[MUD-Dev] Level abstractions - Realism vs Game Issues

[Nathan Yospe]

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Matt Chatterley wrote:

:On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

:Egad, this was quite a while ago.

Heh. I just realized this only came in yesterday. So much for "going way
back and replying to a bunch of stuff"...

:> We have a lot of different stats for general physical stalwartness.
:> The one which is not changable is constitution, which basically represents
:> your body's actual resistance to damage - the traditional example being
:> that dwarves have high constitutions due to very strong bones, thick limbs
:> (relative to their height), and are very 'meaty' in general.  All
:> the other stats can vary dramatically during the character's life, and
:> include:

:I suppose constitution would equate to metabolic stability (or somesuch)
:in my world. The Physical stats (say, Strength, Agility and Endurance) are
:workable - by physical exertion, you can probably add upto 20% of your
:inital value to them.

Nicely integrated into my skill web, at least in terms of the mental
portions. The physical ones (like strength) I center in the limbs
themselves... physical memory, unfortunately, for design reasons, is
inbued into the mind, not the body. It made up for itself by creating a
"ghost limb" effect when limbs go missing... this system is sooo cool that
way.

:> Mobs also take advantage of this when relating events to players:

:> You ask the shopkeeper, 'What happened?'
:> The shopkeeper says, 'Buffy KILLED Bruno!  It was terrible!'
:> You ask Boffo, 'What happened?'
:> Boffo says, 'Buffy killed Bruno.'

:This is a truly excellent premise for handling things - it gives a really
:good reason why experience in gory combat gives an advantage over an
:inexperienced fighter (or rather, one of a set of reasons).

This is an advantage I hadn't thought of. I wonder if acclimation works in
my system? With the stats in the middle layer of a neural net, you never
can tell...

:I'm pleased with it; I dislike the notion that each object contains a
:finite amount of magical, which can be so strictly measured.

Heh. Reminds me of the sentivores of... geeze, what was that book? One of
Hambly's... they homed in on thought, so the only way to survive them was
to stop thinking.

:> So is mana also a stat 'contained' in characters?  We currently have it

:Yes. The 'mana' stat is a representation of your AMC (actual magical
:capacitance), and MPs reflect your mental state. If you are mentally
:exhausted, although you may have a very high AMC, you cannot control the
:flow of mana through yourself to conduct any magics. You will recover
:faster mentally if you have a high AMC (its a side effect of the sort of
:build up of magical static).

This is funny. When we wrote Singularity 1, we replaced mana with energy,
in joules, and players would always be searching for better capacitors for
their gear. Eventually someone realized that the rate of recharge of these
capacitors was inversely proportional to the amount of charge already
present, and started popping capacitors into a charger at half charge, and
switching them with the ones in his laser... he became a holy terror (he
was a hitman for the most unpleasant social organization in the game) and
noone else caught on to his weapons never running low on power. So I
implemented consequences for weapon overheat.

:Nog. This works too - the theme of my world illustrates magic as a sort of
:cross between electricity, radiation and perhaps light.

Theme of my world illustrates it as fast wrists and pockets in the
sleeves. *grin*

"You? We can't take you," said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian.
"You don't know a thing about guerilla warfare." - Reaper Man,
Nathan F. Yospe  Registered Looney                   by Terry Pratchett
yospe at hawaii.edu   http://www2.hawaii.edu/~yospe           Meow