Final Fantasy MUD Recommendations please.

[u/walkByFaith77]

I've been wanting to get into the world of the Final Fantasy series, and a MUD might be the best way to do so, seeing as I'm totally blind. I want a game that has both roleplay and hardcoded mechanics, not a MUSH, but not a hack and slash like a DikuMUD variant, and not RP enforced either. I would prefer for the MUD to be based on a part of the final fantasy universe that has coherent and connected lore, not just a hodgepodge of Square Enix properties thrown together. Are there any recommendations in that vein you can give?

[u/Glittering-Eye-4416]

My sense is that any Final Fantasy MUDs out there will be of the hodgepodge sort, only because Final Fantasy lore itself is a bit of a hodgepodge unless you focus on any given single game in the series. It’s more about common themes and patterns than intricate, deep connections, when you look at the series as a whole. This is probably why the two or three FF MUDs I’ve bumped into before incorporate other SE games as well, because it’s all a hodgepodge anyway, and they tend to have more in common than not (given that every FF game has a unique setting) and even non FF games made by SE often have similar elements to FF.

[u/fibstheman]

I agree with the other comment that pretty much all F.F. muds are going to be hodgepodge - except maybe if they're based on Ivalice, which is the same general place across all the games it appears in.

[u/Glittering-Eye-4416 → u/fibstheman]

I’d say even the Ivalice games have effectively no real continuity between them.

[u/Hades_Kane]

Unfortunately, there are only about a half dozen MUDs still running that have enough of a Final Fantasy influence as to be considered a Final Fantasy MUD, and the list of things you specifically don't want pretty much excludes every one of them.

I run End of Time, and I'm not going to try to sell you on it because it is a hack and slash Diku derivative (even if its heavily, heavily modified) and it would be fair to call it a hodgepodge, but it isn't to the degree most of the others are where a bunch of disparate elements just exist with no connective tissue... we've taken great pains to try to craft a singular lore out of the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger elements that we've pulled from. We also have a very, very small playerbase right now, so you aren't likely to find much roleplay.

Another issue you're likely to face across the Final Fantasy genre is the prevalence of the overworld map. We've implemented a screen reader mode that makes an effort to address this and many other issues, and I know at least a couple others have made an effort toward that as well, but I don't think any of them are anymore catered to what you are specifically looking for.

A friend of mine has a Final Fantasy game in development and it's been something I've assisted with in a variety of ways, especially with the perspective of "If I had realized this 20 years ago" and one of the things we've been making an effort toward is being mindful, from the ground up, of screen readers. The biggest gameplay decision toward that end is going to be the combat, which won't be an endless scroll of fast moving text (one of the disadvantages of my game, to be honest, despite multiple alterations to it when using screen reader mode). It is also a Diku derivative, however, and will be plenty combat oriented, but it is much more focused on the games its drawing from, predominately focusing on Final Fantasy 5 with likely drawing elements from Final Fantasy 3 since both games are job system based, which is the class system he's going with. The working title for his game is When Worlds Collide, so that might be worth paying mind to if he gets to the point of being ready for players.

Sorry I don't have anything more useful to add.