are designed to counter maybe some abilities of the good aligned classes and cabals and vice versa. I'm not a math major. I'm sorry, but 36 legacies, eight weapons and, and all these edges and different cabals and everything. You can really have countless builds you would never have enough time to play every build just of warriors. Then you have thieves and you have conjurers you have Invoker and, and basically every class they're there. They're just so many different ways you can go so many different abilities you can acquire or accumulate in different ways and and just directions that you can go where you don't have to play the same character twice pretty much ever.

Danny:              09:18          How do you keep the game interesting for people that have been around for a long time, 10, 20, 25 years for some people. Is it the re-playability? Is it, is it people making alts or, or more characters if their character happens to die or are there people that find it interesting playing the same character for like you said, 1400 hours?

Rahsael:            09:42          Obviously these, you know, really old 12 to 14 hundred hour characters who die of old age, you know, who are the, usually they're like elves or dark elves because they have the longest lifespan. They're rare. They really are, because that's a lot of time and people, and you can also die permanently of constitution death. So every three times you are killed, whether it's by a player or a creature, you lose one constitution point and you can train it back up.

Rahsael:            10:13          There's some things that you can do and you know, to, to mitigate that. When you dropped down to three constitution points, your character dies. It's gone because they are, they're just out. Their life force is spent. And it's another thing that kind of ups the stakes a little bit. So death does feel like, yeah, it has consequences. But at the same time, that allows you a lot of deaths. You know, we're talking at least 50, you know, maybe more so, you know. Yeah, I guess it kind of, it prevents a lot of just like crazy kamikaze stuff for people who want to have a long lived character. But at the same time I think in most cases freak anybody out to the point where they're you know, just hiding from any encounters at all. You know, again, the most common way that a character goes out is by voluntary deletion.

Rahsael:            11:01          You know, somebody who it's just, you know, okay, well I've hit like 200 hours, 300 hours you know, kinda ready to for something new so I'm just going to delete, leave, you know, and roll something else, you know. But at the same time, these, these constitution and age deaths, they add a lot to the game in terms of just the emotional investment and the, the emotion of seeing, you know, seeing your friend die their last death in front of you when you fail to save them. It's just like heartbreaking. That's happened. That's happened to me a few times where it's like, Oh man, I failed the rescue of this person and now they're gone. Yeah. I've, I spent, you know, a hundred hours with this guy. We feel like buddies that that's something that haven't experienced anywhere else. For sure. Beyond that, what keeps people coming back?

Rahsael:            11:42          You know, there, there are changes and the changes have slowed down to some extent lately in part because we're focusing on outreach and social media efforts. I mean, it's just been continuously updated and improved for 25 years. And, you know, we're kind of at the point now where we're kind of just tweaking and and, and evaluating the variety of different classes and roles and the changes in, I mean, sometimes the immortals who run the religions and different cabals, these kinds of things will change their religions. They'll, they'll say, okay, I'm tired of this character. Just like players get tired of theirs and I want to try something else. So you might have a guy who's been been playing a super evil immortal for awhile decide, okay, I want to be, you know, the good guy now. And they'll switch and it might offer some, some different roles to players.

Rahsael:            12:38          And it becomes a real collaborative experience where these players are interacting with this religion, which is a creation of mine, right? And then they are creating their own roles and it becomes much more elaborate and they take it in places where I would never have dreamed and makes, it makes me feel, you know, my thing is better and it's a collaborative process and nothing stays the same forever in this game. Additionally, there are just so many different mechanical ways you could go. There's always something to do or there's something, there's always something new to try in every aspect. It's not the same game it was 10 years ago. It's not the same game it was three years ago, you know? So there's just a lot of change in flux and it's a, it keeps it fresh and fun while still being at least to the veterans very familiar. And to the newer players, if they're familiar at all with ROMs the mechanics will be very familiar. You know, there's, there's definitely some learning to do. In terms of areas and the specifics of all these customized classes, I think it's a, it's a great mix of the familiar and the, the constantly changing and new.

Eric:               13:50          Is there any high level of PVE content or is the end game mostly PVP related?

Rahsael:            13:55          Oh, there's plenty of PVE. So PVP permeates the entire thing. Player versus player combat permeates the entire game. A lot of the reason that people want to go to these really high level player versus environment areas is to collect things that will help them kill each other better, right? So it's kind of like there's an arms race, there are limited items. So there's some items where there's only one in the entire game and they're really hard to get. And if you die and somebody takes it from you, the only way you can get it back is by killing them. Right. And so again, it's just another thing that adds stakes to it and adds some kind of this emotional tension. Oh my God, I got this great, you know, crazy, unique sort of death.

