Classes vs Classless
Trinity
> xxxxx Mud has abandoned the class system used by other Circle based
> muds. Now all spells, skills and equipment are available to all!
I've noticed a trend towards this kind of thing, but I have to wonder:
Is it a good thing? Personally, I dislike it from both a player and
IMP standpoint.
To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based muds of
yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to accomplish much.
Players soon learn how to min/max their character, and soon EVERYONE is
playing a clone of everyone else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
In my mud (which shall remain nameless, 'cause I tend to dislike
mudvertising during the course of general discussions) the classes are
very narrowly defined. Healers can Heal, but fighters can't. And what
I've noticed is people tend to group more, and use more strategy. I've
seen people actually ASKING if a Thief is online, because they need
someone to diffuse traps and unlock doors. When was the last time you
saw that kind of cooperation on a classless mud?
Anyway, it's all a matter of personal opinion I know, but I personally
don't believe that classless muds are inherently "better" than
traditional, class-based codebases.
Thoughts?
Chris Ebert
element that you couldnt get without classes, because there is a feud if you
willl, going on between one and all the other classes, because they have an
idiot leader. i find it much more fun when there are classes, because there
is a certain, realism added to the game, but, like the previous post states,
this is all about opinion.
Jp Calderone
I agree with your comment about the backlash against D&D - that's what
I was going for when I designed my "classless" system. My system
doesn't
allow you to learn all spells and skills though, and I'm still working
on the eq system. Basically skills are distributed in webs, rather than
groups. If you have the basic pre-requisite skills, you can learn a new
one. Each skill has these pre-requisites, except for the very lowest
most newbie (though still important) skills. You can go for extreme
specialization in one area by building up skills in a certain "field"
at the cost of not having enough knowledge points (looking for a better
name for this... anyone got any ideas? (: ) to learn things in another
area. For example, you could learn all the healing skills and be
completely
incompetent at even basic defense skills. Conversely, if you wish you
could go for the "jack of all trades" character and learn some low-mid
power healing and low-mid level technical spells (techno based mud),
and maybe one or two different areas. The mud is leveless, too; gain of
knowledge points is based only on play time, questing, and to some
extent,
character stats. The mud isn't open yet, but the system looks good. I
think
it has a lot more room for variance than the standard circle system or a
completely free-style skill system.
Jp "Kuran" Calderone
--
A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and
folly.
If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
-- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars
Trinity
<ech...@elp.rr.com> wrote:
True. =) However, it's still a fun topic. So hopefully nobody will
be offended if we keep talking about it. *laugh*
When I first started mudding... ooooh, about five years ago (Migod, I'm
8,300 in Mud Years!) I played a stock Circle called The Void. It was
probably the funnest mud I've ever played, because you really NEEDED to
form groups. There was no way to get decent eq or exp without
grouping. And so, every night I'd log on, hook up with the nine or ten
players that I'd become friends with, and we'd go kick the snot out of
Mahn-Tor or whoever. It was a blast!
Then I stopped playing for a year or two. A few months back I started
playing a ROM based mud, and at first I thought it was cool being able
to decide which spells/skills I wanted. Then I noticed that everyone
that had any mudding experience at all had characters almost identical
to mine. PK battles where almost a flip of the coin, because the
characters were so similar.
I understand that a lot of first-time IMPS try to lure players by
promising them limitless power, but it makes game balance nearly
impossible. And really, it makes the game less fun. In the old days,
I'd spend hours accumulating Sanct scrolls, heal potions, etc. for
exploring. Now days it seems that everyone has Sanct and Heal and
Haste etc., and so the only point to playing is killing mobs for exp.
On one mud I play, a guy was bitching that he had to sleep to regain
HP. When this happens, it tells me that things have gotten a little
out of hand. =)
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based muds of
> yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to accomplish much.
> Players soon learn how to min/max their character, and soon EVERYONE is
> playing a clone of everyone else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
That sounds like incompetent implementation. I have little experience
with classless muds, but I've played plenty of classless role-playing
games, most extensively GURPS. There are plenty of ways to encourage
specialization besides forcing people into narrow classes. Indeed, a
worthwhile fighter/magic-user was a lot harder to make in GURPS than in
AD&D; in AD&D, you just make an elf. In GURPS, you have to divide your
effort between making the character competent in fighting and competent
at magic, and you end up with a character much less effective at either
than a specialist.
> In my mud (which shall remain nameless, 'cause I tend to dislike
> mudvertising during the course of general discussions) the classes are
> very narrowly defined. Healers can Heal, but fighters can't. And what
> I've noticed is people tend to group more, and use more strategy. I've
> seen people actually ASKING if a Thief is online, because they need
> someone to diffuse traps and unlock doors. When was the last time you
> saw that kind of cooperation on a classless mud?
Again, I haven't had lots of experience with classless muds (because
there aren't very many of them), but there's a difference between going
classless and making everybody good at everything. If the classless
muds you've been on have been doing the latter, then the problem isn't
just the absence of classes; other aspects of the design aren't being
done very well.
--
---
Aaron Boyden
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe
anything upon insufficient evidence." W. K. Clifford
Jon A. Lambert
>
>i would have to agree with you, on the muds i play, there is a certain RP
>element that you couldnt get without classes, because there is a feud if you
>willl, going on between one and all the other classes, because they have an
>idiot leader. i find it much more fun when there are classes, because there
>is a certain, realism added to the game, but, like the previous post states,
>this is all about opinion.
>
The interactions between butchers, bakers, coopers, millers, farmers,
blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
role-play.
Jon> What do you do Bubba?
Bubba> Hi, I'm a thief!
Jon> yells for the town watch.
Enter TW> What's all this then!?
Jon> Bubba here says he's a thief.
TW> Is this true Mr. Bubba?
Bubba> Yes, I'm a thief.
TW> Locks Bubba up in dungeon.
game over
--
--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email:jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://pw1.netcom.com/~jlsysinc> *--
--* I am the Dragon of Grindly Grund, but my lunches aren't very much fun, *--
--* For I like my damsels medium rare, And they always come out well done. *--
Ilya
>
> Trinity wrote:
>
> > To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based
> > muds of yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to
> > accomplish much. Players soon learn how to min/max their
> > character, and soon EVERYONE is playing a clone of everyone
> >else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
>
> There are plenty of ways to encourage
> specialization besides forcing people into narrow classes.
>
> > In my mud the classes are very narrowly defined.
> > Healers can Heal, but fighters can't. And what
> > I've noticed is people tend to group more, and
> > use more strategy. I've seen people actually
> > ASKING if a Thief is online, because they need
> > someone to diffuse traps and unlock doors.
> > When was the last time you
> > saw that kind of cooperation on a classless mud?
>
> <snip> there's a difference between going
> classless and making everybody good at everything. <snip>
> the problem isn't just the absence of classes;
> other aspects of the design aren't being done very well.
> Aaron Boyden
>
Aaron has the right of it, I'd say. I've written a longish
article along these lines which you can find at my site at
http://www.gamecommandos.com/GameCommandos/Article_Main.asp
(it's the one called "Classles Indeed" from 22 May, 99).
I'll repeat just a bit here, but that's got a fair coverage
I think.
There's also a nice article about classlessness in Imaginary
Realities a couple of months back. The main index is at
http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/index.html. The
Feb issue has an article titled "Completely Classless" by
"The Wildman" at http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/
(continued) volume2/issue2/classless.html
Anyway, to answer the original post more directly:
I have seen the kind of cooperation you wrote about, and
seen it often, in classless muds. Not that I've had a chance
to play any recently :-) but I've seen it. It mainly comes
from having inducements to specialization without arbitrary
class divisions. It's not that hard to do. But it hasn't
often been done well, that's for sure.
As for everyone learning to min/max and becoming clones,
yes, this is also a problem in poorly designed classless
architectures. Skill webs or trees with intelligent
interrelationships and prerequisites take care of that
pretty well.
The rest is in the article. I invite comment there, or
here, too!
--
Ilya (at) gamecommandos (dot) com a mud list & review site
www.gamecommandos.com for online roleplaying games
Brendon Robinson
doesn't mean that every character gets everything. For instance, on the one
I work on, a thick skulled hand to hand barbarian type CAN learn a spell,
but he isn't necessarily a match for a wizard who's be practicing magic all
his life.
John Adelsberger
: To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based muds of
: yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to accomplish much.
: Players soon learn how to min/max their character, and soon EVERYONE is
: playing a clone of everyone else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
So then the problem is that those muds are badly designed. It should be
impossible to min/max a single best sort of character, even in a mud
which is completely classless. While it has balance problems, you can
get an idea of what I'm talking about in book form by reading the
Shadowrun tabletop RPG rules if you need a concrete example.
Classless muds are a superior breed, IF they are well designed. The
problem is, most of the current crop of mud owners can barely manage
to create an original area, IF they can even do that, and certainly
aren't competent to design a game system.
--
John J. Adelsberger III
j...@umr.edu
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
John Adelsberger
: The interactions between butchers, bakers, coopers, millers, farmers,
: blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
: gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
: role-play.
You're one of those people who greatly enjoys books like _Giants In The
Earth,_ aren't you?:)
Bob(a barber): So, Bill, you here for a haircut?
Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
Bill: Shave it off.
Bob: Ok.
<clip, clip, clip>
Bill: Thanks. Here.
Bob: Thank you.
Bill: Would you like to come to my gallery show this Saturday?
Bob: Sure.
Bill: Great! It's at one pm at the museum.
Man, that was exciting. I think I'll go clean the storage room.
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> Classless muds are a superior breed, IF they are well designed. The
> problem is, most of the current crop of mud owners can barely manage
> to create an original area, IF they can even do that, and certainly
> aren't competent to design a game system.
So they should steal one. There are plenty out there. I'm not a huge
fan of Shadowrun (the example you gave), but it's better than what most
muds currently use, as are most tabletop RPGs one can find at the local
gaming store. If only someone would steal GURPS for this purpose.
Ilya
>
> In rec.games.mud.admin Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : The interactions between butchers, bakers, coopers, millers, farmers,
> : blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
> : gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
> : role-play.
>
> You're one of those people who greatly enjoys books like _Giants In The
> Earth,_ aren't you?:)
>
> Bob(a barber): So, Bill, you here for a haircut?
> Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
> Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
> Bill: Shave it off.
> Bob: Ok.
> <clip, clip, clip>
> Bill: Thanks. Here.
> Bob: Thank you.
> Bill: Would you like to come to my gallery show this Saturday?
> Bob: Sure.
> Bill: Great! It's at one pm at the museum.
>
> Man, that was exciting. I think I'll go clean the storage room.
>
As surprising as it may seem, I knew a heavy-duty full-time
mudder who really got off on playing a weaver/dyer. He didn't
do it all the time, but he spent a fair amount of time at finding
the materials, finding the dyes, shearing/cutting/weaving these
materials into basic forms, coloring to suit, sewing up into
garments, bags, and other useful things you couldn't really get
any other way. He rose in skill and could make more complex
things, including garments and/or objects either ridiculously
costly or impossible to find. His skills at the highest levels
finally were in demand for the creation of fine inputs to magical
processes, the outputs of which were also in high demand.
Sitting there sewing/dyeing/weaving sounds dry, I'll admit,
but it doesn't have to be. Exploring and finding resources
can be interesting. And of course trials of skill and eventual
successes can be quite rewarding. And, honestly, it compares
pretty favorably with 'kill rat' . . . 'get all corpse' . . .
'kill rat' . . . 'get all corpse' . . . 'drink water' / 'eat bread'
. . . 'sell skin' . . . (heal up) (repair damaged stuff) (repeat)
eh? !( :-^)*
> --
> John J. Adelsberger III
> j...@umr.edu
>
> "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
>
> - Ayn Rand
--
John Adelsberger
: So they should steal one. There are plenty out there. I'm not a huge
: fan of Shadowrun (the example you gave), but it's better than what most
: muds currently use, as are most tabletop RPGs one can find at the local
: gaming store. If only someone would steal GURPS for this purpose.
Honestly, the reason it hasn't happened is that most people have never
played GURPS, even among serious tabletop gamers. The SR system has
problems, but they relate to use of the system rather than the structure
of the system itself. In particular, magic is grossly overpowered and
full of stupid loopholes, and there are an insane number of pointless
limitations on the abilities of nonmagical characters. I don't have
much experience with GURPS, but I think one can outdo it AND SR and
any other tabletop game - because computers are better at calculations
and complexity than are people - but not by a 12 year old yoyo who just
downloaded a copy of UltraEnvy:)
: "It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe
: anything upon insufficient evidence." W. K. Clifford
An excellent sentiment, but poor use of moral terminology. I read the
piece awhile back; I remember thinking that, whatever its imperfections,
it was still far superior to most of what passes for ideas these days.
Clifford DOES have problems explaining what 'sufficient evidence' is,
though. Then again, so does the rest of the world, as one can see
quite vividly by watching the progress of the physical sciences.
Greg Miller
> To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based muds of
> yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to accomplish much.
> Players soon learn how to min/max their character, and soon EVERYONE is
> playing a clone of everyone else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
Maybe I've just played better muds than you have, but I haven't seen
this sort of thing happen... Nor have I noticed them in pen & paper
games, where classes are rare these days.
