[MUD-Dev] Evil coders from beyond the grave

[Matt Chatterley]

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Orion Henry wrote:

> 	Adam Wiggins and I had fun with this.  While developing 
> our damage system we hade a pleasant side effect.  Our system 
> does not have hit points, but keeps track of the states of different
> organs and mucles, the amout of blood lost (and still being lost) 
> and also pain.  Quite often a fight can be desided with a single
> blow to the face causing a not-so-well-adversed-to-pain opponent
> to clutch their face and scream and be able to do little else
> (ok this is an extreme example).  In any case a zombie can not
> feel pain, has no beating heart so he does not bleed badly 
> nor even need the blood in any case...  Destruction of vital organs 
> will not kill them.  You basically have an opponent that does not 
> die.  You can only run or dismember the creature to the point where
> it can offer no threat.  It wanst out intention to make undead
> unkillable creatues to be feared at all cost... buuut I kind of 
> like it this way. :)

This is nice, even if not intentional! It just shows that given
consistancy in the world (and to a degree 'realism', or perhaps 'detail'
is a better term), can have unintentional, but beneficial side effects,
which fit in well. It may not be true of all undead, but we can set them
up a trifle differently.

Other things worth addressing: Two types of undead typically manifest
themselves in RPG contexts, the corporeal undead, who have a body of some
kind (zombies through liches), and the noncorporeal who don't have a body
asuch (wraiths, spirits, ghosts). They all have points in terror where
they fit in well, and it's worth pondering how to handle 'non physical'
bodies.

You may wonder why this topic seems prevalent in my thoughts - tied into
part of my game theme (the 'deadlands' about which I posted some time ago)
is the concept of 'lost' life force being reincarnated into the undead
(sometimes accidental, because of 'leakage' and sometimes deliberate
and/or controlled). It's likely that areas of the game will contain
organised and disorganised undead in large quantities. They are of course
also great horror tools, and nice henchment for the truly evil, wicked and
nasty.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's
	mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell