Legend of the Green Dragon

Legend of the Green Dragon (abbreviated LoGD or LotGD) is a humorous text-based multi-player fantasy CRPG. It is a WWW-based implementation and homage to the classic BBS door game Legend of the Red Dragon. Originally written by Eric Stevens ("MightyE"), the copyright now contains both his and JT Traub's names. Version 1.0.0 was released in April 1, 2005.

As of December 2005, MightyE's server at lotgd.net has approximately 5900 players, and there are some 8,500 players at the largest German server, lotgd.de. There are 297 servers listed in the LoGDNET list. 

The lead developers have announced that they quit updating the code base in December 31, 2005, likely leading to one final code release; the original developers, as well as the lead moderators of lotgd.net server, have decided to move on to other projects. The reason for this decision was mostly due to the fact that the development and maintenance took too much of their time. The future of the code project thus remains somewhat undecided, but it is likely that the code will be maintained by the DragonPrime.net members in the future. The moderators have, in turn, encouraged player community to become more self-policing in the future.

Game days
Game primarily progresses on daily basis. There are limits on how much combat can be done in each game day. There are usually one or more game days in a real-world day; MightyE's lotgd.net server, for example, has two game days for every real-world day. All dead characters get resurrected at the beginning of the day.

Characters
The player starts by creating a character. Characters can be male or female (which only affects the level titles, and marrying), and players can pick a race, which somewhat affects the abilities. Typical fantasy races (humans, dwarves, trolls and elves) are represented, as are some atypical ones (felynes and storm giants).

Instead of character class, the game has different specializations - Dark Arts, Mystical Powers, and Thieving Skills - which determine what abilities the "use points" the characters collect over time give.

Combat
The basic idea of the game is to gather experience, gold, and gems. This is done either by going to the forests and killing various monsters, or by fighting other players. After the character has gathered enough experience points, he/she must fight the trainer in home village to advance to next experience level.

The monster combat is done in forests around home town. Characters can look for monsters that are of same character level than themselves, or go slumming (looking for easier monsters) or thrillseeking (looking for difficult monsters), which will give an appropriate bonus or penalty to gained XP.

Player versus player combat is very integral part of the game, though it is not necessary to attack other players to advance in game, and many players refuse to do so. A player may choose to get certain bonuses in return of not attacking people and still risk being attacked, or choose to be completely immune from attacks, which also makes them unable to gain those bonuses and also to attack other players. The game only allows combat between logged-in and logged-out characters: If a character logs out, he or she goes sleeping on the fields, where anyone logged on can attack him/her. It is possible to go in a well-guarded inn for a night, which helps things somewhat, but even that won't save the character from PvP combat completely. PvP combat between two logged-in players has not been implemented due to several problems arising from statelessness of the HTTP protocol.

The combat system itself is turn-based. The combat itself is very simple, the only options available are fighting, using special abilities, or fleeing. There is also automated combat, which can be used if the player feels there's no real danger of dying (but which can be fatal if the player miscalculates something, or has a streak of bad luck). The combatants end up either hitting the opponent, missing, blocking the blow, or doing a riposte (causing damage to the attacker). Randomly, a "power move" is executed, which does a large amount of damage.

Dying in combat, or for other reasons, is not particularly harmful; an experience point penalty and loss of held gold is all that happens. The dead characters get resurrected in the beginning of the day, but resurrection can also be granted earlier by Ramius, the overlord of the dead.

Equipment and special abilities
As well as experience points, combat gives gold coins and gems. Gold is usually spent on better equipment. Gems can be used on various special things. Primarily, gems are used to buy mounts or familiars, which will fight by the character's side for a part of the day. Gems can also be used to purchase various potions, or spent on certain special events.

Goal and secrets
The goal of the game is to fight the green dragon that is terrorizing the land. However, what happens after that is one of the best-kept secrets of the game - though people who play the game can usually guess that earlier.

A large part of the game doesn't have any kind of obvious documentation, and other players tend to refuse telling "game secrets" to other players. Part of the joy of the game is to discover various things, since generally, nothing that happens in the game has any sort of permanent damage - though it may have a long-lasting good effect.

Implementation and extensibility
The game is implemented in PHP, and developed by contributors under a Creative Commons License. Formerly (in versions 0.9.7 and earlier), the game was distributed under GNU General Public License, but the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license was chosen for 0.9.8 and later, due to GPL's (admitted) inadequacy to cover web-based software to necessary extent.

There is an active development community at DragonPrime.net. The game supports an extensive moduling system which enables developers to significantly extend base functionality with out need to modify core code. Thus modules can be distributed to other users given they have a version of the game installed which is at least as recent as that under which the module was developed. Modules can be turned on and off within an administrative interface in the game.

Notable non-player characters

 * MightyE, weapons merchant
 * Pegasus, armoress
 * Foilwench, sage
 * Bluspring, trainer
 * Tynan, gym trainer
 * Elessa, banker
 * Seth, bard
 * Violet, bar maid
 * Cedrik, barkeeper
 * SaucyWench, cook
 * Merick and Bertold, the stable keepers
 * Deimos, haberdasher
 * Dag Durnick, bounty hunter
 * Petra, tattoo artist
 * Heidi, witch
 * Ella, dance teacher
 * Oliver, jeweller
 * Lonestrider, leader of band of thieves
 * Ramius, Overlord of Death

In tradition of many role-playing games, many of the characters (or at least their names) are based on personae of the game implementors and contributors.

Donation points
Players can obtain donation points by donating money, reporting bugs or typos, or by referring other players to the site. Depending on configuration and setup, the game awards each player referral points for referrals. Once the referred player's character gets to specific level, the referred player's characters get points.

The points can be spent of "glittery" things, such as portraits (from pre-set galleries), colored names, custom titles, and like. Of note is the ability to play the powerful storm giant player race, which requires 2000 points, an amount which usually can only be obtained through donations.

Currently, due to lack of time and manpower, monetary donations are the only way to get the points on the Classic Server.

Features specific to Classic Server
The "MightyE's Classic Server", formerly called the Central Server, at lotgd.net uses a fairly unusual method of funding its operation. The gameplay itself is free, but people are encouraged to donate. The server has a fund drive indicator that is reset at the beginning ot the month. Once 100% of the money needed to cover the monthly costs is donated, players get extra forest fights and discounts for healing for every 10% afterward (up to 10 forest fights). This has been proven quite successful, for example, in March 2005 310% of the costs were covered.