Moria II
Jeff Johnson
1. The ability to scroll the screen w/o moving your character.
Oftentimes, I'm moving towards the edge of the screen, and I'd
like to do a detect evil on the next screen, but I can't until
I move at least one square away from it. Sometimes this leads
me to run face to face into a vampire, trap, etc.
2. How about a blacksmith shop, where you can pay to have damaged
armor and broken swords repaired ? This wouldn't add magical
bonuses, or anything, just repair acid/gas/combat damage, etc.
This would imply a new feature of "wear and tear"; each combat
has a % chance of breaking your weapons ( or dulling them,
which reduces the pluses for hits/damage ), and damaging your
armour. Maybe the percentage of breaking is based on the type of
monster you fight; "armored" opponents (dragons, etc) increase the
% chance of dulling of your blade ( i.e., reducing damage by 1 ),
or something like that.
Also, it might be that repairing the armor/weapon might take awhile.
So, the repair person could issue a receipt, and you could return
later to collect your repaired item ( unless the receipt gets
stolen ) .
Perhaps this repair functionality could be incorporated into the
existing weaponsmith and armorer shops.
3. A bank, with safety deposit boxes for storing items.
4. A secret pouch, which could hold a very limited number of items,
but they could never be stolen.
5a. New spell/prayer: Summon friendly monster/elemental. This would
summon a magical/physical monster ( of some random or not random
type ) which would attack everything in the room ( except you ).
However, you wouldn't gain experience points for the monsters killed
by the summoned monster. The monster would stick around (and follow
you ) until:
1. It was killed.
2. You attacked it, in which case it would attack you
to the death.
3. It "dissipated", in the case of a magical elemental-type
monster, like after the spell wears off. Or, perhaps it
periodically drains mana points from you to keep generating
the elemental monster in the physical plane or whatever.
( when you reach 0 mana, poof ! ).
This would be kind of like a temporary companion dog ( in Hack ).
But you could have several around at one time, if you wanted.
5b. New spell/prayer: Doppelganger/Illusion/Decoy
This would create an illusion ( or maybe a real person ) of
your character, that could fight monsters, or at least fool them
into attacking it instead of you ( perhaps it doesn't fight back,
it just sits there and gets womped on until it disappears ).
6. I'd also like to see the ability to regain a stolen item if you
immediately kill the thief.
7. CHANGE: Make area-effect weapons ( poison cloud, etc ) affect
your character if you set them off while your character is within
the blast radius.
8. CHANGE: Have monsters set off traps. That way, the wands of
trap creation are actually useful. You can set traps while
being chased along a long corridor, and let the traps kill
your pursuers.
[ This assumes they don't set off traps now. Do they ? ]
9. New monster: the blob:
It reproduces like worm mass, but it always stay contiguous.
So, it covers more than one square, but it's still the same
monster. Perhaps [only] if it touches other monsters/objects/traps,
it sucks them inside, and gains strength. Perhaps, it can't be
killed by hacking, it can only be killed by frost balls.
10. New object: Coffin ( looks a lot like a large wooden chest ).
Maybe it contains treasure, and/or a sleeping vampire.
11. New object/weapon/amulet: Holy Cross - repels undead, or protects
you from loss of life levels.
12. New food: garlic ( can be thrown at vampires ).
13. New monster: werewolves,werebears,weretribbles.
If you get bitten by one ( but not if only clawed ), then every 30
turns/days or so, for one turn/day you go completely mad and are
"confused" until you cure the "were"-ism affliction, with an
appropriate new item/spell/scroll.
This would imply the need for silver-tipped daggers, etc.
14. New feature: Killing a humanoid has a certain percent chance of
immediately creating a "lost soul" or other ghost from that dead
person. For magic users, this would be high %, for others a low %.
[ I got this idea from "PowerMonger". ]
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Jeffrey A. Johnson uunet!ingr!b17d!jaj!jeff <std disclaimer>
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Jeff Johnson ingr!b17d!jaj!jeff x7851 <std disclaimer>
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John H. Kim
please forgive if some of these have been mentioned.
1. Dragons, bats and dragonflies seem to be able to breathe
directly on me whether or not they're lined up with me. They
can also breathe past other creatures in the way. Either I
get to do the same with spells and wands, or they don't get
to do it. (The most frustrating thing about this game is
running away from something down a long hall towards a dark
room only to find out there's a wimpy black dragonfly in
there who keeps breathing on you while never lining up so
you can take a shot at it with a wand.)
2. Change the light area spell to just light. Then give the
player a choice of direction (like a wand) or no direction
(in which case the spell would act like light area). This
lets you use the spell on creatures susceptible to light.
Oh yeah, shouldn't said creatures continue to take damage if
they stay in a lit area? How about giving them a darkness
spell (this might get into a light/darkness spellcasting war)?
3. How about a mana score for spellcasting monsters? I'm
a little tired of being blinded, confused, paralyzed, made
paranoid, and having monsters summoned seemingly without end
by certain creatures.
4. If the monsters can cast it, I want a blind, paralyze,
and fear spell. To be fair, give 'em sleep. Giving them
Genocide and polymorph other might be going too far through :-)
5. If the idea of a weapon/armor repair shop flies, how about
letting them also turn your normal equipment into magical
equipment (HA, R, slaying, etc.) for mondo-gold and special
components which you have to find. Like to make an SE sword,
you need a sword, 20 scrolls of detect evil (staff will do),
20 scrolls of dispel evil (staff will do), a bunch of gold,
and some new things to make it all interesting. It'll add
another dimension to the game besides the "pick up all the
offensive artillery I can find" mentality. I suppose you'd
have to make the magical equipment inherently rarer in treasure
or easier to disenchant.
6. On the character sheet, tell how many attacks you get
per turn with a certain weapon. That way, it'll be easier
to gauge if this new weapon will be better than your old one.
7. Everyone seems to collect enough gold to buy everything
in every store after some time. OK. Make gold have WEIGHT!
And place a limit on the maximum amount of gold you can hold
at one time. There would have to be a bank to make it fair
but this would limit your profits from each journey to a
reasonable amount. This and (5) would also give gems a reason
for existing.
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John H. Kim | (This space to be filled when I
jo...@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever
uunet!jarthur!jokim | to use as a disclaimer)
Josh Hayes
1) I think haggling is okay as is (version 5.x), except I'd like to
see the top limit lifted (i.e. you shouldn't have to haggle for even
expensive things) once you get good enough at it.
2) There ARE ways of restoring magic bonuses to damaged armor, they're
called scrolls of enchant armor. I see no reason to get a blacksmith
shop. The current system makes you be a bit careful coming around corners.
3) I'd like to see potions do their thing on impact, too, so that one
might save up potions of blindness and toss them at nasties and make
them blind. (Or confused, or poisoned...) We already have unhealthy
fungi that do that. A simple extension.
Frankly, I like the game as is. Many of the proposed changes I've seen
are rather hack-like: I think we do well to preserve the differences
between the two games, the elegant simplicity of moria and the everything-
including-the-kitchen-sink approach of hack.
Josh Hayes, Zoology Department, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056
voice: 513-529-1679 fax: 513-529-6900
jah...@miamiu.bitnet, or jah...@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu
"I am the Supreme Being, you know; I'm not completely dim."
Paul Botts
These are all EXCELLENT suggestions; I heartily endorse them!
John Carter
merit. Keeping track of hit points and mana of several characters
could clutter the screen a bit, but then, why not!
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