mudname: Deckeon
email: trip[@]shadowgalaxy.com
url: http://www.shadowgalaxy.com
port: deckeon.mine.nu 2065theme: Shadowrun (Cyberpunk)
focus: We’re a role playing enforced mud that draws strict lines between OOC and IC
features: Our players are our best feature, they’re small in number but helpful and friendly.
Other than that, we just try and stick as closely to the pen & paper game that we base the mud off of, so you’ll find guns, grenades, magic, ranged combat, vehicles, computer hacking in a virtual world, astral space, spirit and elemental conjuring, a classless and leveless system with some default archetypes to help define your character to help new players. Optional careers as medics, bounty hunters or lonestar police officers in a world where most of the players are criminals.
excerpt: The year is 2065. The world has changed. Ravaging diseases and
computer viruses have brought humanity the brink of disaster.
This is Shadowrun, and the setting for the MUD known as Deckeon.
For nearly a decade Deckeon has strived to recreate the Third edition
Shadowrun game in a role playing enforced MUD.
status: May 1997, Fully Functional
codebase: ROM
average_players: Under 10
Review by Akiko:
Note: Deckeon is a Shadowrun game on the ‘net. To get the most out of it, you need to know how to play Shadowrun, which means you should have some rulebooks handy.
Website
Nicely done, although I almost missed the scroll buttons in the lower right corner. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought there were only three races. Also, there are things under “Contrubutions” that are just about game mechanics. In fairness, it looks like they’re still working on the webpage. It’s a big improvement over what was there 3 months ago.
Credits
All in place.
Creation
Easy. Preset characters are available. The custom creation isn’t much harder, bypassing the selection of skills in the “nanny”. Nicely done. (Note: this reviewer is familiar with Shadowrun.)
School
It’s not really a “school”, though it does cover “say” and “score”, but where you buy your skills. Well, after about 40 minutes of trying, I realised I couldn’t buy skills because the preset had spent all my points for me. I can’t find my SR rulebook, but it sure isn’t ROM. I’d say very well done in terms of recreating SR online.
Play
After getting confused by ‘i’ not aliasing to ‘inventory’ and buying an extra gun and ammo, I walked out into the game and took a bus to Denver. Inside the bus terminal I met a chummer who told me to take a taxi to the Shadowclub. There, the bartender introduced me to a Mr Johnson, who sent me to pick up a package. It was a long walk, I probably should have stolen the Honda left unlocked outside the club. I also should have pawned the extra gun, as when I finally got to the Feathers and Leathers shop (I took a taxi), the briefcase I was supposed to pick up for Mr. Johnson was too heavy for me to carry.
Well, after a good beginning, I can’t find much to do. Shadowrun is a roleplaying game, and there sometimes is no one online. It doesn’t seem there are any mobs to kill, and the more I wander the more annoying the exit code becomes. You can’t open “door”, you have to open “screen” or whatever, and then it says “You open the it.”
The Creator, Trip, helped me with my weight problem, and I’ve been happily running quests and getting more nuyen (Shadowrun money). He explained the exit problem only occurs in older areas that don’t support the new code that allows blowing up doors or bashing them down.
Building
Overall, well done with few typos and detailed, thematic descriptions. There are ASCII maps to keep you from getting too lost. Equipment is very well done - weapons take clips, silencers and other accessories, and the cyberdecks are complete with disks to add programs and several displays. The Matrix is nicely described, though a bit “real” feeling - I would have colored the descs or something. My Mage never got far enough to try astral projection.
Similar
There are two other SR MUDs, those being based on Circle, and Deckeon is a clear winner. In fact, despite my bias (I was a coder on a Shadowrun MUX and they rock!), I think this game’s experience compares favorably with the MUXen.
Conclusion
While I wish they would fix the exits, overall the game is an excellent online version of Shadowrun, and all it needs is more players to provide roleplay. Still, with the scripted NPCs providing quests, you can keep yourself quite busy while waiting for others. Two thumbs up (as that’s all I have).
Additional review by Angkor:
(Note: this reviewer is not familiar with Shadowrun)
I connected, and spent around 2 hours on char generation, which at least for me seems a bit too long. I’d rather leave some of the choices till later, when you know a bit more of the game, (but I was also informed that it will be possible to change path later).
Chargen was interesting, but - at least to me - a bit confusing, since it was very different from the mostly CIRCLE-based muds I am used to. Their choice of races seemed a bit weird for Cyberpunk too, - dwarves, orcs, trolls and elves in a future city environment? But then again, I know little to nothing about cyberpunk.
I probably could have bypassed a lot of it, but I decided to go through all the steps, including buying my skills, setting up my desc and answering 13 RP questions about my character, (which I also could have left till later). Strangely enough I sort of enjoyed that part, maybe answering those questions made me feel I actually accomplished something.
There were only two players on line apart from me, but both were very friendly and one of them patiently answered a number of questions about the skills over OOC and tell, which was lucky for me since I didn’t have a clue what to choose. She also informed me that I had made a bad choice putting magic as my 4th option, since apparently you don’t get any magic at all at either 4th or 5th choice, so if I had put it last instead, I could have got some other advantage as 4th choice… Confusing? Well, it was to me, but I decided to finish the chargen instead of taking her advice and recreating.
I only came as far as the shops after Mudschool, didn’t know what to buy, so I settled for stuff that fit my background, rather than what looked like more powerful armour. It is after all, RP enforced… One small disappointment is that I managed to buy some sort of implant for my last currency, but then I couldn’t afford to actually have it implanted.
What little I saw seemed well and consistently done, true to theme, very few typos, helpfiles on most of the things I looked for. The objects apparently have no real descriptions, but apart from that the only irritating thing that I came across so far (apart from the implant, which I guess was my own fault), is that the direction abbreviations n, s etc. didn’t work, so ‘look s’ produced the desc ‘A pair of tennis shoes is here.’ (I actually went back twice to look for those damn shoes, before I realised that I was wearing them). Also it was irritating to have to type out ‘push green button’ to get to the next station of Mud school, instead of simply going north or south. It’s amazing how lazy you get when mudding.
At this point I had to log out, but I’ll get back later to check some more. It does seem rather intriguing. And compared to the lengthy char-gen, quitting was blessedly easy…
deckeon.mine.nu 2065http://www.shadowgalaxy.com
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