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

[Adam Wiggins]

> >[Chris L:]
> The problem with the approach is that it will quickly be used as an
> excuse to not take risks as a character's "luck" stat suddenly becomes
> precious.  Tuning is required of the algorithm.  I suspect a simple
> rubber-band pattern where the greater the luck value's devation from
> 0, both the more slowly it will increase its deviation, and the more
> difficult it is to change the deviation.  Then just add a *very* low
> probability action that reverses the current sign on the luck value,
> and a slightly higher probability action that significantly alters the
> current value (+ve or -ve) no matter its current value).

Okay...I can see how this would work, but will be tricky to balance.
Done correctly, it should result in players saying things like, 'Man,
I just can't seem to do anything right today.  I think I'll hold off on
that trip we were planning to try to take out the mighty dragon.' and
'I'm feelin' lucky!  Let's go waste that buff-ass dragon!'

On a somewhat but not entirely related topic, we have luck as a stat on
the character.  It was something that originated back when we were
far more of a numbers-mud - just a simple balance.  The game made a
rating based on how 'good' your starting character was, and set your
luck to be inversely proportional to that.  Thus, a character with uniformly
good stats will *have* to rely on those stats - they will always get a
penalty to random-ish rolls (things like tumbling down hills, 'saving
throws' (as it were) to certain spells, bestowment of godly favor).
A mediocre character, however, will find himself miraculously surviving
that tumble down the cliff due to good luck.  The stat-heavy character will
have to hope he makes his DEX check or whatever to grab the cliff, because
he sure isn't gonna have much luck when he hits the ground.

Since then we've gone through so many changes that most of the stat system
(including DEX, heh) was scrapped.  However, I liked this idea so much that
we've kept it around.  For one thing, I find it highly useful for making
rolls on things that I'm not really to sure what to based it on; kind of
like a generalized saving throw thing for your character...roughly.
While luck won't make a *dramatic* impact on anything you do (not like
strength or size, to pick some blatant examples), it sure is handy to have
around.  This is something that could be handy, I think, in any mud,
although actually implementation might be a bit different.  I've seen
variations on this theme elsewhere - 'karma', from Wizardry (?), pops
to mind.  It wasn't necessarily good or bad to have a high or low karma.
Mainly, as I recall, was that characters with similar karmas would respond
better to each other.  Thus, you could more easily persuade a given NPC
to do whatever if you had a character of a similar karma chat with them.
This gives the effect of certain NPCs 'liking' certain kinds of characters
better, without being as blantantly obvious as racial or alignment
likes/dislikes (though those should be there, too), in a very simple
implementation.