[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Adam Wiggins]

[Marian:]
> On Sun 01 Jun, Jeff Kesselman wrote:
> > Interesting idea. Seirra's The Realm does soemthing like this.,
> > Unfortunately its too EASY to escape any danger you fidn yo ucan't happen.
> > The game ahs a real problem that perceieved danger is too low...
> 
> The idea is that if you encounter a dragon  you have no chance of surviving
> a fight. No matter how powerfull a fighter you are. No matter how well made
> your dwarven armour is. Dragons are simply too strong and tough, and deadly
> to fight. To survive a meeting you must hide, or run faster than the dragon
> can fly. So there is a very real chance, and most people would opt for hid-
> ing themselves.  But of course dragons have a keen eyesight  and an equally
> keen sense of smell so no matter how well you hide, a dragon may be able to
> track you by scent alone. If it is so inclined, is hungry and picks up your
> trail in the first place amongst the myriad of other smells. And the dragon
> will also find you  if you're not particularly adept at hiding.  Or if your
> hiding spot isn't very good.  Another thing, I think, should be that higher
> level players have a harder time of hiding from beings like dragons.  Their
> armour at least should make it harder for them to hide.  After all the high
> level players have a better fighting chance to escape.

Well, I'd actually say that your #1 advantage vs the dragon is that it's
just not terribly interested in you.  You're an ugly little scrub with
no treasure to speak of and not even enough meat on your bones to make a
mouthful - why in the world would it want to single you out and hunt you
down, when it's got a whole countryside to ravage?  Now, it would be
quite easy for you to get snapped up in its jaws if you were running with
a group of other people, or if you were standing between two huts it
decides to torch with its fire breath, or whatever...but I doubt it's
going to go after you specifically unless you draw attention to itself.
Thus the danger comes from the fact that the creature is dangerous and
destroys large swaths of territory seemingly without reason.  This serves
a dual purpose: both giving you a chance for escape (you simply have to
lie low and make sure you're out of the dragon's path), and making the
world seem (once again) 'larger than you'.  The dragon's not after *you* -
in fact, who knows what its after, except for it.  Maybe it's just in a bad
mood.  Maybe it's hungry.  Maybe it's after some treasure that was stolen
from its hoard.  You, most likely, don't know - and don't really care.
(By the same token, if your character somehow managed to steal the Golden
Armor of Incredible Shinniness from the dragon while it was sleeping, it
may indeed be after you...)

> > Now, IF when you encounter the Dragon there is osme % chance it MIGHT jump
> > you...  that might raise tension without TOO much actual danger...
> 
> There should indeed be a certain risk involved in meeting a dragon. No
> matter how well you hide. And this risk should increase as you're get-
> ting to higher levels. (In a game that measures in levels of course).

Bleh.  Levels.
On our mud, one thing that encountering a dragon will do, assuming you
survive, is make you quite a bit mentally tougher.  Kinda hard to explain
how this works, but basically someone who has never seen much of any danger
(ie, the 'sheltered' life) will have a high chance of panicing and running
out straight into the dragons path (or possibly, running the other direction
screaming, attracting the dragon's attention).  The trick is just to keep
your cool while knowing that certain death is flying overhead.  Should
you manage to do this, your character will be conditioned to severe stress
and impending doom quite a bit, which is a generally useful ability for
anyone, regardless if they like to swing swords around or apply salves
to those fallen on the battlefield.
On the other hand, dragons are the most dangerous and powerful creatures which
exist in our world.  They are designed to be, for all practical purposes,
unkillable (although I have no doubt that some ingenious bunch of players
will find a way someday).  For this reason there are a very small number
of them and they tend to keep to their lairs.

> This is also where a game that has real space instead of a series of rooms
> gets much more interesting. You can actually hide behind the dragon's back
> and have a better chance of escaping undetected. And you can hide behind a
> tree or underneath a rock to avoid detection.  And you can more accurately
> model the effect of the wind (and have some real use for scent and smell).

Absolutely.  When I first started mudding I'd try to 'outreason' the
system - running to places I though would be more difficult for a given
creature to follow and so forth.  Later, of course, I realized that the
scripts that mobiles run usually just do some simple tracking routine
which has little to do with the terrain and nothing at all to do with things
like wind, time of day, season, or any other number of environmental
affects which may or may not be modeled.