[MUD-Dev] Supporting RP+PG

[Matt Chatterley]

On Wed, 2 Jul 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:
> On Tue 01 Jul, Matt Chatterley wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, Huibai wrote:
> 
> > Yeah - gradual increase seems to be thought of as the way to go now, and
> > is certainly very attractive over a jagged set of increases, pretty much a
> > smooth, exponential approach (or a parabola, or normal distribution).
> 
> The good part about it is of course that it allows you to hide
> the details from the players. If the changes are gradual there
> is no way to point at exact moments  where the change occurse.
> There isn't one after all.  It distracts players from the game
> of levelling and allows them to concentrate more on playing it
> as a game rather than as a point (kills ?) scoring contest.

Oh absolutely, thats a wonderful thing. The player can look back at how he
was <some relevant time period ago> and compare to how he is now
qualitatively ("I used to barely be able to get past those guards, they
hardly trouble me now!" - which may be for any of a number of reasons, not
classic skewed balance), but cannot say "Cool, I went up a level, now I
know I can do X". Improvements in RL are similar - I can handle calculus
much better than I could 6 months ago, but I can't pinpoint a particular
point along my learning where I could suddenly do problems that used to
cause me much trouble, easily.
 
> > Is 50/100 HP exactly half dead? Would being poked in the tummy hurt more
> > if you had several cracked ribs? Ie: Will a hit of the same strength
> > always hurt the same amount, no matter how close to being dead you are?
> 
> It took me a good long time to understand that hitpoints in the
> traditional mud do not mean healt, but your ability to continue
> the fight. As you fight you get tired, you get cuts and scrapes
> and so on.  All this wears out your ability to fight,  until at
> one point you are too hurt+exhausted to avoid the killing blow.
> Of course  the fact that the being hit messages describe every-
> thing as a veritable carnage  do not help to bring this message
> across to the players. It also isn't exactly necessary to do it
> this way. You can simply keep track of wounds and exhaustion in
> separate numbers.  And have a more or less realistic effect for
> wounds.

I think this original intention of HPs (more as endurance, with nothing
really critical being dealt until the end) is quite good in notion - but
as you say, many muds do not follow through with it, it's just rather
silly. You can get hit very very hard a dozen times, then get tapped,
which kills you. :)

Tracking wounds, exhaustion etc separately can work too - but needs to be
done with some caution so as not to be very confusing. Adjusting things so
you have your "health tracking", which is not a simple "alive or dead" is
one of the most immediate solutions - for instance, my implementation of
"death" is not absolute, in the sense that the function which causes it
gives you chances to escape with just a pretty nasty effect (hangovers
from bad wounds), until you're beat up (or hit hard/often enough), when
you can simply die.
 
> Marian
> -- 
> Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
> out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
> my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
> will there be loneliness ...
> 
> Rolan Choosing Talia,
> Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey
> 
> 


Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"He can't stop us, we're on a mission from Glod!" - Soul Music (Pratchett)