General Application

I. The Proposal Process

A. Submission Times

Proposals can be turned in at anytime, but be sure to inform the department head of the department for which you are applying before submitting.

B. Before You Propose

Before you rush through this file -- slow down and ask yourself if you really want to do this. Do you want to add another full-time job, without pay, to your schedule? Are you ready for the amount of work, of stress, and hassle that immorting will entail? It's a lot of work to even get a proposal together, and even after you do, that is no guarantee that it will be accepted. If it is, then you are in for a major commitment of time and energy. This is not meant to sound discouraging, but merely to point out that immorting is not a step to be taken lightly.

C. Proposal Acceptance

If your application and department proposal are accepted, you will be advanced to level 52 and assigned an assistant position in the department into which you immorted. (In some departments it is possible for your proposal to be accepted but your project idea declined. If that happens the dept head will discuss with you whether you'd like to be immorted and work on a different project instead.) In all departments at level 52, you can pretty much move around the mud, take part in discussions, and gather information about how to go about your job as an immortal. The immortal character is no longer in the game, and is considered to be an Out Of Character persona at all times. The new immortal no longer role plays and must make significant steps to distance himself or herself from any biases towards mortals which he or she may have. The new immortal should spend some time getting used to the new commands, the new rules and the immortal documentation and the documentation specific to their department. This is the time to bring up any questions, and to start work on your project or event. The head of the department supervises all aspects of their department and will ask to see what you have done on your project or event and answer any questions that you might have concerning your department or any other immortal policy. This is a great time to catch inconsistencies in the docs, and to point out bugs that immortals may have missed. Just because it's in the game does not mean it is right; nor should you feel that you are somehow betraying the players who are your friends by getting some awesome item reduced in power. Think of it as improving the game for everyone by preserving game balance.

D. Rules and Responsibilities

A new immort's project or event proposed is their prime duty, unless otherwise directed by their department head of an imp. It is not, however, their only duty. Online presence is important to ask questions, keep abreast of changes and to keep informed. Also, new immortals should not expect to pick up additional departmental jobs until they are well acquainted with immorting as a whole and have completed their first project or event and should only do so with the approval of their department head. If you were immorted for a department that accepted you but declined to implement your project idea, your prime duty becomes working with your department head to find a different project that you are happy about working on.

Responsibilities:

Report any and all bugs to the bug channel. Report any violations of the mud's rules to the PR staff, and deal with what violations you can with guidance from existing staff. Continually work on your project or event as well as other tasks assigned. Keep up to date on your department's docs and how the balance of the mud is going. Learn enough about other departments' docs to be able to handle online player requests and diagnose problems. It is highly advised though not required that all immortals subscribe to the LT. Rights: To exercise immortal powers within the spirit of the Immortal Code of Conduct To voice opinions regarding game design, and even, with approval, to design additions to the game themselves. You have the right to anonymously, that is anonymous from non-immortal staff, play a mortal and to have its actions regarded as separate from your immortal, but within the restrictions applied to an immortal's mortals. Immortals are permitted to have their immortal and one character on at the same time. With due notice immortals may resign, take leaves, or be granted extensions on deadlines, according to your department head's implementation of the immortal inactivity policy. What you can't do:

Use immortal knowledge to help any mortal, including your own, in any game sense. This includes handing out information on quests, stats, skills, prerequisites, areas, mobiles, player locations, resets, player identities, item stats, etc. Use immortal powers to help or hinder any mortal, including your own. This includes loading items, loading mobs, slaying mobs, altering stats on mobs, items or players, teleporting, attacking mortals with an immort, creating mobs or rooms that respond negatively to specific players, sleeping mobs, etc. Think of the consequences before you take action. Use mortal skills or spells with your immortal in order to help or hinder any mortal, including your own. This includes casting any spells on or for mortals or using skills on them or for them. Exceptions in RARE cases can be made to these in order to test area bugs and such in game, but as most of the testing can be done on a testmud, these cases will be few and far in between. Anything else that would violate the spirit of the Immortal Code of Conduct. E. A Brief Note

All of this may seem terribly intimidating, and may give the impression that immorthood is some sort of police state or secret society. In fact, the rules at LegendMUD are fairly lax about most things, compared to most muds. Once you immort, you have a voice in every aspect of the game design and game policy, until it comes down to final decisions. Then again, you've had this same voice as a player, you'll just hear a lot more of it. Immorting is indeed a volunteer job, and often the rewards may seem negligible. It SHOULD seem intimidating; think of the job as volunteering to be on the board of the PTA, or town assembly member, or administrator of a large public park. Not everyone is going to stay on the paths, not everyone will like being told they can't walk on the grass, and it becomes your job to tell them they have to. You may find friendships disrupted. You will find it consumes a lot of your time. But it can also be a heck of a lot of fun.