>
> In my mud (which shall remain nameless, 'cause I tend to dislike
> mudvertising during the course of general discussions) the classes are
> very narrowly defined. Healers can Heal, but fighters can't. And what
> I've noticed is people tend to group more, and use more strategy. I've
> seen people actually ASKING if a Thief is online, because they need
> someone to diffuse traps and unlock doors. When was the last time you
> saw that kind of cooperation on a classless mud?
All the time on EmlenMUDs, for one example.
>
> Anyway, it's all a matter of personal opinion I know, but I personally
> don't believe that classless muds are inherently "better" than
> traditional, class-based codebases.
The mud wouldn't have a bizarre construct like classes unless it had
serious design flaws to begin with. Removing classes from such a flawed
design will tend to expose it. A well designed mud, on the other hand,
will be just fine without the classes, simple as that.
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
President Clinton was acquitted; then again, so was O. J. Simpson.
*** NEWBIES: Limit signatures to four lines! No HTML mail or posts! ***
Greg Miller
>
> i would have to agree with you, on the muds i play, there is a certain RP
> element that you couldnt get without classes, because there is a feud if you
> willl, going on between one and all the other classes, because they have an
> idiot leader. i find it much more fun when there are classes, because there
> is a certain, realism added to the game, but, like the previous post states,
> this is all about opinion.
I must admit, I've never seen realism used as a defense of classes
before, so I credit you with creativity at the least.
Holly Sommer
> That sounds like incompetent implementation. I have little experience
> with classless muds, but I've played plenty of classless role-playing
> games, most extensively GURPS. There are plenty of ways to encourage
> specialization besides forcing people into narrow classes. Indeed, a
> worthwhile fighter/magic-user was a lot harder to make in GURPS than in
> AD&D; in AD&D, you just make an elf. In GURPS, you have to divide your
> effort between making the character competent in fighting and competent
> at magic, and you end up with a character much less effective at either
> than a specialist.
Which reminds me... I've got a partially-started project sitting in
limbo due to a head coder no longer having time for it (started as
Lima), which is essentially, GURPS-based rather than AD&D.
If there are any folks with time and inclination to get into this, I'd
love to blow the dust off it, and get started again. Drop me an email.
(got our own site, good server, permanent high-speed connection, yadda
yadda yadda)
-Holly
Holly Sommer
>
> John Adelsberger wrote:
>
> > Classless muds are a superior breed, IF they are well designed. The
> > problem is, most of the current crop of mud owners can barely manage
> > to create an original area, IF they can even do that, and certainly
> > aren't competent to design a game system.
>
> fan of Shadowrun (the example you gave), but it's better than what most
> muds currently use, as are most tabletop RPGs one can find at the local
> gaming store. If only someone would steal GURPS for this purpose.
Hardly stolen, but see my previous post :)
-Holly
Trinity
<gmi...@classic-games.com> wrote:
> The mud wouldn't have a bizarre construct like classes unless it had
> serious design flaws to begin with. Removing classes from such a flawed
> design will tend to expose it. A well designed mud, on the other hand,
> will be just fine without the classes, simple as that.
It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish, wouldn't you say?
My mud -which has been merrily chugging along for three years now with
an average of 40 players online at any one moment- is extremely class
based.
Right off the top players are expected to pick which path they'll
follow: Healing, fighting, stealing, or magic. I won't bore you with
the technical details, but suffice it to say that players can gain exp
in a lot of ways, not merely by killing mobs. One small example:
Thieves gain exp for treasure recovery, picking locks, etc.
I created my mud like this on purpose, and after a lot of thought.
Each class fills a carefully considered nitch in my fantasy world.
It's possible to multiclass, but that's another issue.
Muds are fantasy worlds, after all. Classes are no more inherently
bizzare than any other mud concept. I've seen the same argument
applied to Level-less muds; that the concept of "levels" is bizzare.
And so it may be, but then orcs, elves, dragons etc. are a pretty
bizzare concept too. =)
Paul Klingler
choose their skills and pay their experience to advance in the skills, but that
that level of each skill affects the cost of the levels of other skills.
Example, it normally costs say 100 points for a first level rank in a skill like
say Spellcasting, and also 100 to learn a first level rank in say Melee Weapons.
Now Our player chooses Melee Weapons first. Since Melee Weapons and Spellcasting
are along the same path, Spellcasting now has a general cost increase of 10% per
level, so, the first level rank now costs 110 points. Now say they next buy
spellcasting. This would affect their Melee Weapons, increasing it's costs by
10% per rank. Of course the first rank is already purchased, but the second rank
costs 10% more. Each additional rank affects the conflicting skills as stated
above, but further, say raising the cost by an additional 10% per rank, so rank 5
in Melee Weapons raises the Spellcasting costs by 50% per rank. And since the
skills affect each other, then someone trying to branch out evenly, will go
slowly, while someone focusing on one "class'like" path would advance very
quickly, but be limited in abilities. In a sense, there is a class breakdown,
because different skills would fall into different groups, such as a group of
spellcasting skills, and a group of warrior skills, and a group of rogue skills,
and so on. But,...Without the limit on who can learn skills, some people can
expand into more areas, if they so choose. The trick is to make the cost of
cross-training limiting enough to make only those with patience or desire
actually do it, without making it so limiting that no0 one does it. A world of
Single-minded people in general, a smaller group of those who know a few extra
skills, a smaller group of well rounded individuals, and an elite few who have
mastered all. This would even work with guilds. Instead of making guilds based
on classes, focus on guild concepts. Assassins, can be warriors, such as Artemis
Entreri in the Forgotten Realms series based on Drizz't Do'Urden, and Many of
Clint Eastwood's Western characters, or they can be wizards, Such as Morganna
(Stretching it I know, but hey), and so on. Fighter guilds could be for anyone
who wants to focus on combat, and thieves guilds for those who steal for a
living, and so on.
Well, This is a start to a concept. Of course there would be a bit of work
on balancing, and a bit more on coding. But it is defeinitely workable. Feel
free to use it if you want, but please drop me a line if it works. Me, I am to
caught up in the Earthdawn system currently, to want to try something else right
now. :)
Paul
Brendon Robinson
> Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
> Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
> Bill: Shave it off.
> Bob: Ok.
> <clip, clip, clip>
> Bill: Thanks. Here.
> Bob: Thank you.
> Bill: Would you like to come to my gallery show this Saturday?
> Bob: Sure.
> Bill: Great! It's at one pm at the museum.
>
> Man, that was exciting. I think I'll go clean the storage room.
citizen, wandering aimlessly with her eyes and mouth sewn shut?
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> An interesting variant to a classless system would be to allow the players to
> choose their skills and pay their experience to advance in the skills, but that
> that level of each skill affects the cost of the levels of other skills.
> Example, it normally costs say 100 points for a first level rank in a skill like
> say Spellcasting, and also 100 to learn a first level rank in say Melee Weapons.
> Now Our player chooses Melee Weapons first. Since Melee Weapons and Spellcasting
> are along the same path, Spellcasting now has a general cost increase of 10% per
> level, so, the first level rank now costs 110 points. Now say they next buy
> spellcasting. This would affect their Melee Weapons, increasing it's costs by
> 10% per rank.
It would seem to be more realistic and sensible if similar skills gave
bonuses to one another rather than disimilar skills giving penalties to
one another (I can see how studying sword might make it easier to learn
how to use a dagger, but not how it would make it harder to learn to
pick locks). Another possiblity is to play around with stats. Most
muds these days let everyone raise their stats to the racial maximums
after a moderate amount of time, but this silly policy is by no means
necessary. If people genuinely differ in stats, that will enforce
specialization; if your character has a high dex and a low intelligence,
and that's not just a temporary problem that will go away when you
advance a little and train all your stats up to max, then your character
will always have some trouble learning magic, and so will, if sensible,
devote most of his effort to skills at which he is not destined to be
permanently second-rate.
--
---
Aaron Boyden
Ilya
> Another possiblity is to play around with stats. Most
> muds these days let everyone raise their stats to the racial maximums
> after a moderate amount of time, but this silly policy is by no means
> necessary. If people genuinely differ in stats, that will enforce
> specialization;
> Aaron Boyden
>
That's the right direction I'd say. I've never ever understood
exactly how anyone could justify raising stats. Okay, maybe
strength can be trained by weight training, but still only to
the maximum your physical frame can support. If you are short
with a narrow frame, day-long life-long practice on the weights
will not get you anywhere near where it would if you were tall
with a broad frame. Same with intelligence -- allowing for small
variations, intelligence changes very little no matter what you do.
_learning_ changes. You learn more, you know more. But that's
nowhere near the same thing as intelligence. Charisma might be
affected in various ways, a little maybe, but then it could be
affected down by disease or hair style or all sorts of other
things, along with being affected upwards by, say, charm school
training.
I really don't buy charisma as a stat anyway, so it's probably
better just to throw it out. Or at -least- make it more race
specific. But it works as an example.
Constitution: it makes no sense to make that trainable either.
Throw out this crap! Leave 'em fixed, or perhaps slightly
variable in some cases, and have interested characters that
vary from the stupid cookie cutters we tend to get now, either
one cookie cutter mold or one per race.
Ilya
> . . .
> that level of each skill affects the cost of the levels of
> Well, This is a start to a concept. Of course there
> would be a bit of work on balancing, and a bit more on
> coding. But it is defeinitely workable.
I'll chime in with your other respondent -- it doesn't make
sense exactly to have rising skills in one area result in
greater learning difficulties in other areas.
But I think you are on the right track in this sense: learning
tends to get harder (or slower if you will) at higher levels
of attainment. That's one of the many reasons why, for example,
performance/physical type pursuits (concert pianists and ice
skaters come to mind) require hours of practice per day just to
advance a little bit, or even to keep level.
But this idea taken alone results in anti-specialization.
If it takes, say, 10 units of time, or experience, or whatever
to get started in a skill, then 20, then 30, and so on, well,
after a while, the choice is obvious to branch out and learn
more skills. Who would pay, say, 100 for the 11th rank in a skill
when they could pay 10 each for the first rank in 10 other skills?
Some would, yes, but the pressure away from specialization and
towards generalization would be strong.
The added element that balances things out a bit and continues
to reward specialization is this: make the earlier levels of a
skill more costly, but slowly decreasing in cost. Costs finally
flatten out in the 'mid levels' of skill, and then begin to
rise again. It's the "S" curve of technology (early slow returns
on investment/research/effort; rapidly increasing returns; slowly
decreasing returns as you reach the end of this particular tech).
I wrote about this in my article on our Game Commandos site as
well. It seemed to be well received.
Cheers,
Ilya
Trinity
<il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
> I've never ever understood
> exactly how anyone could justify raising stats.
Many Stats, as they currently work in the majority of muds, are fairly
pointless. Wisdom, for example, typically only effects how many
"practices" you get. But the average player has practices to burn buy
50th level, so who really cares?
Intelligence is the same way- a nearly pointless stat mainly used for
leveling. Some muds base spell success on Int, but this seems a bit
hokey: If you're smart enough to learn it, you should be smart enough
to cast it.
Charisma has been a thorn in the side of Imps for years now; nobody
really knows what to do with it. "Does it make shopkeepers give you
better deals? Does it make it so aggro mobs don't attack you?
And so on. But I have this idea formin' in my brain: =) Woah, in
fact, I think I might actually implement this tonight: What if Int was
a modifier on spells? Hmmmm. So a fireball (in my mud at least) might
do 1d6 + level + int damage. Woo hoo!
Trinity
<ilovem...@geocities.com> wrote:
> gw mudS KICK ASS AND THEY HAVE ALL JUNK, BUT THEY ARE NOT CLASSLESS, (sorry
> 'bout the caps:P) they are the best mud around, you should play them
> instead of that damn limitation shit with normal muds, forget yore!
> welcome to the 20th century! the century of GOD WARS!
Did someone leave the liquor cabinet open again?
Jon A. Lambert
>
>In rec.games.mud.admin Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>: The interactions between butchers, bakers, coopers, millers, farmers,
>: blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
>: gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
>: role-play.
>
>You're one of those people who greatly enjoys books like _Giants In The
>Earth,_ aren't you?:)
>
Yuk, I liked 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'On the Banks of Plum
Creek" much better. :)
You need to adjust this scenario a bit to excite a roll-player...
>Bob(a barber): So, Bill, you here for a haircut?
>Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
>Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
>Bill: Shave it off.
>Bob: Ok.
><clip, clip, clip>
Bob <-- You DECIMATE a hair of Bill !!!
Bob <-- You OBLITERATE a the bangs of Bill !!!
Bob <-- You receive 1000xps!
Bob <-- You have raised a level!!!
Global <-- Bob has slain the hair of Bill!!!
Global <-- Bob has raised a level to the title The Barber of Seville !!!
>Bill: Thanks. Here.
>Bob: Thank you.
>Bill: Would you like to come to my gallery show this Saturday?
>Bob: Sure.
>Bill: Great! It's at one pm at the museum.
>
>Man, that was exciting. I think I'll go clean the storage room.
Well Bob and Bill are fairly unimaginative role-players.
If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
John Adelsberger
: Bob <-- You OBLITERATE a the bangs of Bill !!!
: Bob <-- You receive 1000xps!
: Bob <-- You have raised a level!!!
: Global <-- Bob has slain the hair of Bill!!!
: Global <-- Bob has raised a level to the title The Barber of Seville !!!
Now THIS is amusing:)
: If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
No, but I despise the attempt to do it using a networked computer game.
