[MUD-Dev] Re: Introductions and descriptions

[Derrick Jones]

On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> [Brandon J. Rickman:]
> > On Fri, 28 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'll see if I can find the old posts.  I really like discussion of
> > pseudo-random skill checks.  But how could a character "learn" something,
> > like how to identify a very specific species of mushroom?  If mushroom
> > recognition is dependent on a very genreal skill, such as survival,
> > and "my" seeded skill requires an 87 to identify a particular mushroom
> > but my current skill is 13...  
>
> If it requires an 87 on a scale of 100, this should mean it is a very
> difficult mushroom to identify.  Thus only a highly trained survivalist
> would be able to tell that particular mushroom apart from the three other
> species of nearly identical-looking, but completely harmless, 'shrooms.
>
But the random seed is also dependant on the character.  So one particular
mushroom may require an 87 for Bubba, while Boffo only needs a 35...On the
other hand, the seeding may work out to be on another mushroom, Boffo
needs the 87 and Bubba the 35.  So Bubba may learn mushroom B easily, but
not mushroom A, and Boffo can pick up on A, but not B.
Two solutions readily come to mind.  First you could granulate skills, so
that going from 13 to 87 in 'survival.shrooms.mushroom_A' can be done
quite easily, but only raising the more general skills slightly.
Secondly, remove much of the affect of the individual character on the
outcome:  Perhaps taking two seeded randoms (one with character one
without) and coming up with a weighted average to find out what skill
level is required.  You would of course still have the differences due 
to character stats(perception, intelligence, etc). That way the difficulty
in identifying a particular mushroom won't be 'as random' from plater to
player.

> Of course, I dislike super general skills except as roots in a skill
> tree.
Agreed.

Gunther