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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199706202126.OAA03533 at user1.inficad.com>, on 06/20/97 
   at 07:28 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> said:

>If you have dragons be these intensely powerful creatures that are
>magically sustained and incredibly evil, to the point that they spend
>100% of their time cruising around toasting anything that moves, your
>game probably won't play very well.  The simplest way to reduce the
>destructive power of a dragon, of course, is to assume that it only
>hunts when it is hungry.  

Another approach is to limit the domain travelled by dragons, or as a
variation on a theme, differentiate the domains haunted by dragons and
those haunted by players (with some overlap of course).  Obvious
cases:  

  Players spend almost all their time underground (chased there by
dragons?).  Dragons haunt the surface.  Players must venture on the
surface only for limited periods and for specific goals.

  Players spend almost all their time under water...etc.

  Dragons are dependant on planets/atmosphere.  Players are a space
faring species which use planets for resouce mining.  Dragons
propagate by attaching microscopic eggs to space ships while in
atmosphere, with said eggs maturing into fully competant and
planet-busting adults while in hyperspace, only to be released on the
new planet upon landing.  (** Basic model of one of my more successful
short stories).

  Model an incredibly deep atmosphere where barometric pressure on the
surface of the planet (mountains, valleys, gorges, etc) varies from
near vacuum to hundreds if not thousands of PSI.  Have dragons
pressure dependant and thus only able to live at the deeper/higher
depths (your choice) with only brief forays into the different
pressure regions.  (Note: there's an SF book which takes this very
example (minus dragons) but I'm resistant to recalling the title or
author right now).

--
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...