The result is ALWAYS substandard compared to the best tabletop or LARP
rp, and usually doesn't even compare favorably to pro wrestling:)
joshua
'bout the caps:P) they are the best mud around, you should play them
instead of that damn limitation shit with normal muds, forget yore!
welcome to the 20th century! the century of GOD WARS!
Trinity wrote:
> Manija <man...@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>
> > xxxxx Mud has abandoned the class system used by other Circle based
> > muds. Now all spells, skills and equipment are available to all!
>
> I've noticed a trend towards this kind of thing, but I have to wonder:
> Is it a good thing? Personally, I dislike it from both a player and
> IMP standpoint.
>
> To me, "classless" muds are a backlash against the D&D based muds of
> yore. Yet classless muds really don't seem to accomplish much.
> Players soon learn how to min/max their character, and soon EVERYONE is
> playing a clone of everyone else. Bad Karma, IMHO.
>
> In my mud (which shall remain nameless, 'cause I tend to dislike
> mudvertising during the course of general discussions) the classes are
> very narrowly defined. Healers can Heal, but fighters can't. And what
> I've noticed is people tend to group more, and use more strategy. I've
> seen people actually ASKING if a Thief is online, because they need
> someone to diffuse traps and unlock doors. When was the last time you
> saw that kind of cooperation on a classless mud?
>
> Anyway, it's all a matter of personal opinion I know, but I personally
> don't believe that classless muds are inherently "better" than
> traditional, class-based codebases.
>
> Thoughts?
Richard
> John Adelsberger wrote:
>> In rec.games.mud.admin Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> : blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
>> : gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
>> : role-play.
Our mud is looking into providing the ability to learn professions like
these, but the hardest thing seems to be tracking down the information on
how each of the professions actually did their thing.
Like for instance a blacksmith, what steps did they go through to err
smith and what materials did they need. For the metal, for it to be
mined, how was it mined and what tools were needed and how were they used.
The guy who makes leather armour, how did the leather need to be treated.
etc..
Anyone who has done research in this vein have any suggestions?
You would think with a university library full of wanky books filled with
useless information would have lots of books relevant for this - but nope.
--
Richard Tew (above spudent -> student, lame spam avoidance thingy)
Nightshade
>Intelligence is the same way- a nearly pointless stat mainly used for
>leveling. Some muds base spell success on Int, but this seems a bit
>hokey: If you're smart enough to learn it, you should be smart enough
>to cast it.
I don't know about that; just because you know how to do something
doesn't mean you'll do it perfect every time. In magic, if one of the
issues is factoring in the phase of the moon, which way the wind is
blowing, and a half dozen other things, then I'd think the ability to
juggle all the factors in your head might indeed be an issue.
Johnny Bravo
>Many Stats, as they currently work in the majority of muds, are fairly
>pointless. Wisdom, for example, typically only effects how many
>"practices" you get. But the average player has practices to burn buy
>50th level, so who really cares?
Depends on the mud, even with 1 extra prac a level you can spend those 50
pracs on 50 more hp. And on muds with 200+ levels, it really adds up.
>Intelligence is the same way- a nearly pointless stat mainly used for
>leveling. Some muds base spell success on Int, but this seems a bit
>hokey: If you're smart enough to learn it, you should be smart enough
>to cast it.
It increasing how much % you gain per prac, saving you pracs in the long run,
2-3 per skill for some muds. Could easily be another 100-150 hp at level 50.
Now we are up to +200 hp over someone with just a bit smaller scores, could
easily be a total of +1000 hp for a 200 level mud.
>Charisma has been a thorn in the side of Imps for years now; nobody
>really knows what to do with it. "Does it make shopkeepers give you
>better deals? Does it make it so aggro mobs don't attack you?
Why not. Hell, for people with really LOW charisma have good mobs go aggro on
them.
Guard: (to human with 3 cha) It's an ORC, BANZAI, CHARGE! :)
Johnny Bravo
"LOL, just have a Real Life(tm) mud. No levels, all chars get first level hp.
And all weapons do enough damage that they can kill an average human with a good
blow. <smirk> "
joshua
GW GW GW GW GW GW GW GW GW GW!
Trinity wrote:
> In article <375806D1...@geocities.com>, joshua
> <ilovem...@geocities.com> wrote:
>
> > gw mudS KICK ASS AND THEY HAVE ALL JUNK, BUT THEY ARE NOT CLASSLESS, (sorry
> > 'bout the caps:P) they are the best mud around, you should play them
> > instead of that damn limitation shit with normal muds, forget yore!
> > welcome to the 20th century! the century of GOD WARS!
>
Richard Woolcock
>
[snip]
> "LOL, just have a Real Life(tm) mud. No levels, all chars get first level hp.
> And all weapons do enough damage that they can kill an average human with a good
> blow. <smirk> "
Sounds reasonable to me. Why the smirk?
KaVir.
Johnny Bravo
I doubt you would have many players, seeing as how they would have about a
50/50 chance of dying in every fight. Even worse odds if they faced something
really nasty, like a wild boar.
Johnny Bravo
Nyarlathotep
Gods...
Johnny Bravo wrote in message <37590cd3....@news.mpinet.net>...
XoBLASToX
MajorMUD. It has been the most addictive mud to ever be released. Even
though you need worldgroup to run a server with it and it is expensive as
hell it has a large realm and a lost of player rivalry. Every other mud
just seems like a spinoff....
Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:7j9gd2$i...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com...
> On 3 Jun 1999 00:36:03 -0600, John Adelsberger said:
> >
> >In rec.games.mud.admin Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
> >
> >: The interactions between butchers, bakers, coopers, millers, farmers,
> >: blacksmiths, tax collectors, watchmen, artists, traders, nobles,
> >: gravediggers, soldiers, midwives, and barbers is the stuff of good
> >: role-play.
> >
> >You're one of those people who greatly enjoys books like _Giants In The
> >Earth,_ aren't you?:)
> >
>
> Yuk, I liked 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'On the Banks of Plum
> Creek" much better. :)
>
> You need to adjust this scenario a bit to excite a roll-player...
>
> >Bob(a barber): So, Bill, you here for a haircut?
> >Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
> >Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
> >Bill: Shave it off.
> >Bob: Ok.
> ><clip, clip, clip>
> Bob <-- You DECIMATE a hair of Bill !!!
> Bob <-- You OBLITERATE a the bangs of Bill !!!
> Bob <-- You receive 1000xps!
> Bob <-- You have raised a level!!!
> Global <-- Bob has slain the hair of Bill!!!
> Global <-- Bob has raised a level to the title The Barber of Seville !!!
> >Bill: Thanks. Here.
> >Bob: Thank you.
> >Bill: Would you like to come to my gallery show this Saturday?
> >Bob: Sure.
> >Bill: Great! It's at one pm at the museum.
> >
> >Man, that was exciting. I think I'll go clean the storage room.
>
> Well Bob and Bill are fairly unimaginative role-players.
> If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
>
Jon A. Lambert
>
>I don't think so.... The best mud of all time that has never been topped is
>MajorMUD. It has been the most addictive mud to ever be released. Even
>though you need worldgroup to run a server with it and it is expensive as
>hell it has a large realm and a lost of player rivalry. Every other mud
>just seems like a spinoff....
>
Just what the heck are you replying to?
This is even more incoherent than your post on Y2K.
Richard Woolcock
>
> On Sat, 05 Jun 1999 14:44:10 -0700, Richard Woolcock
> <Ka...@nospam.dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> >Johnny Bravo wrote:
> >>
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >> "LOL, just have a Real Life(tm) mud. No levels, all chars get first level hp.
> >> And all weapons do enough damage that they can kill an average human with a good
> >> blow. <smirk> "
> >
> >Sounds reasonable to me. Why the smirk?
> >
> >KaVir.
>
> I doubt you would have many players, seeing as how they would have about a
> 50/50 chance of dying in every fight. Even worse odds if they faced something
> really nasty, like a wild boar.
You're forgetting about skills and equipment. A well prepared player, skilled
with his weapons and decked out with quality weapons and armour should butcher
any newbie. Imagine such a mud as being comparible with regular muds, except
that instead of taking 20 blows to kill a powerful player, each blow only has
a 5% chance of getting past an experienced warrior's defences.
KaVir.
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
>
> This line of though really grabbed me, and I had an idea on the refinement
> of the system, which is free for anyone to use, as they wish (up to and
> including mocking the author).
> The mortal max hp is 15. Players begin with 10, with a penalty for very low
> Con, bonuses for high Con (which can be raised, but only over a long period
> of using trains [% raise each train?]). Weapons can do between 1 (nerf dart)
> and 10 (shotgun blast) points of damage (maybe a small bonus for
> specialization in the weapon or an increased damage skill), soaked by armour
> (1-5 scale). Only dexterity increases chance of dodge (as well as the skill
> itself). Thus, if Joe the High-Level Engine of Death gets nailed with a
> shotgun by Ricardo the Lucky Newbie Scavenger, he's not gonna walk away
> unscathed, even if he has some God-awful-strong armour, which certainly
> holds a bit more realism. Also, emphasis holds more on RP, quests (xp
> instead of qp), exceling in one's profession, etc. No longer is it so easy
> to be a massive, burly fighter, and mop the floor with everyone. *grin*
> Sadistic, no?
GURPS works a little like this. This just highlights the need for more
GURPSish muds and less AD&Dish muds.
Nyarlathotep
of the system, which is free for anyone to use, as they wish (up to and
including mocking the author).
The mortal max hp is 15. Players begin with 10, with a penalty for very low
Con, bonuses for high Con (which can be raised, but only over a long period
of using trains [% raise each train?]). Weapons can do between 1 (nerf dart)
and 10 (shotgun blast) points of damage (maybe a small bonus for
specialization in the weapon or an increased damage skill), soaked by armour
(1-5 scale). Only dexterity increases chance of dodge (as well as the skill
itself). Thus, if Joe the High-Level Engine of Death gets nailed with a
shotgun by Ricardo the Lucky Newbie Scavenger, he's not gonna walk away
unscathed, even if he has some God-awful-strong armour, which certainly
holds a bit more realism. Also, emphasis holds more on RP, quests (xp
instead of qp), exceling in one's profession, etc. No longer is it so easy
to be a massive, burly fighter, and mop the floor with everyone. *grin*
Sadistic, no?
-Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
ignore this desire. Granted, GURPS allows for fantasy as well as sci-fi,
etc, but a good number of players I've spoken to, both on my own MUDs and
others, prefer the straight fantasy setting to anything fancy. Of course,
those same players may not wish to use this type of system, seeing as it's
different, and most of them want fantasy because it's familiar... Same
people who howl for Midgaard whenever I try to remove it...
Johnny Bravo
<Ka...@nospam.dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>You're forgetting about skills and equipment. A well prepared player, skilled
>with his weapons and decked out with quality weapons and armour should butcher
>any newbie. Imagine such a mud as being comparible with regular muds, except
>that instead of taking 20 blows to kill a powerful player, each blow only has
>a 5% chance of getting past an experienced warrior's defences.
>
>KaVir.
Then again you won't see many people outside the town. There is a reason wild
boar were hunted in groups of 12+ people on horse back with pikes, and then some
people still got killed. :)
Still I would love to play in such a mud, you would need more than "X" hours
of playing time to get to the upper ranks, and there would be more to do than
kill the monster, take the treasure, acquire a max set of level eq, ect.
If any coder or group of coders who wants to code such a project, I'd be
willing to contribute to the idea pool. Would be about time I used my 22 years
of RPG/Wargame experience. The last thing I want to see is another mud claiming
to be "heavily modified" and see all the same classes, levels, autoquests, clans
and arenas that I can find on any number of good muds already.
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo
wrote:
>The mortal max hp is 15. Players begin with 10, with a penalty for very low
>Con, bonuses for high Con (which can be raised, but only over a long period
>of using trains [% raise each train?]).
Easy way, use Con for HP. No increase.
>Weapons can do between 1 (nerf dart)
>and 10 (shotgun blast) points of damage (maybe a small bonus for
>specialization in the weapon or an increased damage skill), soaked by armour
>(1-5 scale).
Any weapon that could kill a human should have a chance of doing so. Say any
hit has a 1 in 10 chance of doing double damage. Then even a d4 knife would
pose a threat to an average 10 con human. And a 2d6 shotgun would indeed be
fearsome.
Johnny Bravo
som...@mugs.net
> Well Bob and Bill are fairly unimaginative role-players.
> If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
Heh. So, let me see if I have this straight... role-playing is boring, but if you
add lots of exclamation points and a dash of all-caps action verbs, it becomes
roll-playing.
That sound right?
-Holly
--
"Also in the funk hall of fame are split-personality cases the Commodores,
who alternated between the hard funk of `Machine Gun' and the Manilow-esque
gushy-goo of `Three Times a Lady' depending on how much freedom Lionel
Richie was given to wander alone in the Hallmark shop." -Rhino Records
Richard Woolcock
>
> Perhaps as a system, but there's far too much market for fantasy MUDs to
> ignore this desire. Granted, GURPS allows for fantasy as well as sci-fi,
> etc, but a good number of players I've spoken to, both on my own MUDs and
> others, prefer the straight fantasy setting to anything fancy. Of course,
> those same players may not wish to use this type of system, seeing as it's
> different, and most of them want fantasy because it's familiar... Same
> people who howl for Midgaard whenever I try to remove it...
If you try and create a mud to cater to your players, you'll end up with
yet another stock mud with a few extra twink features.
Create the mud the way *you* want it, and let it attract the type of players
who like the same things you do.
