Farwoods Graphical MUD

[Farwoods]

Hello, folks! I'd like to take the time to tell you about a project we're working on called Farwoods. We're a small indie team building what is, for us, a passion project, a free-to-play online roleplaying game set in a land of talking animals where everyone you meet is another player. These sorts of games live and die on their playerbases, so we're trying to get the word out right now, and given that the game (and its walking, talking critters) are inspired by Redwall, I figured you might be interested. You can read a little more about the gameplay on the website, but the basic idea is this: a persistent world without NPCs, where character advancement is tied to time spent playing and not repetitive grinding or combat, so that you can make any character you want and play them any way you want, and you'll still be able to get better at your skills.

Here's some pictures from the closed alpha:



We currently have 12 races in the game with plans for at least 4 more down the road. Each race has up to 6 visual variations that don't have an effect on gameplay, but help you set your character apart. Different races have different starting stats that help classify them into soft "roles," but ultimately can be customized to do whatever you want them to do. The game's 9 stats are prioritized for each character, with the first stat gaining 9 points and the last stat gaining only 1. From there, you can choose from some of the game's (currently) 70 traits, taking on weird quirks for bonuses or sacrificing one stat for another. There are some basic traits, like pacifism, blindness, muteness, and deafness, and also more specific or complex ones, like only being able to speak and understand your racial language.



Once you've created your character, you'll spawn inside the Morenth Library, the game's only PvP safe zone and the hub of skill advancement. From the bookshelves there you can scrounge for skill books, which you can use to spend your skill points on things your character can do. Each skill has one or more stats it depends on, and your scores in those stats heavily influence both how quickly you can learn it, and how good you are at it at an equal skill level. You also receive a limited number of skill points, and have to wait to get more through intervals, which award skill points after a certain amount of time playing. In this way, players are encouraged to specialize their characters in a few specific things and take on jobs within the player economy. What those jobs do is entirely up to the player, dependent on how they imagine their character.



For instance, a character might specialize into combat skills, mixing and matching to create their own style of fighting. Then, they have a choice of many different informal professions to choose from: They could be a bandit, and make their living beating up other players and stealing their things. Or, they could become a bodyguard, and find someone who needs protecting and get paid to do it. They could find a player shop that's getting shaken down, and offer their skills to make it safer for customers. They could choose a specific part of the map, and charge other characters to be able to pass through unharmed. They could try and establish some sort of guard presence in an area, and take donations in exchange for chasing off violent animals. They could even pick up just enough survival skills to keep themselves fed, and wander the world as a wayfarer, seeing what kind of trouble they can get up to without a specific goal.



The backbone of this persistent world is the burrow system, whereby players who've been playing for a while are given an item that allows them to place a permanent home for themselves on the world map. This creates a named burrow hole on the map, which can be locked (so that only the owner can enter) or unlocked (so that any player can freely enter and leave). Unlocked burrows can only be locked when they have no other players inside them. These burrows can be dug out however the owner chooses, and decorated for free with doors and countertops, but any other furniture has to be acquired from other players. Doors can be locked and unlocked by the burrow owner at any time, but by acquiring keys from a blacksmith and assigning them to doors in your burrow, you can give other players the freedom to move through specific areas in your burrow. You can use this system to create any kind of structure you want: a home, a shop, an inn, a faction base, etc.

If you've read this far, thank you very much for your interest! I encourage you to follow us on Twitter and ask in this thread any questions you may have about the game. The Twitter account also has many progress reports showing the pace of development on the game and the other features we plan to add. I hope this summary has ignited some creativity in you and that you're thinking about the characters you might want to make and play when it opens to the public. Right now much of the game is still in flux and few, if any, of the assets are final, but much of what we intend to add is already in place and playable. The game will be entering public alpha soon, and will eventually have a Steam release. Thanks for your time!

[Verdauga]

I'm not into online gaming much, but this does seem interesting. How long has it been in development?

[Farwoods]

I'm not into online gaming much, but this does seem interesting. How long has it been in development?

I would say that this is more akin to a persistent roleplaying environment than a game per se. It's like a tabletop RPG that's run by a server and co-DMed by its players. It's been in development in closed alpha since May of last year.

[Tungro]

Seems interesting enough, not really the style I frequent however

[Farwoods]

We wrote some stuff on the language system in the game. Maybe you'll be interested in reading it:
https://twitter.com/FarwoodsGame/status/1445700734448594945
https://twitter.com/FarwoodsGame/status/1445701778771623945

Hop into our Discord to participate in our free, open alpha playtesting events: https://discord.gg/kcStdHHuE6

Did we mention we have a Linux client now?

