Mixture

[claw at null.net]

On 27/03/97 at 10:27 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at inficad.com> said: >
[JCL]:

>> I also like levelless numberless classless goal-oriented systems (and
>> no, I'm not convinced that skill trees are the one true solution).

>Well...ya gotta admit, they do work pretty darn well. :) 

True.  They just imply a world model I'm not comfortable with.

>> >Usually you don't find out your
>> >actual stats (numerically, that is) until high level, and in some
>> >cases never.  

>> I see no reason that the system should ever report stats for things
>> like dexterity, strength and such (aside: I can see no possible excuse
>> for an intelligence stat.).

>Oh?  It's all a matter of what you have to compare to.  

Precisely.  Let the player do the comparisons.  If you feel you have
to give him something to compare, give him an utterly meaningless
value which he can use to feel good about.  Either way the value is
useless in fact -- its just soporific.

>> *That* is exactly the sort of play I expect.  "Oh, my magical spells
>> are succeeding more often == I must be getting better at magic.".  I
>> don't want the system to come back and report some sort of meaningful
>> comparitive value or phrase to the user at any point.

>Welll...the thing is, people want a way to be able to judge their
>character's advancement.  

Fine.  Give meaningless values based on proportionate placement on the
scale of what that player has seen recently.  Its fairly accurate, its
meaningless, it can't be used to definitively predict outcomes, and it
is delightfully subject to deception (players masquerading as
higher/lower level than they are).

>As much as I'd like to think that just
>practical use is good enough, I kind of doubt it.  Our skill display
>currently just tries to give a rough idea of your abilities at a
>given level of the tree, like so:
>
>  > skills
>  You are very skilled at combat, particularly offence and ranged
>  attacks. Your stealth is quite good.
>  Your knowledge of theology, particularly the goddess Celendria, is
>  very good. You know a few things about thaumaturgy.
...

Right, and the problem is that those "values" are presented computed
as absolutes.  Admittedly they're better than most in that the max
value is the max for that character-type, but it is still an absolute
scale.  Once a player knows the maxes for each type, he knows the
entire system.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...