KaVir.
Richard Woolcock
My mud is based on WoD, so I use the whitewolf combat system (with a few extra
features added). All players have 8 health levels which are reduced through
receiving blows in combat. If a single blow hits hard enough, there is the
possibility of a mortal wound (slashing their throat open, severing a limb,
etc) which results in death within a few seconds - assuming you're playing a
mortal rather than some supernatural entity.
Not many people player regular mortals though.
KaVir.
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
>
> Perhaps as a system, but there's far too much market for fantasy MUDs to
> ignore this desire. Granted, GURPS allows for fantasy as well as sci-fi,
> etc, but a good number of players I've spoken to, both on my own MUDs and
> others, prefer the straight fantasy setting to anything fancy. Of course,
> those same players may not wish to use this type of system, seeing as it's
> different, and most of them want fantasy because it's familiar... Same
> people who howl for Midgaard whenever I try to remove it...
Numerous though the GURPS worldbooks are, I can say from experience that
a straight fantasy setting is one of the places the GURPS rules work
best. I was not suggesting any change of setting, only a change of
system.
Ilya
>
> On Sat, 05 Jun 1999 15:12:37 -0500, som...@mugs.net said:
> >
> to use magic. Or Dartanyan(sp?) the musketeer using a
> battle-axe because it "ID"s better than a rapier.
That's "D'artagnan" I believe. Athos, Porthos, Aramis,
and him. And I believe all of the other names were
pseudonyms, much like "Voltaire" -- the Frenchies seem
to have gotten the idea of going around with handles long
before the Internet hit.
>
> In any event, I use Professions and Cultures, in lieu of Classes
> and Races as a way to give the character a more personalized
> connection, feel and view of the _world_. It's much more than
> a mere renaming of the two concepts.
I'd love to hear more. My own thoughts lean away from "races"
entirely, with variations being along the lines of what you
might find in a suitably varied species.
> One can still be in essence a dwarven fighter, yet the class
> _fighter_ is something that through happenstance or design was
> achieved via the character's skill progression and activities.
> While the race Dwarf is one of the many side effects of being
> born and raised in Dol Gulder. This character may have been
> apprenticed to a smith in adolescence, but is currently the
> barkeep at the Velvet Faun. On weekends he happens to be
> fond of adventuring in some nearby dangerous ancient mines.
That's the ticket! Classlessness gets rid of those ridiculous
questions one so often hears from people trying to choose a class
or, in the case of admins, "balance" classes -- "gee, do fighters
get dirt kick?" or "Do Thieves get Shield Block?" Ridiculous
questions, ridiculous assumptions, all gone with classless systems.
Cheers,
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> That's the ticket! Classlessness gets rid of those ridiculous
> questions one so often hears from people trying to choose a class
> or, in the case of admins, "balance" classes -- "gee, do fighters
> get dirt kick?" or "Do Thieves get Shield Block?" Ridiculous
> questions, ridiculous assumptions, all gone with classless systems.
I don't suppose you know of a good classless mud that you can recommend?
Ilya
>
> Ilya wrote:
>
> > That's the ticket! Classlessness gets rid of those ridiculous
> > questions one so often hears from people trying to choose a class
> > or, in the case of admins, "balance" classes -- "gee, do fighters
> > get dirt kick?" or "Do Thieves get Shield Block?" Ridiculous
> > questions, ridiculous assumptions, all gone with classless systems.
>
> I don't suppose you know of a good classless mud that you can
> recommend?
>
> --
> ---
> Aaron Boyden
Hmm. The best two I know of from direct experience are
both pay-for-play -- Legends of Future Past and Terris
(which apparently is now offered as a service under AOL).
Let me give this further thought. In the meantime, I'll
bet a few others will pipe up with suggestions.
Jon A. Lambert
>
>> Well Bob and Bill are fairly unimaginative role-players.
>> If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
>
>Heh. So, let me see if I have this straight... role-playing is boring, but if you
>add lots of exclamation points and a dash of all-caps action verbs, it becomes
>roll-playing.
>
>That sound right?
>
Not quite right. The scenario was meant to providing readers with a chuckle.
However, it was illustrative of how an admin at wits end might attempt to
_force_ roleplaying on rollplayers by baiting them with traditional systemic
rewards for actions a roleplayer would otherwise enjoy participating in.
If John's supposed conversation was pretty much all the barber and the artist
could come up with, I suppose the game would grind along at the speed of
Mayberry. I envisioned my original cast of mundane characters to be
somewhat more medieval, and barbers to be a tad more exotic and interesting.
Rollplaying(or min/maxing) is Conan the barbarian walking about with a full
suit of plate armor and a backpack full of wands and potions, because the
_game_ is stacked against Conan wandering around half-naked and refusing
to use magic. Or Dartanyan(sp?) the musketeer using a battle-axe because
it "ID"s better than a rapier.
In any event, I use Professions and Cultures, in lieu of Classes and Races
as a way to give the character a more personalized connection, feel and view
of the _world_. It's much more than a mere renaming of the two concepts.
One can still be in essence a dwarven fighter, yet the class _fighter_ is
something that through happenstance or design was achieved via the character's
skill progression and activities. While the race Dwarf is one of the many
side effects of being born and raised in Dol Gulder. This character may
have been apprenticed to a smith in adolescence, but is currently the
barkeep at the Velvet Faun. On weekends he happens to be fond of adventuring
in some nearby dangerous ancient mines.
--
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Richard Woolcock <Ka...@nospam.dial.pipex.com> wrote:
Some guy who was only kidding anyway wrote:
: > "LOL, just have a Real Life(tm) mud. No levels, all chars get first level hp.
: > And all weapons do enough damage that they can kill an average human with a good
: > blow. <smirk> "
: Sounds reasonable to me. Why the smirk?
This has been done tabletop. Friday Night Firefight comes to mind. The
mud I play on is sort of this way, at high levels. If you actually get
hit by a couple of just about any maxxed attack hits, you're history, but
there are LOTS of ways to avoid getting hit(or in some cases, soak the
damage into magical defenses.) Personally, I like the overwhelming
offense style of combat system, but only if the offense isn't too hard
to get ahold of - this promotes use of violence in a reasonable last
resort sort of manner, instead of as the only way of doing things. Sure,
you COULD just go and lop off my good friend Cornelius's head, but then
you'd better go into hiding for the next decade, because otherwise, I
will find you, and a solid hit in the back of the head with my slightly
oversized rock hammer is liable to be the last(and quite possibly the
briefest) sensation you'll ever have:)
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote:
: I doubt you would have many players, seeing as how they would have about a
: 50/50 chance of dying in every fight. Even worse odds if they faced something
: really nasty, like a wild boar.
The dick-u crowd would avoid such a game like the plague, which is fine,
because most of them are hydrocephalic anyway. On the other hand, people
who like a nice power struggle and covert action sort of game would love
such a combat system.
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Richard Woolcock <Ka...@nospam.dial.pipex.com> wrote:
: You're forgetting about skills and equipment. A well prepared player, skilled
: with his weapons and decked out with quality weapons and armour should butcher
: any newbie.
Nah, this is the wrong way to defend such a system. Hell, I can kill
anyone on this planet with the element of surprise, and I'm a little
wuss. Similarly, in a game that properly implemented this, the big bad
warrior hero types COULDN'T just go kill anyone they wanted - if nothing
else, someone would slit them open in their sleep - but yes, one on one,
they'd have a huge edge in a fair fight, IF they chose to fight.
OTOH, you do need a way to stop newbies from picking up crossbows and
butchering enemies of former characters belonging to the same player,
because unless you're heavily tricked out with magical effects or
technology, in which case you've really done nothing more than substitute
defenses for hit points, you CAN NOT dodge crossbow bolts with any kind
of regularity. Sure, one guy might miss, and you put the smack down on
him, but another will be around in 10 minutes or so - and sooner or
later, one of them will hit.
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote:
: On Sat, 5 Jun 1999 11:27:10 -0700, "Nyarlathotep" <nyarla...@mindspring.com>
: wrote:
: >The mortal max hp is 15. Players begin with 10, with a penalty for very low
: >Weapons can do between 1 (nerf dart)
So fifteen nerf darts will kill me? Damn, I should have been dead years
ago... let me suggest that 1 at least involve visible damage to the
person in question... (oh, and you might consider something I wrote below.)
: Any weapon that could kill a human should have a chance of doing so.
But how big a chance? Lots of 'freak accident' cases get left out of
combat systems, and with good reason. A penknife can be a lethal weapon,
but it is absurdly unlikely unless the user can get a LOT of blows in.
: Say any
: hit has a 1 in 10 chance of doing double damage. Then even a d4 knife would
: pose a threat to an average 10 con human. And a 2d6 shotgun would indeed be
: fearsome.
Sure, but more interesting is rate of fire. You fire your shotgun once,
and get a 5. I'm pretty messed up, but you, being a silly fool, didn't
buy a semiauto shotgun, and while you're busy reloading, I crawl over
and stab you 37 times with my survival knife. You lose, whereas with
good medical care, I probably won't. I've yet to see a combat system
that, in dealing with knives, takes into account the repeat-strike
pattern that is typically employed in actually fighting with one.
Similarly, nobody hits you just once with a telescoping metal baton
or most small to moderately sized weapons of similar nature. If you
get hit, you're goig to get hit over and over and over until you
either get away, hit back really hard, or collapse.
John Adelsberger
: My mud is based on WoD, so I use the whitewolf combat system (with a few extra
: features added). All players have 8 health levels which are reduced through
: receiving blows in combat. If a single blow hits hard enough, there is the
: possibility of a mortal wound (slashing their throat open, severing a limb,
: etc) which results in death within a few seconds - assuming you're playing a
: mortal rather than some supernatural entity.
: Not many people player regular mortals though.
Mortals are where it's at. Unless your system is WILDLY out of whack,
the only reason nobody plays mortals is because the necessities of
playing supers are better provided for. I quit playing vampires and
such in tabletop WoD games years ago, because any idiot can survive
and prosper that way. OTOH, it requires planning, thought, and
creative use of some really interesting weaponry to survive as a
mortal. You'd be amazed how buying advantages like wealth and
connections can make getting huge stocks of stakes, silver bullets,
flamethrowers, molotov cocktails, and so forth downright simple - but
even if you can't do that, homemade jellied gasoline will kill any
vampire you're likely to meet much more quickly than he'll be able
to respond reasonably - as if he could respond at all while his
flesh rapidly disintegrates:) Of course, they always have friends,
which is odd, since players of such sorts never seem to have any
friends whatsoever, and get screwed over by everyone who meets
them - but hey, that's just my basic bitterness at the hypocrisy
and innate antagonism inherent in running a tabletop game:)
Prince Kheldar
>that, in dealing with knives, takes into account the repeat-strike
>pattern that is typically employed in actually fighting with one.
A good way (that I'm considering implementing) to deal with this is to
completely do away with the "round" system entirely (you know, the one where
ever few seconds I hit you about 7 times and you hit me about 7 times). I
think the way I would do this is give each player and NPC a fight timer,
based largly on dexterity and weapon weight (effectively, weapon type - but
if you're using a magic system, there would conceivably be magic metals,
etc), though affected on a smaller basis by spells, wits, wounds, etc...
For instance, given the typical diku pulse_per_second of 4, a normal player
with their bare hands, completely average stats, etc. would have about a 6-8
timer.... That's realistic enough (1 attack every 1.5/2 seconds) to emulate
real fighting, but fast enough so players don't get bored. However, if
you're a thief using a dagger, with high dexterity and "haste" casted on
you, perhaps your timer would be more like 3-5. That way, when you're
fighting Conan the Barbarian in full plate swinging a battleaxe at your
(with a fight timer well over 10), you're hitting him 3 or 4 times for every
time he takes a swing at you.
I'd also probably take into account (as is alluded to above) the weight
(again, effectively the type) of one's armour. This gives way to extremely
interesting styles of combat.... Sure, the fighter could go around wearing
full plate with a battleaxe, but he's gonna have one hell of a time killing
a thief in leather armour with a dagger. Likewise, however, that thief
isn't going to be very happy if he tries to take on a dragon (who is
breathing fire at him :).
Taking this even further, one could implement it so that certain types of
weapons are weak/useless against certain types of armour. A crossbow
against platemail would be extremely effective, but a whip against platemail
would effectively be useless. This would force players to either use
strategy when attacking things, or avoid certain types of monster and
players entirely. One would hope that players would choose the former, and
get discouraged trying to do the latter (especially when the goblins notice
that big old battleaxe rarely, if ever hits them and start chasing down
Conan).
>Similarly, nobody hits you just once with a telescoping metal baton
>or most small to moderately sized weapons of similar nature. If you
>get hit, you're goig to get hit over and over and over until you
>either get away, hit back really hard, or collapse.
Yeah, this is really one of the most cringe-inducing aspects of the
diku-style combat systems. "second attack", an already dubiously named
skill, applies evenly regardless of whether you're using a stick or a
sledgehammer. Likewise, "parry" works just as well with a broadsword as it
does with a shortsword, and "dodge" applies perfectly if you're wearing full
platemail. Something's wrong there if you want a useful combat system (that
isn't just there to "kill mobs" with).
Prince Kheldar
kheldar@(nospam)ioa.com
White Flame (aka David Holz)
>
> No, but I despise the attempt to do it using a networked computer game.
