[MUD-Dev] Re: skill system

[Andrew C.M. McClintock]

Jo Dillon <emily at thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>Andrew C.M. McClintock (andrewm at tiger.hsc.edu) spake thusly:
>> 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) -
>
>[snip]
>
>> Practical application (experience) -
>
>[more snip]
>
>  Presumably you would want to limit the influence of book learning
>over practical application for some skills; trying to learn swordfighting
>from a book would likely not get you very far, the only way to learn it would
>be by practical experience (or would tuition by a fencing master go under
>education? It seems more logical to me to use the same mechanism for
>a fencing master's training bouts as for real fights). Rather than
>using book learning to set the maximum you can learn by actual practise,
>I'd probably have a default maximum value for each skill which would exist
>without book learning, and then allow book learning to give you a small
>amount of practical skill (depending on the skill in question) and raise
>that maximum by certain amount (again depending on the skill in question).
>So for instance, swordfighting would have a high maximum, and learning
>from a book would give minimal practical experience and wouldn't raise
>that maximum. Alchemy, on the other hand, would have a very low initial
>maximum, and book learning would raise actual experience and maximum
>experience by large amounts.
>
>	Jo
>
I was actually intending 'book-learning' to be more all-encompassing than
just knowledge gleaned from reading books-- this would include lessons
taught by sword-masters, and knowledge passed down from generation to
generation by word of mouth. The practical experience would be simply how
much real life use the player had made of that knowledge--you have to have
been shown a move before you can learn the move. Practicing that move would
add practical experience, and using that move in combat would add even
more. I still there there is a distinction between knowledge and
application, no matter how thin the dividing line in some skills. I think
the distinction would then come from how much 'knowledge' will affect
training - reading alot about sword fighting might teach me the theories
involved, but it will do little towards helping gain practical experience.
Alchemy would be a less involved skill in many ways, so reading about it
would enable quicker practical application (though learning alchemy would
be many times tougher than learning a fencing manuever). Thus the balance
for skills would be time-to-learn vs. time-to-master (what you have
learned).
-Andrew

>--
>MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.


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