Rahsael:            14:40          Now I'm afraid that I have to hold onto it. You know, it's kind of a, a mixed blessing. So we have these like dragon lairs that these are one of the, the the coolest things I think for the end game that, that are pretty unique. We have different dragon lairs for, you know, several different chromatic dragons, right? We have like the white dragon, which is an ice dragon, the blue dragon, a lightning one, the red dragon fire and they're all hidden all over the world. So you have to find these lairs and then once you find them, you have to figure out a way to get through them. And they're really complicated. They're not big in size. You can do them if you know what you're doing in you know, 10 to 15 minutes. But if you don't know what you're doing or if your group is really, you know, not quite equipped for it, it can be a longer slog and it can be really difficult and tricky.

Rahsael:            15:29          Those are fantastic, especially for the players who don't have hours to invest. You could do one at a time and then work your way up to fight Tiamat the, the mother of dragons who you know, by defeating each of these dragons, you gain certain advantages to fighting her. And that's, that's one giant thing. There's also one of the more mysterious areas that nobody has cracked yet. It's been, it's been in the game for years. Nobody's cracked it. It's the plane of shadow. Yes. This was in the game before stranger things and it was a, you know, it is a fascinating area as a, as a mortal, before I join the staff, I was just obsessed with it and I was trying to figure it out and it's just, it's so weird and cool and challenging and interesting. I never got all the way through it and nobody has, there's several other areas it can be really harrowing to get through and can take hours and hours and hours. Those I think are some of my favorites.

Announcer:          16:28          I'd like to take a moment out of the podcast to talk about NaMuBuMo, the national mud building month. It wisas a contest that we're currently running that ends at the end of October on October 31st and we invite you to build something to build a, a single player or a multiplayer world. If you'd feel like it just head on over to namubumo.com. You can read up on the rules and the criteria. It is a non competitive contest in which you just build a zone and a story and it doesn't have to be all that long. This year's inaugural criteria is a 100 rooms and at least 10 significant non-player characters. And by significant, as long as they have dialog or some way to interact with them, then that's great. And you'll be joining a, a number of other people that are already participating or maybe you started participating already. If you do clear the threshold, you will get a certificate announcing a, your participation in NaMuBuMo of 2019. So just head on over to that website and check us out.

Danny:              17:46          So there's a lot of PK in Carrion Fields. PVP. I mean, it asks you how you want to be mourned essentially when you first connect to the game. So how do you handle balancing that aspect of the game between players that have just started off, whether it be someone who knows nothing of the game or someone who's just making a new character and you know, veteran players that have characters that, you know, could probably one shot all the people coming out of the tutorial.

Rahsael:            18:23          Well, first off you are protected up until you pass level 10 and that'll take some time for a new player to get to. You have a newbie channel that will, you know, help and I, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that our community is fantastic. The player killing can be hardcore, but it's not, Oh, I wouldn't call the people who play our game ruthless. Right. If somebody seems like a new player, I mean, yes, you're going to get people are gonna wipe the floor with you left and right. But first off, if you're a brand new player, you're not going to be accumulating the, the limited, the equipment that's going to incentivize people to go after you. And second know people don't have fun just like wiping the floor with somebody who, you know, it was asking for directions, you know, for the most part, we don't have too many griefers really. And I've seen griefers in other games and our community pretty good. And in fact you'll find people, even evil characters sometimes, you know if a good character comes in, is asking for help, you'll see them kind of like really push the evil roleplay to the limit trying to like offer a little hints, you know what I mean? And you know they'll call them like, Oh, you stupid elf, don't you know that you just go West of Galladon for that. You know, like, it's heartwarming in a way to see characters really try to or players really try to help each other. Yeah. Nobody wants to chase away or drive away the new players. It's inclusive. Even if it is sometimes ruthless.

Eric:               19:56          All right. I guess kind of going with the, the ruthless nature, has there been any truly divisive conflicts coming out about PK and Carrion Fields and how did the staff handle it?

Rahsael:            20:09          You know, it's tough cause there's, there seems to always be an argument. And what's funny is, is that most of the skills that are being argued about or spells or, or tactics or whatever have been around for years, some of them from the very start of the game, you know a quarter century ago. So you'll see the people complain about, you know, whatever it is that they haven't devised a way to get around yet or maybe something that their particular character or build is just really vulnerable to. It's hard to just pick one thing because again, people, people will complain about the sleep spell which can be really frustrating to experience. You know, the necromancer for, you know, will come in and, and cast a sleep spell on you and it knocks you out. And then there'll be able to cast all these different maladictions. And you know, then basically you can't do anything while you're getting blinded and plagued and all these other things and you know, and then they're able to wipe you out. On the flip side, you know, if they, if they miss that sleep, they eat, you know, a full round of combat at least, and, and it's not unheard of for them to die immediately without any extra input after failing.