> The result is ALWAYS substandard compared to the best tabletop or LARP
> rp, and usually doesn't even compare favorably to pro wrestling:)
I have to totally agree. The point of putting it on a computer is so that it
can create the RP world for you. One of my friends is a whats-it-called on
EverQuest, and when he meets up with regular players online he always talks in
Ye Ohldhe Aenglisch and wanks on about "Darn those bad other-race characters!"
trying to be all "in character". It's just totally lame. (Hi, Stan! You
reading? <g>) The game creates the setting, and everybody knows that there's a
real person behind PCs. If there's a need to do RP stuff in your inter-PC
dialog, then there's something missing in the game engine, IMO. (or maybe it's
because the setting is just sooooo good. Haven't seen anything like that yet,
though)
--
White Flame (aka David Holz)
http://fly.to/theflame - Programming, WFDis, VicSim, and soon Sox!
(kill the "Parrot" to reply to my Geocities e-mail account)
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> I'd also probably take into account (as is alluded to above) the weight
> (again, effectively the type) of one's armour. This gives way to extremely
> interesting styles of combat.... Sure, the fighter could go around wearing
> full plate with a battleaxe, but he's gonna have one hell of a time killing
> a thief in leather armour with a dagger.
Perhaps if the thief runs away. That's about the only way he should
have a chance. The common system on muds of having armor not slow
people down at all is, I admit, not perfectly realistic, but it's
important not to go overboard the other way. Armor was designed to be
worn in combat. With the exception of special types designed solely for
use by knights on horseback, it generally was designed to restrict
movement as little as possible.
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Jon A. Lambert <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
: Actually, on further thought, I've come to the conclusion that John A.
: despises anything that occurs over a network connection, with the
: possible exception of Telnetting into an Elvis session. :P
While telnetting into an elvis session is in fact a rewarding and
enlightening experience, I must admit that I also enjoy playing
on yahoo's chess server and ANNIHILATING and OBLITERATING Diku
adherents whereever such may be found:)
Jon A. Lambert
>
>John Adelsberger <j...@umr.edu> wrote in message news:3758...@news.cc.umr.edu...
>>
>> No, but I despise the attempt to do it using a networked computer game.
>> The result is ALWAYS substandard compared to the best tabletop or LARP
>> rp, and usually doesn't even compare favorably to pro wrestling:)
>
>I have to totally agree.
Actually, on further thought, I've come to the conclusion that John A.
despises anything that occurs over a network connection, with the
possible exception of Telnetting into an Elvis session. :P
Jon A. Lambert
>
>Jon A. Lambert wrote:
>>
>> In any event, I use Professions and Cultures, in lieu of Classes
>> and Races as a way to give the character a more personalized
>> connection, feel and view of the _world_. It's much more than
>> a mere renaming of the two concepts.
>
>entirely, with variations being along the lines of what you
>might find in a suitably varied species.
In truth, I don't plan on implementing dwarves at all, but if
I did implement races other than humans, I would still do it
along cultural lines. Instead I implement Egyptians, Athenians,
Argives, Lacedaemonians, Spartans, Persians, Atlantans, Phoenicians,
Trojans and other cultures. Each character inherits skills, rituals,
history, professions, religions and general attitudes from their
culture as background infornmation. Their 'starting' social standing,
wealth, class and position within their own culture is also chosen.
Tolkein attempted a similar thing with his elves, by elaborating upon
the history, culture, and etymology of elves. It's something that
made his stories have great depth; that is there is always a larger
tapestry or another related story behind even a simple tale. OTOH,
the material I'm using comes almost for free.
Characters are often created as two-dimensional beings, rooted in the
immediate here and now. Admittedly, many players prefer things this way
and won't have any interest in my style of game. I wish to create three-
dimensional characters, that 3rd dimension being time, or history.
A character might be a Trojan who was apprenticed to be a mason. Perhaps
his father had joined up with Xerxes, followed him and died on the road
from Sardis to Athens. Mayhap he was slain by an Argive hero named
Rhodetus. Maybe the character begins the game looking for work in Dardanus.
Perhaps the character chooses to start the game with a cleft lip. Mayhap
being fatherless in Illium, he had learned the art of streetfighting
the hard way. There are countless ways to build and flesh out a character.
My job isn't to create the character, that's the player's task, but to
provide enough information in the form of backdrop, skills, talents, flaws,
etc. so that after one finishes character creation they already have a
pretty good idea of who they are. Of course character development is never
really complete, until death, and perhaps continues afterdeath.
>That's the ticket! Classlessness gets rid of those ridiculous
>questions one so often hears from people trying to choose a class
>or, in the case of admins, "balance" classes -- "gee, do fighters
>get dirt kick?" or "Do Thieves get Shield Block?" Ridiculous
>questions, ridiculous assumptions, all gone with classless systems.
I allow a character to learn any skill, athough some skills are harder
to come by or for that character to learn based upon their cultural and
professional background. For example, a character who did not learn to
read and write a given language as a youth, perhaps as a consequence of
culture, might find attempting to learn skills that require r&w later in
life much more difficult than someone who already did. They might proceed
much more slowly in attempting to learn alchemy for instance.
I'm designing a game that _I_ want to play which is rooted in player
investment in politics, culture, religion, and economics.
-from my web page-
My goal in designing TychoMUD is to create a network programming platform
where one can build a virtual world that is more simulation than game. An
environment where seasons change, crops grow and are harvested, economies
flourish and stagnate, flora and fauna ecologies live, spawn, and die.
Where gods, who are really gods, have their place in interacting with the
world and the mortals contained within. A place where merchant traders can
ply their wares between city-states, driven by greed and necessity. Lands
where politicians vie for power within city-states and without, engage in
intrigues, and make war on occasion. Where alchemists and engineers can
research, design, and create new technologies and magicks. Lands, in which
kings and nobles build and maintain strongholds, marry, duel and negotiate
for power, hold festivals and masked balls. A world where priests have
direction and purpose in gathering and maintaining the flocks of their
gods, and can advance their causes and lead holy wars. Where adventurers
may risk their very lives in the pursuit of fell creatures, fabled riches,
and immortal fame. And where characters grow old and die, passing wisdom
and possessions on to their heirs. A virtual world in which the many
myriad ripples created by the cumulative actions of its player inhabitants
ultimately mold, shape, and direct the character and course of history.
--end blurb--
Anyway... enough for now. :)
Johnny Bravo
>Sure, but more interesting is rate of fire. You fire your shotgun once,
>and get a 5. I'm pretty messed up, but you, being a silly fool, didn't
>buy a semiauto shotgun, and while you're busy reloading, I crawl over
>and stab you 37 times with my survival knife.
More likely is that when you crawl within range, they use the shotgun as a
most effective and primitive weapon "the club" and just squash you. :)
> I've yet to see a combat system
>that, in dealing with knives, takes into account the repeat-strike
>pattern that is typically employed in actually fighting with one.
>Similarly, nobody hits you just once with a telescoping metal baton
>or most small to moderately sized weapons of similar nature. If you
>get hit, you're goig to get hit over and over and over until you
>either get away, hit back really hard, or collapse.
If you don't want to use timer based combat, which isn't a bad idea, how about
using multiple dice for faster weapons. Taking into account that armor would
absorb damage. You would have a % chance of getting another attack based on
your str and dex, and the weapon weight.
The tradeoff is that smaller weapons do less damage, using smaller dice.
And each hit would be soaked by the armor. In skilled hands a knife could be
more deadly than a sword to an unarmed man, but an unarmored man using a pen
knife against a fighter wearing armor and carrying a sword and shield should be
suicide.
Let longer weapons have a first attack advantage, and some pretty good
penalties for actions taken while damaged. It's going to be hard to stab
someone 37 times with 2 feet of steel in your gut.
Johnny Bravo
Larnen
>
> Then again you won't see many people outside the town. There is a
> reason wild boar were hunted in groups of 12+ people on horse back
> with pikes, and then some people still got killed. :)
With Pikes? :)
An ex of mine was into re-enactment and signed up as a pike(wo)man.
She was about 5'2, and has a 16 foot pike, which you can imagine
must have looked pretty odd! I have to say, the idea of someone
using a pike from horseback strikes me as a phenominally bad
idea - the words 'impromptu pole vault' spring to mind ;)
Mind you, I once played a RPG in which the referee allowed a 3'9"
dwarf to wield a pike, not realising that said pike was about 17'
long. All we need now is a Faerie with a Halberd :)
Larnen
ps You may have meant 'pike' as in 'similar to a salmon' in which
case this is an altogether more sensible idea. The French Nobility
often rode forth to battle, wielding nothing but Halibut, shouting
their terrible battle cry:
"Des dieux de toutes les choses aqueuses - donnez-moi les poissons ou
donnez-moi la mort!"
Jp Calderone
>
> On 6 Jun 1999 15:02:17 -0600, John Adelsberger <j...@umr.edu> wrote:
>
> >Sure, but more interesting is rate of fire. You fire your shotgun once,
> >and get a 5. I'm pretty messed up, but you, being a silly fool, didn't
> >buy a semiauto shotgun, and while you're busy reloading, I crawl over
> >and stab you 37 times with my survival knife.
>
> More likely is that when you crawl within range, they use the shotgun as a
> most effective and primitive weapon "the club" and just squash you. :)
>
> > I've yet to see a combat system
> >that, in dealing with knives, takes into account the repeat-strike
> >pattern that is typically employed in actually fighting with one.
> >Similarly, nobody hits you just once with a telescoping metal baton
> >or most small to moderately sized weapons of similar nature. If you
> >get hit, you're goig to get hit over and over and over until you
> >either get away, hit back really hard, or collapse.
>
> If you don't want to use timer based combat, which isn't a bad idea, how about
> using multiple dice for faster weapons. Taking into account that armor would
> absorb damage. You would have a % chance of getting another attack based on
> your str and dex, and the weapon weight.
> The tradeoff is that smaller weapons do less damage, using smaller dice.
> And each hit would be soaked by the armor. In skilled hands a knife could be
> more deadly than a sword to an unarmed man, but an unarmored man using a pen
> knife against a fighter wearing armor and carrying a sword and shield should be
> suicide.
unarmed
combat (most muds don't take that past 1 skill, if they have it at all -
I've got
about 50 or so relating to it), which would allow a skilled, unarmored
combatant,
with NO pen knife to take on a skilled fighter wearign armor and
carrying a sword
and shield and have a 50-50 chance of winning.
Why doesn't everyone pick unarmed combat as their speciality, then?
Because it
takes a lot more effort and time to build up a character that is good at
unarmed combat than it does to buy a shield, buy a sword, and practice
the sword
skill. I think the ideas of multiple-fire weapons is a good one, but
you oughtn't
automatically assume that it will make or break the battle.
> Let longer weapons have a first attack advantage, and some pretty good
> penalties for actions taken while damaged. It's going to be hard to stab
> someone 37 times with 2 feet of steel in your gut.
>
> Johnny Bravo
Let the person with higher initiative attack first. It was always a
pain in the
ass to do in d&d, stopping ever 3 minutes to roll 3d6 + whatever to see
if you
get to open the door before your friend, but now you can have the
computer do it
for you! *gasp* Tie in relative dexterities, healths, positions,
restedness,
whatever. And it costs the player nothing to do, they just see that its
better
to be combat ready before actually going into combat...
my 785 yen...
--
A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and
folly.
If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
-- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars
LP
> Hmm. The best two I know of from direct experience are
> both pay-for-play -- Legends of Future Past and Terris
> (which apparently is now offered as a service under AOL).
when did you play terris? Were you about in the days
of the dragonserve account, pre AOL? If so what character were you?
I just loved Terris in those days, but couldn't afford to go with
AOL so I dropped it. (I didn't have a PC in those days, much
less a modem! I was using my Uni account, and we couldn't
sign up for AOL over Jannet! Although we did try...)
If any of the following names are familliar contact me...
Poblin, Boug, Kiar, Dredd, Millamber - All were either me or
friends of mine...
Just a thought!
--
-The Little Paul with the Big Kitbag
lp @ freenet . co . uk
Holly Sommer
> >
> >add lots of exclamation points and a dash of all-caps action verbs, it becomes
> >roll-playing.
> >
> >That sound right?
> >
>
> Not quite right. The scenario was meant to providing readers with a chuckle.
As was my reply :)
-Holly
Trinity
<il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
> That's the ticket! Classlessness gets rid of those ridiculous
> questions one so often hears from people trying to choose a class
> or, in the case of admins, "balance" classes -- "gee, do fighters
> get dirt kick?" or "Do Thieves get Shield Block?" Ridiculous
> questions, ridiculous assumptions, all gone with classless systems.
Heya Ilya;
The whole concept of mudding can be "ridiculous" if that's the way you
choose to look at it. It's a fantasy game, after all. With that in
mind, I'm not quite sure it's fair to condemn any particular style of
mud. I personally dislike Classless systems because no matter what
anyone says, they encourange cookie-cutter players. (Note that web or
tree based systems are NOT "classless". They're "Multi-Classed", no
matter how badly people would like to believe otherwise.)
However, I understand that some IMPS and players perfer classless or
leveless or raceless systems. That's fine. Some people perfer
magicless systems; this hardly makes the concept of magic ridiculous.
It just means that it's not how some folks choose to play.
Trinity
<white-fl...@geoKillTheParrotcities.com> wrote:
> I have to totally agree. The point of putting it on a computer is so that it
> can create the RP world for you. One of my friends is a whats-it-called on
> EverQuest, and when he meets up with regular players online he always talks in
> Ye Ohldhe Aenglisch and wanks on about "Darn those bad other-race characters!"
