[MUD-Dev] skill system

[Andrew C.M. McClintock]

I've been mulling over some ideas for the skill system in my mud (at
this stage still no more than a fantastical whimsy) and thought I
would bounce the ideas off the list.

For each skill there would be:

Knowledge (book learning/education) -
	What you learn by being taught. Higher knowledge of a skill subject
	promotes faster practical application, and limits the practical
	experience you can gain about a subject. Personal knowledge about
	a subject goes down very slowly, and only when unused for a long
	time. This rate of decay will perhaps increase as age increases past
	a certain prime. This can be increased to the level of world knowledge
	on the subject by study, and increased beyond that with research (alone
	or in conjunction with others). Skills comparisons will be skill vs
	skill and not based on a percentage system. Lost knowledge can be
	gained back at a fast rate up to the current level of world knowledge,
	after which it advances at a normal rate (or slightly increased.)
	Learning up to the current world skill level is considerably faster
	then and learning above it, and much much faster than new research.
	Related skills (knowledge) will be improved a little as learning
	increases in a given area.

Practical application (experience) -
	What you learn by doing: knowledge is generally useless without
	practice. Practical experience is limited by your max knowledge of
	the subject, but a higher experience increases the chance for new
	discoveries when researching. This decays at a proportional rate
	to your experience, but only if the skill is unused for a period
	of time (thus peak performance requires constant training.) Training
	a skill bleeds some training into related skills.

Stats -
	Not really a skill, but essential to their application. Skill use,
	and the subsequent stat usage will improve stats. Stats have no
	max value but increase very slowly when current maximum is reached.
	Stats decay at a proportional rate to their current level; decayed
	stats can be trained back at a faster rate than new growth (it is
	faster to regain depreciated strength than to become stronger than
	you have ever been before.)

World knowledge -
	This general figure illustrates the level of 'common' knowledge on
	a subject. This level can be surpassed by indivduals, and slowly
	raised by those above its current maximum. This level can fall if
	there are no people at or above this level, but will be regained
	quickly if/when people regain the knowledge. This could be broken
	down into subdivisions, based on race, or geography, or political
	structures; this would make for an interesting rivalry type mud,
	where raids took place to steal knowledge, and/or trading for
	knowledge.

I am hoping this will create a balance between studying and practicing,
and keep people interested in doing stuff because there are no practical
maximums that skills can reach (subsequent skill levels simply increase
the effect of the skill, or decrease its cost). This should allow for
people to come up to speed faster, and yet only with work become masters.
This should also allow people to have unique specialties, yet encourage
further research because the bar is always being raised.

Andrew C.M. McClintock
andrew at moonstar.com    andrewm at mail.hsc.edu