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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199706180353.UAA02692 at user2.inficad.com>, on 06/18/97 
   at 09:26 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at inficad.com> said: >[ChrisL:]

>>   DM: A dozen six-headed dragons fly in from the south.
>> 
>>   Player: What! I'm being attacked by a *flock* of Tiamats?

>*sigh* This is something I've long argued against, for a lot of
>reasons, a few of which I'll detail below.

Quite.  It is essentially a cold war with escalation of powers on both
sides.  Its a zero sum game in the end.  

>>   Bubba Joe as staggered out of a bar vs dragon == dragon food.
>> 
>>   Bubba Joe as suitably perpared with all possible dragon
>> killing/weakening EQ/magic/etc vs dragon == what?

>As stated above, the idea of a human, equiped with anything but
>possibly an F-16 or possibly a bazooka, being anything but dragon
>food is ridiculous, at least given the type of dragons you have in
>D&D.  Of course, this is just one more reason why I pretty much
>loathe D&D.

How about the old standstill:

  Bubba is effectively invulnerable to dragons, and dragons are
practically invulnerable to Bubba and his toys.

It extends the game to one of over-powered behemouths wandering a
land, each unable to directly affect the other, but each possessing
incredible force etc.  (cf rock and a hard place)

>For starters, the mere idea that a land creature of that size could
>actually exist is pretty preposterous.  Most of the D&D dragons clock
>in at a size that would dwarf just about every dinosaur to ever walk
>this earth, and we all know how well THEY did.  

Actually they did pretty damned well, incredibly well even.  They were
around a heck of a lot longer than it looks like Home Sap. might be.

>...The T-Rex
>is probably the best direct comparsion on this, and it had problems
>at a mere 6 tons or so with keeping itself fed.  The massive amount
>of energy (== prey) which it takes to keep that sort of a body in
>motion is damn near impossible to maintain...now imagine a creature
>four to ten times larger. 

Such carnivores tend to fall into two camps which I'll characterise as
Voles and Lizards.  

  Voles have incredibly high metabolic rates and must constantly feed
or they starve to death within hours.  For obvious reasons there are
not many species which occupy this model (no predators that I can
think of right now outside of voles). 

  Lizards have extrmely slow metabolic rates, or highly variant
metabolic rates which can get very low (cf hibernation, cold-blooded,
etc) and generally survive on gorge/starve cycles, often with
heightened metabolic rates only when hunting.  Many large predators
occupy this model.  A few bring their metabolic rates down to glacial
speeds when gorged.

T-Rex, or that new several-times-the-size-of-a-T-Rex dio most likely
fell into this last camp with bells on.  The marauding teeth and
bottomless stomache model just doesn't work for such creatures -- the
ecology can't renewably produce enough prey/flesh for the vole model
of a T-Rexx.  (I'll ignore the debate over whether dinos where hot or
cold blooded).  

>If we assume that strength increases more or less along with
>size (volume), a 250-ft dragon would have a strength somewhere
>between 500,000 and 1 million.  

Remember: muscular strength is proportional to the cross-sectional
area of a muscle, not its mass.  When you then factor in weight being
a cubic volume function, I suspect that many of these dinos where not
that much more capable than lumbering their own weight about.

>However...I am willing to accept all of the above.  It is fantasy
>after all, and there's always that excuse that, "Well, they are
>MAGICAL." They subsist off of the radiance of their treasure hoarde,
>they spend most of their time sleeping, etc etc.  Fine by me.

I would love to see a MUD world which actively violates many if not
all the currently known laws of physics (let alone magic), yet which
is entirely logically consistant within its own laws...  cf earlier
discussion on magic being "gravity" and normal "gravity" repelling
objects.

>The part I just *cannot* stomach is the idea of two or three well
>equiped adventurers taking one out.  If we assume that dragons have
>the armor plating, size, strength and so forth as is usually put
>forth by fantasy worlds, then this is roughly equivilent to a couple
>of small mice equiped with tacks trying to kill a fully-grown man
>wearing head-to-toe skin-tight bodyarmor.  Usually the reasoning is,
>"But the mice are *really* strong, for mice, and the tacks are
>*especially* sharp!"  Maybe if the man was asleep, but even then it
>would probably take them hours if not days to hack through to the
>vital organs.  (This would be a bit more reasonable if there were
>gaps in the armor large enough for the mice to fit their bodies
>through.)

Nose.  Eyes.  Ears.  Mouth.  Anus.  Genitals.  Belly button (almost
always weak).  

cf David and Goliath.

>> Translation:
>>   To what extent can your player's control of influence the habits of
>> dragons?

>A good question.  To establish my position of this sort of creature:
>I like big, intelligent, mystious, mythical creatures.  I just think
>that they way they are usually handled is both unbelievable and
>incredibly degrading to the idea of an incredible powerful beast like
>this.  (See the flock of Tiamats thing, above.)

Agreed.  

I also think it is near impossible to code a truly mysterious beast in
an automated fashion.  Sustaining mystery requires either intelligence
or incredible resources.

>Finally, we don't have dragons roaming the land at all, simply
>because I don't want walking deathtraps cruising around ripping
>people to shreds. The game is dangerous enough as it is without
>*that*.  Mostly they hang out in their caves and sleep on their
>treassure.  The main idea is that ocassionally a player will get the
>idea to go and try to filch something.. which should most likely
>result in the dragon adding whatever the player was carrying to its
>hoarde.

cf Stories of Bobo the dragon hoarde stealer?  (I suspect these tales
were unique to the UK)

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...