> trying to be all "in character". It's just totally lame. (Hi, Stan! You
> reading? <g>) The game creates the setting, and everybody knows that there's
> a real person behind PCs. If there's a need to do RP stuff in your inter-PC
> dialog, then there's something missing in the game engine, IMO. (or maybe it's
> because the setting is just sooooo good. Haven't seen anything like that yet,
> though)
I see nothing in your post that wouldn't apply to ANY role-playing
game. Let's say you're playing White Wolf or Masquerade or whatever.
Do you feel that if the players "need to do RP stuff" that there's
"something missing" with the Game Master? Everyone knows that there's
a real person behind the dice and charts. =)
While I don't require my players to role-play, I sure as heck reward
those that do. I'd never consider them to be totally lame. I'd
encourage them to play Quake if all they wanted was to kill things. =)
Trinity
<khe...@ioaNOSPAM.com> wrote:
> Yeah, this is really one of the most cringe-inducing aspects of the
> diku-style combat systems. "second attack", an already dubiously named
> skill, applies evenly regardless of whether you're using a stick or a
> sledgehammer. Likewise, "parry" works just as well with a broadsword as it
> does with a shortsword, and "dodge" applies perfectly if you're wearing full
> platemail. Something's wrong there if you want a useful combat system (that
> isn't just there to "kill mobs" with).
I had this discussion with my coders about ten grillion times, and they
always used the argument presented above, or variations thereof. So
one day I let them implement their "perfect" system.
Players hated it. They left in droves. Our userbase fell by a third
in four days, and we had to restore the old codebase from backup and
promise on our mother's graves to never do it again. =)
Now, before the inevitable chorus of "you just implemented it wrong"
springs up, I'd like to point out that I have really excellent coders.
Their system was a thing of beauty, well balanced, extremely logical-
And players just don't care. See, to your average player, the point of
combat really IS to "just kill mobs." They didn't enjoy having to find
a lance to kill a Dragon, even though it certainly makes more sense
than killing a dragon with a dagger.
"Realistic" combat (a term I find amusing when applied to fantasy games
in any event) is just boring when applied to muds. Combat happens too
quickly, and nobody wants to carry around five different weapons and
six suits of armour, just so they'll be prepared for every possible
combat situation.
(Besides that, you can never make combat "realistic" anyway. In real
life, you'd probably be more likely to use a kitchen knife to kill
somebody than a chainsaw, so why assume that a dagger is inherently
inferior to a sword?)
So basically, you have to decide what the point of your game is. If
the point is to kill stuff, level, and get cool EQ, then anything that
confuses the issue and makes these goals more difficult is bad. Most
players LIKE being able to identify there weapon and know how strong it
is. =)
Prince Kheldar
>in four days, and we had to restore the old codebase from backup and
>promise on our mother's graves to never do it again. =)
...
>Now, before the inevitable chorus of "you just implemented it wrong"
...
I wouldn't really say that, I'd just say that you had a playerbase before
you implemented the changes, and they were the wrong type of players :)
Now, I know absolutely nothing about your MUD, your players, or your goals,
but it seems to me that this allegedly perfect system is more suitable to
people who actually enjoy strategy, a slice of realism, and perhaps a little
RP. For instance, I would enjoy a system like the one that I laid out...
even more so, I'd like to implement it just for the fun of doing so, and
playing around in it for a bit. 0
>springs up, I'd like to point out that I have really excellent coders.
>Their system was a thing of beauty, well balanced, extremely logical-
>And players just don't care. See, to your average player, the point of
>combat really IS to "just kill mobs." They didn't enjoy having to find
>a lance to kill a Dragon, even though it certainly makes more sense
>than killing a dragon with a dagger.
I think the entire point (well, my point, anyway) is that the "average"
player isn't really one that is going to contribute to the greater
intelligence and depth of your world, and can therefore take his holy
avenger and go kill tarrasques on uber-twink mud for all I care :)
>"Realistic" combat (a term I find amusing when applied to fantasy games
>in any event) is just boring when applied to muds. Combat happens too
>quickly, and nobody wants to carry around five different weapons and
>six suits of armour, just so they'll be prepared for every possible
>combat situation.
I think the general idea is that no one character should even have the
slightest, measly chance of being prepared for every type of possible
combat.... In a majority of (admittedly, diku) MUDs that I have played,
there is a general hierarchy in players. Class A can defeat class B, but
not class C, and class D can wipe the floor with the other x classes, etc...
A system in which your weapons and armour mattered for more than your
hitroll, damroll, and ac, people would actually have to think about
consequences and defenses before they went out and picked on wizard jim,
because his friend thief joe might come and put a dagger between Conan's
shoulder blades (since he's wearing platemail).
>(Besides that, you can never make combat "realistic" anyway. In real
>life, you'd probably be more likely to use a kitchen knife to kill
>somebody than a chainsaw, so why assume that a dagger is inherently
>inferior to a sword?)
The idea isn't really to make combat realistic, but rather to lay the
foundations of a system based more on strategy and intelligence rather than
mindless droning of levels and eq-gathering (since inevitably in most diku
muds, there is an "ideal" set of equipment - another gripe I tend to have).
>So basically, you have to decide what the point of your game is. If
>the point is to kill stuff, level, and get cool EQ, then anything that
>confuses the issue and makes these goals more difficult is bad. Most
>players LIKE being able to identify there weapon and know how strong it
>is. =)
That's the point :) Personally, I don't like hitting "who" and being able
to tell who I can kill and who would mop the floor with my ragged corpse. I
like the sense of mystery, curiosity, cunning, deceit, etc. that go along
with a system in which people have to think about what they're doing instead
of sitting back, hitting k <name> and taking a sip of their soda before
sacrificing (?) the corpse.
Prince Kheldar
Ilya
Perhaps I have failed to explain clearly. I do not claim that
class-based muds are ridiculous. I claim that all those questions
such as I listed are themselves ridiculous. And I stand by that
claim.
At the very least, class-based systems have a heck of a time
explaining away these questions. Why exactly do they exist?
What sort of reality or fantasy do they reflect? Why do people
spend their precious time wondering whether skill <x> is
given to class <y>?
Of course it's a fantasy game. I find nothing ridiculous about
that. I just assert that removing ridiculous, silly, or obviously
inconsistent systems or game components makes life so much better.
Can class-based systems be fun? Sure. Do they stretch the ability
to "suspend disbelief" too far? Usually.
As for tree-based systems not being classless, I would have to
disagree. And I don't think it has anything to do with how
much I _want_ it to be true. I have no emotional investment
in anything but ORPGs/muds that are fun to play and have interesting
systems that reduce the inconsistency/ridiculous/silly aspect
to a minimum. And I think that web/tree skill systems are totally
within the concept of classlessness.
I fully support the variations you describe: that some people
prefer to play one sort of game, and some another. I do not
claim, as you apparently think I did, that class-based systems
are ridiculous. I simply claim that they fail to solve some
very basic problems, and that these problems result in some
ridiculous questions often being asked.
As for class-based vs. classless: I've written plenty on it
elsewhere on the Game Commandos site, so I'll try to keep this
to a minimum, but it seems a few words are in order.
Class-based systems force skill sets into a pre-defined group.
You get some skills, you don't get others. Skills may interrelate
in some way (with, for example, prerequisites). They may not.
Skills may be grouped into logically coherent groups for each
class. They may not. Skills may fall into logical progressions.
They may not. This all depends on the abilities of wisdom of
those designing the classes.
Classless systems, by the way, can also be crap. They can
indeed end up with "cookie cutter" characters. But prerequisites,
interrelationships, trees/webs, and the like are not the
sole domain of class-based systems. Classless systems can
use them too.
What's the diff then? The class-based systems give you a
list to pick from. You have access to the skill or you don't.
Some add multiple classes, effectively allowing you to pick
from several lists. Classless systems leave the whole range
of skills open for you, at least the basic skills in any
coherent grouping of skills. Then the choice is yours what
you pick and how.
Then it is up to the classless skill system designer to arrange
these skills in such a way that cookie cutter characters don't
result. It can be done. I've seen it done. I've also seen
many many failures.
I do not see why adding webs or trees makes it a class-based
system. Webs or trees simply attempt to reflect general
interrelationships between skills, such as we all imagine
is true, in other real life learning situations.
As an example, we all can easily understand how knowledge
of, say, sailing a catamaran and sailing a single-hull
vessel could have some overlap. If you learn a whole lot
about one, you know a bit about the other, since there are
some few commonalities. You don't know everything, however,
since catamarans have much different turning and stability
and drift characteristics, to mention just a few. So if
you learn all about one, you are a leg up with the other,
but you still have more to learn with the other.
Skill trees or webs attempt to systematize this. How well
they do is of course a matter for careful consideration in
each case.
I guess that's enough along the lines of what I've already
written in the article.
I do not ridicule class-based systems, though I think they
can be improved upon. And I've seen them with prerequisites
and skill groupings. I've also seen classless systems with
skill groupings and prerequisites. They were definitely not
the same thing.
Richard Woolcock
>
[snip]
> I personally dislike Classless systems because no matter what
> anyone says, they encourange cookie-cutter players.
A class-based system *is* a cookie-cutter system. If all players in a
classless system have the same abilities, then that system has been
poorly implemented.
Some people like classes, others need such an infrastructure as a crutch
to help them roleplay. I have played both styles of game and prefer
classless, but there is nothing wrong with either method.
> (Note that web or tree based systems are NOT "classless". They're
> "Multi-Classed", no matter how badly people would like to believe
> otherwise.)
How can they be multi-classed if the system has no classes? It could
be argued that all skill-based systems are class-based in some way or
other, just as it could be argued that ones ability in various skills
could be used to represent a sort of 'level'. The question is, where
do you draw the line?
1) Choose to be a "warrior", "mage", "cleric" or "thief". Quite
obviously this is a class-based system.
2) As above, except that you may choose two classes. Obviously
this is a multiclassed system.
3) As 1 or 2, except you may also choose skills from other classes
at greater cost/reduce ability (as per ROM). Are these class-
based systems?
4) As above, except that there is only one initial "class". This
would appear to be a classless system.
5) As above, except that your first six abilities are half price and
more powerful than usual. Is this class-based?
6) As 4 or 5, except that the skills are split into categories of
ascending power, so that you have to learn "burning hands" before
learning "fireball" before learning "wall of flame". Would these
be class-based systems?
7) As above, except that you can only learn one "top level" ability
such as "super backstab", "tenth attack" or "nuclear airstrike".
So, where *do* you draw the line?
KaVir.
Richard Woolcock
>
> In article <RyD63.2251$9J.1...@newsfeed.slurp.net>, Prince Kheldar
> <khe...@ioaNOSPAM.com> wrote:
>
> > Yeah, this is really one of the most cringe-inducing aspects of the
> > diku-style combat systems. "second attack", an already dubiously named
> > skill, applies evenly regardless of whether you're using a stick or a
> > sledgehammer. Likewise, "parry" works just as well with a broadsword as it
> > does with a shortsword, and "dodge" applies perfectly if you're wearing full
> > platemail. Something's wrong there if you want a useful combat system (that
> > isn't just there to "kill mobs" with).
In response to Kheldar (to save writing yet another post): I've implemented
a speed-based combat system. It works reasonably well, but can get spammy
if you're not careful (ie, don't let people attack TOO fast). There are
ways to get around the spam, but that's something you'll want to look into
*after* writing the system.
> I had this discussion with my coders about ten grillion times, and they
> always used the argument presented above, or variations thereof. So
> one day I let them implement their "perfect" system.
>
> Players hated it. They left in droves. Our userbase fell by a third
> in four days, and we had to restore the old codebase from backup and
> promise on our mother's graves to never do it again. =)
Other people have already pointed out that the fault was most likely
with the players rather than the mud. Unfortunately once a mud has
attracted a number of players, most admin are scared to try anything
original for fear of upsetting their players, who generally hate
anything that doesn't benefit them personally.
Perhaps that is the reason why so many stock muds that open up before
making any changes tend to remain stock?
[snip]
> "Realistic" combat (a term I find amusing when applied to fantasy games
> in any event) is just boring when applied to muds.
Don't confuse "realistic" with "reality". The former doesn't have to
apply to our own reality. In a world of dragons and magic, throwing
fireballs around might well be "realistic", whilst killing dragons with
12 foot marshmellows might not. It's all a matter of context.
> (Besides that, you can never make combat "realistic" anyway.
However, you can usually make it "more" realistic than it currently is.
KaVir.
Johnny Bravo
>With Pikes? :)
>
Well a pole 12' long and 3 inches thick with a foot wide cross piece about 2
feet from the tip to keep the boar from running up the weapon and goring you to
death seemed a bit big to call a spear. <grin>
>An ex of mine was into re-enactment and signed up as a pike(wo)man.
>She was about 5'2, and has a 16 foot pike, which you can imagine
>must have looked pretty odd! I have to say, the idea of someone
>using a pike from horseback strikes me as a phenominally bad
>idea - the words 'impromptu pole vault' spring to mind ;)
You could say the same thing about a lance. :)
>Mind you, I once played a RPG in which the referee allowed a 3'9"
>dwarf to wield a pike, not realising that said pike was about 17'
>long. All we need now is a Faerie with a Halberd :)
Keep in mind that the average RPG halfling or hobbit is only as large as a 4
year old human child. I can't imagine them wielding anything bigger than a
kitchen knife. I've also seen referees allow a 4'10 dwarf weighing about 180
lbs and wearing a suit of chainmail to swim. Not to mention the players who
seem to get away with holding a sword, a shield, a lantern and then stating they
are reaching into a pack for a flask of oil.