Rahsael:            21:24          So, so it's a high risk, high reward thing. You know, then once you look at the mechanics, there are a lot of different counters and ways to counter the counters and it just, it gets into a fun tactical place. But for people who don't know what to do to counter a tactic, that can feel pretty cheesy sometimes if you, if you're not armed with the proper knowledge. I can definitely see how it be frustrating. And so we've had, if you search our forums, you will see probably, you know, hundreds of threads about, you know, the sleep spell, you know, or bash, you know, or just really simple like, you know, typical kind of skills. And spells, you know, so, so generally what we try to do is we try to be educational about it. We try to open up a dialogue and and, and discuss different counters and, and make suggestions and we recently open to discord channel, I want to say within the last six months or so.

Rahsael:            22:26          And that's been really helpful because players are now able to kind of interact in, in real time and discuss. We have a strict policy where we don't allow them to discuss their current characters, but they can discuss tactics and gameplay and theory crafting and even ask administrators, you know, like how does this work? And often we try, we do our best to tell them without like revealing everything.

Danny:              22:49          So you of course play the deity of concealment, fate, time and spirit. You have an actual religion that the players can worship or join into. How does the staff play into the role playing one being actual the deities of religions that players follow? I was just in earlier, you have to I guess, note one of the staff members to gain membership. How much of a role does the staff play in the role playing?

Rahsael:            23:22          They can play a large role in some characters lives and they can play a minor side role and others, the idea is that a player can, or character can come to the shrine of a deity. You know, kind of like their church and they prey there. They can interact with members there. The idea is is that, or that the character has a role often and the character, will come to the, to the, to the religion, they'll bring their own backstory with them and it'll kind of become, you know, that it feels, it feels real. It feels organic often when you have a character coming in and wanting to join some religion and wanting to believe in this philosophy and apply it to their own life and their own goals and that kind of a thing.

Speaker 2:          24:13          And the, some of the different, yeah, religions have different structures just like, yeah, real life. Some of them are very structured, some of them are very unstructured. And the, the best followers, the followers who really get it and who, you know, devote time and effort and accomplish goals within the religion are often rewarded with a tattoo. And this tattoo is basically a permanent piece of equipment that bestows certain benefits to that character. And some of them have, ah, powers, special powers that they'll grant. And it's just like an extra, I wouldn't call it customization because it's earned through pretty intense role playing usually, and just a lot of work that a character goes through, right. And it's not something you could always count on getting, but it's a, it adds just extra depth and flavor and maybe even reward too.

Rahsael:            25:03          Sure. So people who come to my shrine, for instance, we'll have long talks about their backstory. We'll have long talks about what they've lost in their lives and you know, what others value in what they've lost around them. And, and you know, sometimes I give them projects and others have people who write literal essays on subjects within the game, within the, you know, they'll talk though, write an essay about the backstory of an area within the game and it'll go in a library and then other players can look at and read. Not everybody chooses to participate in this. It adds a lot of depth. It adds a lot of just a sense of being somewhere to the, to the actual game itself. And you know, it's something that I always loved as a player and it's something I really loved doing as a, it's my favorite part of being a staff member.

Eric:               25:58          So what's on the horizon for Kerry fields? Is there anything interesting happening in the near future?

Rahsael:            26:03          Well, you know, right now we are working on a special skin. I saw that you guys had interviewed Vadi over at Mudlet. We are making a special skin for mudlet that we will release on our website and encourage players to download that is just tailored through our game. And will, you know, help new players come to Carrion Fields fully armed with aliases, a targeting system, you know, health gauges, things like that. That might make it a little bit easier too to get in. It would maybe, you know, lessen the learning curve a little bit. Yeah. We know that text-based games can be intimidating for people who don't play text based games typically. And we just don't want just a scary black screen with nothing else to be something that factors into somebody's decision not to play.

Rahsael:            27:01          Not to give it a try, want to make it a little bit pretty visually pleasing to look at. Okay. And then on the other hand, the people who are familiar with text based games, we don't want them to feel like they are, they have a barrier. They have a a barrier in terms of like having a decent client and aliases and things like that that would put them on a, an uneven playing field, I guess. So, I mean, this basically a is being designed give everybody just a really solid starting point so there'll be able to keep up with veterans at least mechanically.

Danny:              27:34          Well, I would like on behalf of, of the Titans and all of our listeners to thank you for coming on the podcast with us today and telling us some really interesting stuff about Carrion Fields.

Rahsael:            27:49          Sure. Thank you so much for having me.