Pokemorph Below

If you’ve ever played a MUCK, MUSH, MOO, or MUD you’ve probably seen a game like Evennia before. But if you haven’t, or if you’ve never worked with an Evennia based game before, this will be your guide to getting started with Pokemorph Below.

Unlike the now common Massively Multiple Role Playing Games, like the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy XIV or the venerable World of Warcraft, text-bassed RPGs eschew all graphics to really let creative writing take the front seat in interactions between individual characters. Scenes can be crafted either with game staff playing the role of a Game Master, or between players themselves based on the descriptions in individual areas and the setting of the game. In these games, the server itself functions as a back end to help with understanding character’s relative powers, or track their stats and abilities to be able to act as a neutral arbiter to help craft the experience while maintaining fairness and guidance so that everyone can have a good time.

The most common things to know beyond character creation are how to pose, say, navigate, and spoof. These will be explained below, and more advanced topics can be found in the article listing following.

Navigation

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Your character exists within the world in a place. Places are known as ‘Rooms’ and are a discrete location. Rooms can be considered “In Character” or IC which are designed for roleplaying, or “Out of Character” which are locations meant to handle system interactions, or talk player to player without using other commands.

The most basic command for Navigation is the “Look” command, either look or l. By default, this will look at your current location, which is normally going to be a Room. You can also look at other things, such as players, things or objects, and even exits! This can be done with look <object name> or l <object name>. Let’s grab an example of looking at a room:

A room consists of the following parts:

• Room Name: CC GUild Lobby. This is the name of the location, generally to give a rough idea of what the room is representing.
• Room Tag: Optional, rooms may be tagged with a Location (Such as a City) or IC/OOC in the upper right Corner.
• Description: The description sets the stage for any scenes taking place within them. These are generally designed to be descriptive enough to allow for anyone to start roleplay. They can contain specific events if such is happening in that area, or change when something happens to that area In Game, such as a building burning down, or there being a change in the Non-Player Characters around.
• Player List: This lists the players in the scene, color coded for Player, Admin, or Developer and will often indicate if someone has been idle (has not interacted with the game in a while) or disconnected.
• Things or Item List: This lists interactable objects within the room.
• Visible Exits: These are ways to ‘go’, to get to other rooms. Rooms are connected into a “Grid” where you can travel from point of interest to point of interest. You can go ’thought’ the exit by typing the exit name (e.g.: “Hall”) or by using the shortcut listed in []’s (e.g.: “h”).

Interacting with Others

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Collaborative storytelling is all about the collaborative part, so once you know how to locate where you are in the world, next is how do you interact? The key commands for this are say, pose, spoof, and the channel system. For these examples, we will assume your character name is “Matilda”!

Say

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Say is the basic method of interacting. It will take the test you give it, and prepend your character name and ‘says,’ like the following example:

say Beef is great!

Matilda says, “Beef is great!"

This is a bit limited, although you can add in addition double quotes to add some action into the result:

say Beef is great!" Matilda shuffles her feet, "But I guess salad is good, too!

Matilda says, “Beef is great!” Matilda shuffles her feet, “But I guess salad is good, too!"

Notice that the beginning and ending double quotes are added automatically!

You can use the shorcut " instead of the word say for this command as well.

Pose

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Posing doesn’t automatically assume that you’re starting out with something being said, instead, it just prepends your name to an action, hence ‘posing’ being more of something you do, versus something you say. Pose can be used in the following way:

pose shifts idly from one foot to the next.

Matilda shifts idly from one foor to the next.

You can add quotes into this line as well, to add a whole paragraph of action with speech!

pose sighs softly, "You know, I'm not sure this is a good idea." There's the faint forming of a tear in Matilda's eye when this is said. "It could end like my father did..."

Matilda sighs softly, “You know, I’m not sure this is a good idea.” There’s the faint forming of a tear in Matilda’s eye when this is said. “It could end like my father did…"

Notice that pose does not assume the first or last character being a double quote!

You can use the shortcut : instead of the word pose for this command as well.

Spoof

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Spoofing is the act of placing text down that isn’t inherently attached to your character. This can be useful to start your writing with your character’s name in the middle, or if you’re running a scene and are including other characters that aren’t controlled by other players in it. Spoof will append your character’s name at the end of it, to prevent it from being used to ‘assume’ some other player did something when it wasn’t them. You can spoof with the spoof command, like so:

spoof It was a dark, stormy night while Matilda sat near the window, watching the rain slowly drip towards the sill outside.

It was a dark, stormy night while Matilda sat near the window, watching the rain slowly drip towards the sill outside. (Matilda)

You can use the shortcut sp instead of the word spoof for this command as well.

Special Formatting

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Used primarily with Spoof, but it can actually be snuck into quite a few places such as a description, pose, or even a say command, are special formatting characters. These can add carriage returns, tabs, and extra space when interpreted by the game.

• |/ or %r: Newline or Carriage Return, ends the line and starts a new line immediately afterwards.
• |- or %t: Tab, adds in a tab space where placed. Most often used for paragraph breaks.
• |_ or %b: Space, adds a space, most often used at the beginning of a line when less space then a tab is needed and before text that will allow multiple spaces between characters.

You can also add color to your text! But this is an advanced topic for later.