[Farwoods]

Here's a post on our latest skill to be added, Jewelry: https://twitter.com/FarwoodsGame/status/1446988585584955392

Also, some screenshots from our playtest yesterday:

[Farwoods]

More screenshots from our playtests.







Also, a note since I've received several comments on the open PvP nature of the game: This is a roleplaying game. Combat is a necessary part of the economy, and strife a necessary part of stories. It is not permitted nor particularly supported by the mechanics to grief other players, as the mechanics of this game are heavily geared towards cooperation between players and the formation of factions. But combat is a valid playstyle, and brigands, mercenaries, and guards are all valid characters to play; it is just expected that fighting will involve talking and roleplaying. Typical MMO tactics like spawn camping are not possible.

[Farwoods]

We will be expanding our playtests to both Thursdays and Fridays from 5pm EST/10pm UTC to 10pm EST/3am UTC!

[Farwoods]

Hello everyone! Weekly playtests continue after the holiday weekend, Thursdays/Fridays from 5PM EST to 10PM EST (late joiners welcome). People have also been playing on and off throughout the week. Part of our playtesting is attempting to play the game as we expect it to be played after release, albeit with relaxed rules. We expect that, especially with the larger map we have planned for the beta, players will split off and form factions throughout the world, and we expect these factions to have conflict with each other. That's happening now, which makes this a great time to hop in and get involved with the community. Here's a list of niches in the game's economy that are currently underfilled:

- Smithing
- Woodworking (and wood armory)
- Combat-focused characters of any stripe
- Mining
- Blue, gray, green, red, and white magic

If any of this sounds interesting to you, especially if you're looking for a new roleplaying environment to immerse yourself in, join the Discord and our community will happily help you acquaint yourself with the game. The more the merrier!

[Farwoods]

Alpha screenshots for your Sunday. Some of the players have been building a settlement out in the untamed forest!

[Farwoods]

One of our players had their character drawn by @KolatBlue on Twitter:



I suspect there will be more such commissions in the future.

[Russa Nodrey]

That's really cool. I like the style.

[Farwoods]

We now have a custom-made forums solution for the game!

https://farwoods.net/forums

Feel free to check it out and get to know some of the characters that play.

[Farwoods]

Warriors rejoice! By popular request we've added two new types of craftable weapon to the game: axes and spears.



Also, our playtesters continue to find and document new bugs for us to fix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhAxlgDfMk

[Farwoods]

Hello everyone! We've been continuing to work hard on the game, including our moderating and game master toolkit. The latter has reached a point now where we feel comfortable hosting a special event! This event will be aimed at playtesting the combat system on a larger scale: so far, players have mostly been involved in one-on-one duels, but we expect when the game is released that high-stakes combat will most likely take place between groups. We hope that players might even organize dedicated factions, and that these factions might (amicably, at least OOC) go to war with each other and schedule battles between their warriors. If you're at all familiar with SCA and other hobby reenactment groups, the structure might be familiar for you.

Anyway, here's what you can expect from this event:

• Two teams of prebuilt characters of the same interval with appropriate skills and equipment.
• You will receive a special version of the client to connect to the event server.
• The event server will retain your normal login information.
• Your account will be assigned a character and team to maintain balance.
• The event will take place in a separate game world and map, so your existing characters/items will not be present.
• Whichever team downs every member of the opponent team at least once will be the winner.
• There may be multiple rounds depending on how long it takes and how enthusiastic everyone is.

Given the length of the play session you will have some time before the fighting begins to familiarize yourself with your character and abilities and allies, and possibly even spar with your teammates before going out to battle. So don't worry about not knowing what you're doing. All the characters will be created ahead of time and added to your account with appropriate skills and equipment. Since you will need to actively participate in combat with them there will only be 1 character per player.

The event will be held some time in the week of 3/28-4/4 depending on the availability of people who express interest in participating. If you haven't tried the game before, this event is the perfect opportunity to get your feet wet, since everything will be provided for you. All you have to do is log in, socialize, and fight some critters, and there will be plenty of veterans on both sides to help guide you. We are hoping for at least a 4v4 fight, so anyone reading this who wants to show up and give the game a try will be contributing considerably towards that goal.

Forum thread: https://farwoods.net/forums/thread?id=69
Official Discord: https://discord.gg/kcStdHHuE6