>Larnen
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo
>skill. I think the ideas of multiple-fire weapons is a good one, but
>you oughtn't
>automatically assume that it will make or break the battle.
I never assumed that, just was describing a way to match the speed of a dagger
vs that of a two handed sword. Giving each fighter one attack each just doesn't
seem right, never mind the absurdity of applying a standard "double" or "triple"
attack skill to a 30 pound weapon.
>> Let longer weapons have a first attack advantage, and some pretty good
>> penalties for actions taken while damaged. It's going to be hard to stab
>> someone 37 times with 2 feet of steel in your gut.
>>
>> Johnny Bravo
>
>Let the person with higher initiative attack first. It was always a
>pain in the
>ass to do in d&d, stopping ever 3 minutes to roll 3d6 + whatever to see
>if you
>get to open the door before your friend, but now you can have the
>computer do it
>for you! *gasp* Tie in relative dexterities, healths, positions,
>restedness,
>whatever
Exactly, no longer any need to avoid number intensive systems. On a computer
is the ONLY place I'd like to see rolemaster combat played out. It had a
different hit table for each weapon, and on each table was one column for every
single type of armor in the game.
Johnny Bravo
John Adelsberger
In rec.games.mud.admin Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote:
: On 6 Jun 1999 15:02:17 -0600, John Adelsberger <j...@umr.edu> wrote:
: >Sure, but more interesting is rate of fire. You fire your shotgun once,
: >and get a 5. I'm pretty messed up, but you, being a silly fool, didn't
: >buy a semiauto shotgun, and while you're busy reloading, I crawl over
: >and stab you 37 times with my survival knife.
: More likely is that when you crawl within range, they use the shotgun as a
: most effective and primitive weapon "the club" and just squash you. :)
Maybe, but if so, why didn't he just come after me with it in the first
place? This illustrates one of my particular dislikes about mud combat
systems. I've yet to find one that will let you find creative uses for
things. A broken greataxe probably IS a quite passable bludgeoning
weapon - if you know how to use such a thing.
: Let longer weapons have a first attack advantage, and some pretty good
: penalties for actions taken while damaged. It's going to be hard to stab
: someone 37 times with 2 feet of steel in your gut.
You'd be surprised what people with horrid wounds CAN do, but most of them
don't have the stomach to do it. I'd say the issue is one of character or
willpower more than actual difficulty. There's a story of a Marine at Tarawa
in WWII who blocked a bayonet surprise attack with his hand, the blade going
right through, broke off the handle, and literally beat his attacker to
death with it. From what I can tell, the story is regarded as being true
by those who have had the opportunity to investigate it. People can do
amazing things, even if they usually don't - and that's another thing that
most systems ignore, and in so doing, they lose a LOT of the excitement of
combat gaming, because there's no unpredictability.
White Flame (aka David Holz)
news:070619990826117817%dead_p...@hotmail.com...
> I see nothing in your post that wouldn't apply to ANY role-playing
> game. Let's say you're playing White Wolf or Masquerade or whatever.
> Do you feel that if the players "need to do RP stuff" that there's
> "something missing" with the Game Master? Everyone knows that there's
> a real person behind the dice and charts. =)
>
> While I don't require my players to role-play, I sure as heck reward
> those that do. I'd never consider them to be totally lame. I'd
> encourage them to play Quake if all they wanted was to kill things. =)
hmm. Okay, maybe I was a bit misunderstood or wasn't as thorough as I should
have been. (seeing how often I'm grossly misunderstood, I'm assuming the
problem's on my end <g>) (non-C)RPGs rely on player's imaginations,
documentation, dice, etc, to set up the world. Since all the action is
determined by what people say & agree upon, the players/GM must work to define
the world themselves.
In a CRPG/MUD, the player IMO should be entering a pre-existing world that does
not require the player to perform special goofy feats of acting to keep the
world going. Sure, you can talk however you want, but the game commands &
responses should encompass what your PC is capable of & willing to do, the
quests that your PC is eligible for, etc. The gameplay should be fluid and
contiguous in its own setting, while allowing the character freedom to do
whatever they want in the virtual world that you've set up for them.
All IMO, of course.
Trinity
<khe...@ioaNOSPAM.com> wrote:
> I'd just say that you had a playerbase before
> you implemented the changes, and they were the wrong type of players :)
I agree, the main problem is that we'd led our players to expect one
thing, then we gave them another. *nods* If your players go in to a
game expecting a robust combat system, then you're a lot better off
than if they signed up expecting DIKU Gamma and you give them GodWars.
=)
I agree totally with the rest of your post.
Trinity
<il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
> I do not see why adding webs or trees makes it a class-based
> system. Webs or trees simply attempt to reflect general
> interrelationships between skills, such as we all imagine
> is true, in other real life learning situations.
Hiya;
The rest of my message is just sort of a general rant on multiclassing,
and isn't really directed towards your post, which I found extremely
intelligent and thought-provoking. (Even though I do address some of
the issues therein.)
I see web/tree systems as Multiclassing, tis true.. Classes were first
invented precisely to describe general interrelationships between
skills. The only true classless system would allow you to learn any
spell at any time. And really, why not? Let's say you only wanted to
learn "full heal". You don't want to learn "cure scratches" or
anything else, so you devote all your time and money to learning one
specific skill.
Now, some would say "But you couldn't HELP learning "cure scratches" on
the way to learning "Full Heal." To which I'd respond: Yup, which is
why class systems were initially created. It's as though some of the
proponents of classless systems are more concerned about getting rid of
the word "class" than actually losing the class structure.
Hmmm, actually I really don't think one system is superior to another.
I think it's mostly a matter of the kinda game a person wants to run.
So I'm going to shut up now and go get a Pepsi. =)
Richard
% A character might be a Trojan who was apprenticed to be a mason. Perhaps
% his father had joined up with Xerxes, followed him and died on the road
% from Sardis to Athens. Mayhap he was slain by an Argive hero named
% Rhodetus. Maybe the character begins the game looking for work in Dardanus.
% Perhaps the character chooses to start the game with a cleft lip. Mayhap
% being fatherless in Illium, he had learned the art of streetfighting
% the hard way. There are countless ways to build and flesh out a character.
% My job isn't to create the character, that's the player's task, but to
% provide enough information in the form of backdrop, skills, talents, flaws,
% etc. so that after one finishes character creation they already have a
% pretty good idea of who they are. Of course character development is never
% really complete, until death, and perhaps continues afterdeath.
This sounds pretty much like we have been planning on my mud, the ability to
build up a character history for a character you are going to play.
Basically our model allows almost any selection of learnt professions, with
amounts of time spent at each and the order in which they were held
determining what skills a starting character has and what level they start
off at. Initial experience at the expense of age and all that.
--
Richard Tew (above spudent -> student, lame spam avoidance thingy)
Matthew R. Sheahan
> You'd be surprised what people with horrid wounds CAN do, but most of them
> don't have the stomach to do it. I'd say the issue is one of character or
> willpower more than actual difficulty. There's a story of a Marine at Tarawa
> in WWII who blocked a bayonet surprise attack with his hand, the blade going
if you're going to model that in a game, something else you should be
tracking besides willpower and adrenalin is the plain amount of combat
and death the character has seen. part of the reason veterans kill green
troops is that they don't freeze in shock and terror quite as much, and
actually get around to pulling the trigger. jadedness counts for a lot.
(you should probably also be keeping track of the intensity of atrocity
the character has seen, in addition to repetition, for situations like
the one you describe.)
chiaroscuro
i...@wans.net
>
> In article <3757F071...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com>, Ilya
> <il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
>
> > I've never ever understood
> > exactly how anyone could justify raising stats.
>
> Many Stats, as they currently work in the majority of muds, are fairly
> pointless. Wisdom, for example, typically only effects how many
> "practices" you get. But the average player has practices to burn buy
> 50th level, so who really cares?
>
> Intelligence is the same way- a nearly pointless stat mainly used for
> leveling. Some muds base spell success on Int, but this seems a bit
> hokey: If you're smart enough to learn it, you should be smart enough
> to cast it.
>
> Charisma has been a thorn in the side of Imps for years now; nobody
> really knows what to do with it. "Does it make shopkeepers give you
> better deals? Does it make it so aggro mobs don't attack you?
>
> And so on. But I have this idea formin' in my brain: =) Woah, in
> fact, I think I might actually implement this tonight: What if Int was
> a modifier on spells? Hmmmm. So a fireball (in my mud at least) might
> do 1d6 + level + int damage. Woo hoo!
Gee you reinvented a concept that was invented a long time ago! Bravo!
Martin Thomson
Prince Kheldar wrote:
>
> >I've yet to see a combat system
> >that, in dealing with knives, takes into account the repeat-strike
> >pattern that is typically employed in actually fighting with one.
>
> A good way (that I'm considering implementing) to deal with this is to
> completely do away with the "round" system entirely (you know, the one where
> ever few seconds I hit you about 7 times and you hit me about 7 times). I
> think the way I would do this is give each player and NPC a fight timer,
> based largly on dexterity and weapon weight (effectively, weapon type - but
> if you're using a magic system, there would conceivably be magic metals,
> etc), though affected on a smaller basis by spells, wits, wounds, etc...
>
> For instance, given the typical diku pulse_per_second of 4, a normal player
> with their bare hands, completely average stats, etc. would have about a 6-8
> timer.... That's realistic enough (1 attack every 1.5/2 seconds) to emulate
> real fighting, but fast enough so players don't get bored. However, if
> you're a thief using a dagger, with high dexterity and "haste" casted on
> you, perhaps your timer would be more like 3-5. That way, when you're
> fighting Conan the Barbarian in full plate swinging a battleaxe at your
> (with a fight timer well over 10), you're hitting him 3 or 4 times for every
> time he takes a swing at you.
>
> I'd also probably take into account (as is alluded to above) the weight
> (again, effectively the type) of one's armour. This gives way to extremely
> interesting styles of combat.... Sure, the fighter could go around wearing
> full plate with a battleaxe, but he's gonna have one hell of a time killing
> a thief in leather armour with a dagger. Likewise, however, that thief
> isn't going to be very happy if he tries to take on a dragon (who is
> breathing fire at him :).
>
There are a few drawbacks to this system, the obvious is the spam factor
which can be pretty extreme as I have witnessed on one particular try at
this style of attacking. While actually liking the idea of having
definite divisions to reduce spam I find that this 7 each is a little
silly. Has anyone ever considered emulating this wait thing but with
combat rounds compressed somewhat and all the combat coming in pulses,
this way the guy with the knife goes a few times, whoomph the battle axe
swings, then the guy with the knife stabs a few more times and so on and
so forth. This may be some sort of compromise, and is something like
what I have already implemented.
In this system a you start with a certain initiative and that means you
get a certain period to act before the other guy each round, maybe there
should be some residual lag but this can be debateable. Other effects
would be dexterity and some sort of reflex stat if you think necessary.
Another thing to consider in order to reduce spam is combat compression,
I have seen a moderately successful implementation of compression where
you get messages like:
You strike the big blob 3 times, doing ludicrous damage.
The big blob strikes you 500 times, doing a little more damage.
This can easily be implemented and some players find this extremely
useful for reducing the amount of spam flashing past with big groups or
something in that line.
Anyway my two bob,
Martin
Greg Miller
> You need to adjust this scenario a bit to excite a roll-player...
>
> >Bob(a barber): So, Bill, you here for a haircut?
> >Bill(an artist): Yes. Want to buy a painting?
> >Bob: No. How do you want your hair cut?
> >Bill: Shave it off.
> >Bob: Ok.
> ><clip, clip, clip>
> Bob <-- You DECIMATE a hair of Bill !!!
> Bob <-- You OBLITERATE a the bangs of Bill !!!
> Bob <-- You receive 1000xps!
> Bob <-- You have raised a level!!!
> Global <-- Bob has slain the hair of Bill!!!
> Global <-- Bob has raised a level to the title The Barber of Seville !!!
Heh, I like that... but I would point out that capitalizing key words
can be quite helpful for dealing with spammy interfaces...
> Well Bob and Bill are fairly unimaginative role-players.
> If I remember correctly you despise RP in any event. :P
I used to role-play a lot... as a child... And, yes, I realize that we
all enjoy different things and feel our own type of play is superior or
we wouldn't do it.
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
President Clinton was acquitted; then again, so was O. J. Simpson.
*** NEWBIES: Limit signatures to four lines! No HTML mail or posts! ***
Greg Miller
> Ye Ohldhe Aenglisch and wanks on about "Darn those bad other-race characters!"
> trying to be all "in character". It's just totally lame. (Hi, Stan! You
> reading? <g>) The game creates the setting, and everybody knows that
Makes me think of all those people who feel the need to play orcs and
trolls with their perception of orcish english and trollish english...
I'm guessing that irritates even the long-time RPers.
Greg Miller
> Just what the heck are you replying to?
> This is even more incoherent than your post on Y2K.
Erm, I took it for a troll... Nobody REALLY likes MajorMUD, right?