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II. The General Application

A. Personal Information:

1) Which character would you like to immort?

2) What email address can you be reliably reached at?

3) How long have you played LegendMUD?

4) What were your major contributions to LegendMUD as a mortal?

5) Have you read and do you accept the spirit of the law in the Player Code of Conduct and the Immortal Code of Conduct for LegendMUD? You do realize this applies to both your immortal and any mortal characters? Please be aware that we will notice and take it into consideration if you answer "yes" to this question but violate the imm code as a mort before or during the application process, or after if you are turned down this time and choose to apply again.

6) Have you ever been disciplined by the immorts of LegendMUD? If so, what for and how often? Which of your characters was it if it wasn't a currently played one?

7) Who are your other characters?

8) What kinds of roleplay have you done, both here and in other settings? Are you interested in using your mortal characters to help out with tiny plots that other imms are running?

9) What is your favorite aspect of LegendMUD and why?

10) What is your least favorite aspect of LegendMUD and why?

11) What is you attitude toward change?

12) Have you ever been in a team situation where you were dissatisfied with your coworkers, the direction the team was going in, or the demands of the project? What did you do about it?

13) Which do you consider more harmful to the LegendMUD environment, harassment by players of other players, harassment of players by immorts, players harassing immorts, or immorts berating each other? Why?

14) Have you been involved in helping out newbies as a player? How would you help them as an immortal? (remember, immortals can't get gear, or answer questions about specific mobs, or tell someone how to get X item or solve Y quest).

B. Technical Information:

15) Do you have reliable internet access?

16) The mud runs on Linux, a variant of Unix. Most immortals will not need to do work on the mud machine itself, outside of the Mud environment. Have you ever used a command line environment such as DOS or Unix? Do you feel comfortable editing, copying, and generally working with files in such an environment -- that is, one without a mouse?

17) Are you capable of using ftp or a similar file transfer client?

18) Do you use a mud client that allows you to have more than one session open at once? (This is not a requirement but may help you overlap your online presence as an imm with your mort playing time.)

19) Many documents and files used by the immort staff are under revision control, that is, changes to files are automatically logged so that other immortals know that they have been changed and so that it is easy to undo a change if it produces a problem. This is primarily important for builders and coders, but can be of importance to other immortals as well. Have you ever used mercurial or any other popular revision control package (such as RCS)?

C. Immortal Information:

20) Why would you like to immort and why in that particular department? What advantages and disadvantages do you see to being in that particular department instead of another?

21) How do you plan to help the dept you are applying reach it's long term goals? Anything you feel should be added to that dept's agenda?

22) Have you ever been (or currently are) an immortal on another MU*? If so, briefly explain your imm experience.

23) What would you bring to the mud and the immortal staff outside of your specific department proposal (personality, ideas, hobbies, etc.)? What skills and interests do you have that might be useful to the department to which you wish to propose and mud as a whole? If in doubt as to whether a given outside skill or interest is relevant, stick it in. You never know what we'll find useful!

24) As an imm, there will be many more demands on your mudding time. Working on your project may require your undivided, offline attention. Depending on your personal work habits, you may or may not be able to work on your project or contribute visible online presence while playing mort. Keeping all this (and your RL!) in mind, how much time on average can you devote to your project a week? How much time can you be online as your immortal, and how much of this is visible vs invis? Do you forsee any changes in your life in the next few years which might alter your availability (work, school, family responsibilities, etc)? If so, how do you expect your position as an immortal might change as a result?

25) Players hate it when immorts do things that hurt them, and often don't seem to appreciate it when they help them out. This makes immorting often a thankless job. Is that ok with you?

26) As an immortal you may also be asked to help out with maintenance work in your department... simple area or code bug fixes, simple help file corrections, assisting with scheduled game or discussion events, etc. Are you okay with doing paperwork or drudge work such as this?

27) Write the email you would send (add fake quotebacks if you'd use them) in response to the following suggestion that another immortal proposed on the godlist:

     "Mages are too powerful and are dominating the mud,
      I suggest that we split up the current two schools
      of magic into three schools: cause, create and know.
      One would have kere/ksi another vina/meue, and the
      third vid/guh. We'd need to add a few more spells and
      possibly shuffle a few of the old ones around, but
      that's a fairly easy thing to do. This would allow for
      more flexible character types and the vid/guh school
      would allow people to play sages."

28) A newbie logs in and chats that they need help. You're busy in another window and invis. They chat and pray several times, but it appears as if you're the only one who has noticed. What do you do?

29) Pretend that you are in a relationship with another player of LegendMUD who is not an immortal. As the immortal code of conduct applies to you, how will you go about seperating your knowledge and commands from them? Will you be able to avoid passing this information (including alts of other players, stats of items, etc) to them?