Greg Miller
>
> Johnny Bravo wrote:
> >
>
> [snip]
>
> > "LOL, just have a Real Life(tm) mud. No levels, all chars get first level hp.
> > And all weapons do enough damage that they can kill an average human with a good
> > blow. <smirk> "
>
> Sounds reasonable to me. Why the smirk?
As a matter of fact, I'm working on a project right now with no levels
or hp, and a human *can* die in one hit, particularly if totally
unskilled, or tired, or whatever.
Greg Miller
> >Sounds reasonable to me. Why the smirk?
> >
>
> I doubt you would have many players, seeing as how they would have about a
> 50/50 chance of dying in every fight. Even worse odds if they faced something
> really nasty, like a wild boar.
Why would they have to fight very dangerous opponents with a 50/50
chance of killing them right off the bat?
Jp Calderone
>
> In article <375BFEE5...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com>, Ilya
> <il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
>
> > system. Webs or trees simply attempt to reflect general
> > interrelationships between skills, such as we all imagine
> > is true, in other real life learning situations.
>
> The rest of my message is just sort of a general rant on multiclassing,
> and isn't really directed towards your post, which I found extremely
> intelligent and thought-provoking. (Even though I do address some of
> the issues therein.)
>
> I see web/tree systems as Multiclassing, tis true.. Classes were first
> invented precisely to describe general interrelationships between
> skills. The only true classless system would allow you to learn any
> spell at any time. And really, why not? Let's say you only wanted to
> learn "full heal". You don't want to learn "cure scratches" or
> anything else, so you devote all your time and money to learning one
> specific skill.
>
> Now, some would say "But you couldn't HELP learning "cure scratches" on
> the way to learning "Full Heal." To which I'd respond: Yup, which is
> why class systems were initially created. It's as though some of the
> proponents of classless systems are more concerned about getting rid of
> the word "class" than actually losing the class structure.
And right there I think you've hit on the crux of the matter. In most
class-based system, despite the fact that you can't help learning
"cure scratches" on the way to "full heal", all you really have to do
is gain a couple more levels and never bother with cure scratches (I
do it all the time when I'm playing (: ). You may be right that it
is necessary to be able to learn any skill at any time for true
classless-
ness, but I much prefer a system where either "cure scratches" either
is a pre-requisite skill and must be learned before "full heal" or
else it is not, and so must not. This moves the skill pre-reqs
from an arbitrary level system to a more sensical knowledge system.
Hmm, so I guess I'm really arguing in favor of a level-less system,
not a classless system... I think *I'll* go get a mountain dew... :)
>
> Hmmm, actually I really don't think one system is superior to another.
> I think it's mostly a matter of the kinda game a person wants to run.
> So I'm going to shut up now and go get a Pepsi. =)
Greg Miller
> Players hated it. They left in droves. Our userbase fell by a third
> in four days, and we had to restore the old codebase from backup and
> promise on our mother's graves to never do it again. =)
Why did you have to do that? Were players defacing your houses and
threatening your families? Some of your players would have come back,
and you could live without the others who left, could you not? The
problems here are that (a) you gave people plenty of time to leave
without giving players who liked the new system time to find your mud
and (b) you made your decision based on player count.
>
> Now, before the inevitable chorus of "you just implemented it wrong"
> springs up, I'd like to point out that I have really excellent coders.
> Their system was a thing of beauty, well balanced, extremely logical-
> And players just don't care. See, to your average player, the point of
> combat really IS to "just kill mobs." They didn't enjoy having to
Of course... Otherwise, why would stock dikus attract any players? But
do you care about "your average player"? Depends on how much they pay,
doesn't it?
find
> a lance to kill a Dragon, even though it certainly makes more sense
> than killing a dragon with a dagger.
Some always whine about changes. Over time, they quiet down or are
replaced.
> "Realistic" combat (a term I find amusing when applied to fantasy games
> in any event) is just boring when applied to muds. Combat happens too
> quickly, and nobody wants to carry around five different weapons and
> six suits of armour, just so they'll be prepared for every possible
> combat situation.
Indeed, but eventually they learn the new system and pick their targets
based on the new rules.
> So basically, you have to decide what the point of your game is. If
> the point is to kill stuff, level, and get cool EQ, then anything that
> confuses the issue and makes these goals more difficult is bad. Most
> players LIKE being able to identify there weapon and know how strong it
> is. =)
So the easiest possible MUD is the best MUD? I guess that would explain
Medievia, but it has to stop at some point or the game devolves into
> kill mob
Mob died.
You killed Mob.
Greg Miller
>
> In article <375806D1...@geocities.com>, joshua
> <ilovem...@geocities.com> wrote:
>
> > gw mudS KICK ASS AND THEY HAVE ALL JUNK, BUT THEY ARE NOT CLASSLESS, (sorry
> > 'bout the caps:P) they are the best mud around, you should play them
> > instead of that damn limitation shit with normal muds, forget yore!
> > welcome to the 20th century! the century of GOD WARS!
>
> Did someone leave the liquor cabinet open again?
Nah, just the troll pen.
Greg Miller
> Muds are fantasy worlds, after all. Classes are no more inherently
> bizzare than any other mud concept. I've seen the same argument
> applied to Level-less muds; that the concept of "levels" is bizzare.
> And so it may be, but then orcs, elves, dragons etc. are a pretty
> bizzare concept too. =)
I disagree. I can see the motivation behind creating nonhuman races...
but I see no advantage to class systems (or levels).
Prince Kheldar
>combat rounds compressed somewhat and all the combat coming in pulses,
>this way the guy with the knife goes a few times, whoomph the battle axe
>swings, then the guy with the knife stabs a few more times and so on and
>so forth. This may be some sort of compromise, and is something like
>what I have already implemented.
Well, this is kind of the idea I had in mind... I probably encased my main
points in a bunch of auxilliary garbage, however :) I meant that a person
with a battleaxe would attack (perhaps) every 3-4 seconds, and a person with
a dagger would attack about 3 times every 3-4 seconds (I haven't gotten the
numbers down, this is all just guess and check). Basically it would amount
to the same thing... Of course, how presise this gets depends on how often
you 'pulse' for combat. In typically diku (I actually checked with ROM, so
don't jump on me), you have a pulse-per-second of 4, and a pulse-violence of
12 (3* pulse-per-second).
If you just changed the pulse violence, you would have attacks close to the
nearest second rounded up... unfortunately, this means that two people
wielding the same weapons and armour would attack at the same rate, despite
the fact that the second person had a +1 bonus to speed because of their
dexterity.... If you cut this in half and make the pulse 2 (twice per
second), it's a bit more exact, and the extra points could add up. Going
even furthur, if you update combat 4 times per second, each individual bonus
is going to be accounted for, and thus each bonus will be noticed.....
It could, however, simply be easier to say that if you have a "3" fight
timer, and the pulse (set at 4) goes off, your new timer will be one lower
because of your previously "shaved off" bonus. This would eventually add up
as well, and would cut down on CPU time and RAM usage (I think). Any ideas
on how to strike a balance between the two?
<snip combat compression>
>You strike the big blob 3 times, doing ludicrous damage.
>The big blob strikes you 500 times, doing a little more damage.
>This can easily be implemented and some players find this extremely
>useful for reducing the amount of spam flashing past with big groups or
>something in that line.
Didn't they do this in "final fantasy 1"? :) I think this looks like an OK
idea at first glance, but it seems kinda corny to me. Besides, this isn't
really cohesive with my damage messaging system (I pretty much ditched the
old diku bullshit system with one that is a lot more descriptive, based on
damage and weapon type equally), and would look silly :) Also, since I use
a system of hit-locations, if you got a really low percentile roll and hit
in his little toe, but got a really high hit roll and hit 43 times, you
would hit them 43 times in the little toe (absurd example - 'little toe' is
not a valid location :P). That would look both ludicrous and stupid to any
cognizant player ;)
Prince Kheldar
Prince Kheldar
computer
>is the ONLY place I'd like to see rolemaster combat played out. It had a
>different hit table for each weapon, and on each table was one column for
every
>single type of armor in the game.
This is pretty much what I'm doing, though I haven't precisely layed out the
tables yet... A table comparing every single type of weapon vs. every
single type of armor. I'd consider going even furthur and applying a
similar table with regards to weapons vs. weapons, but I can't really
convince myself that a dagger really would be more or less effective against
a sword, or that a whip would be more or less effective against a battleaxe.
Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?
Michael Hanthorn
Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote in message
news:3764ffcd...@news.mpinet.net...
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> This is pretty much what I'm doing, though I haven't precisely layed out the
> tables yet... A table comparing every single type of weapon vs. every
> single type of armor. I'd consider going even furthur and applying a
> similar table with regards to weapons vs. weapons, but I can't really
> convince myself that a dagger really would be more or less effective against
> a sword, or that a whip would be more or less effective against a battleaxe.
> Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?
A small, light weapon is going to have a hard time parrying a big, heavy
weapon (sure, it's easy to get a dagger in the way of a battle-axe, but
hard to keep it from just being knocked aside). Any weapon is going to
have a hard time parrying a flexible weapon like a whip or flail, and
conversely a whip or flail is going to have a hard time parrying
anything. A weapon that's too big and heavy is going to have a hard
time parrying anything. Among big and heavy weapons, two-handed weapons
tend to be a lot easier to parry with.
--
---
Aaron Boyden
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe
anything upon insufficient evidence." W. K. Clifford
Trinity
<white-fl...@geoKillTheParrotcities.com> wrote:
> In a CRPG/MUD, the player IMO should be entering a pre-existing world that
> does not require the player to perform goofy feats of acting to keep the
> world going. Sure, you can talk however you want, but the game commands &
> responses should encompass what your PC is capable of & willing to do, the
> quests that your PC is eligible for, etc. The gameplay should be fluid and
> contiguous in its own setting, while allowing the character freedom to do
> whatever they want in the virtual world that you've set up for them.
>
> All IMO, of course.
Ah! Okay, now I getcha. =) Nods, I agree that the game should bear
the lion's share of establishing the world, just as the GM bears the
burden of creating the atmosphere in a book-based RPGs.
Johnny Bravo
wrote:
>This is pretty much what I'm doing, though I haven't precisely layed out the
>tables yet... A table comparing every single type of weapon vs. every
>single type of armor. I'd consider going even furthur and applying a
>similar table with regards to weapons vs. weapons, but I can't really
>convince myself that a dagger really would be more or less effective against
>a sword, or that a whip would be more or less effective against a battleaxe.
>Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?
Sure, try a real world example. Give a friend a yardstick, you take a
standard foot long ruler. Then you try to touch him with the ruler without you
being touched first by the yardstick. My and my fiance made some swords and
daggers out of pvc pipe and furniture padding, with wood for the crosspieces.
Works pretty well, and using a dagger against a sword is a bitch, you are better
off throwing the dagger at your opponent and going for a tackle while they duck.
And as for the whip vs battle axe, imagine trying to parry a battle axe with a
whip. Not that a whip is all that much of a weapon, think bigger and heavier
say flail. :) Not that a battle axe will do you much good in parrying a flail
either. And talk about serious hurting, flail vs flail.
Johnny Bravo
Richard Woolcock
>
> >Has anyone ever considered emulating this wait thing but with
> >combat rounds compressed somewhat and all the combat coming in pulses,
> >this way the guy with the knife goes a few times, whoomph the battle axe
> >swings, then the guy with the knife stabs a few more times and so on and
> >so forth. This may be some sort of compromise, and is something like
> >what I have already implemented.
[big snip]
> It could, however, simply be easier to say that if you have a "3" fight
> timer, and the pulse (set at 4) goes off, your new timer will be one lower
> because of your previously "shaved off" bonus. This would eventually add up
> as well, and would cut down on CPU time and RAM usage (I think). Any ideas
> on how to strike a balance between the two?
My violence pulse goes off 4 times per second, scanning through a double
linked list containing all players/mobs that are currently fighting (NOT
the entire list, like most Dikus) and decrementing their combat counters.
When their counter reaches 0, it is reset (depending on various attributes
for that person), they attack, and then the process repeats.
> <snip combat compression>
> >You strike the big blob 3 times, doing ludicrous damage.
> >The big blob strikes you 500 times, doing a little more damage.
>
> >This can easily be implemented and some players find this extremely
> >useful for reducing the amount of spam flashing past with big groups or
> >something in that line.
>
> Didn't they do this in "final fantasy 1"? :) I think this looks like an OK
> idea at first glance, but it seems kinda corny to me. Besides, this isn't
> really cohesive with my damage messaging system (I pretty much ditched the
> old diku bullshit system with one that is a lot more descriptive, based on
> damage and weapon type equally), and would look silly :)
Mine is based upon how hard you hit the person, rather than how much damage
you actually did, which is a method I'm rather fond of. If you hit your
opponent lightly and their condition goes down, it's fairly safe to assume
that they are not very tough, while if you hit them incredibly hard and
they just shrug it off, you should start to worry!
> Also, since I use a system of hit-locations, if you got a really low
> percentile roll and hit in his little toe, but got a really high hit
> roll and hit 43 times, you would hit them 43 times in the little toe
> (absurd example - 'little toe' is not a valid location :P). That
> would look both ludicrous and stupid to any cognizant player ;)
I've seem a system of combined messages used elsewhere, and it didn't
prove very popular with the players at all. Powergaming players seem
to enjoy seeing lots of attack messages scrolling up their screen, and
I doubt that roleplayers would be particularly keen on a system that
was lacking in detail to that degree.
KaVir.