[MUD-Dev] Re: let's call it a spellcraft

[Niklas Elmqvist]

On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, Travis Casey wrote:

[snip]

>  - Make creating spells a probabilistic process.  That is, the player
>    can sit down and think up a spell, and try to have his/her
>    character create it, but the character has to make a skill check to
>    do it, which is harder for more complex or powerful spells.  Thus,
>    new characters either can't create powerful spells or have a low
>    chance of creating them, while more experienced characters stand a
>    good chance of successfully creating them.

However, IMHO, I think it would be much nicer to delegate the research,
design and creation of spells (ie spellcraft) to the players instead of
the player characters. It is sort of the same problem/dilemma as in
pen-and-paper-RPGs: should the players think for themselves when solving
puzzles or do an intelligence or puzzle-solving skill roll? Personally, I
tend to lean towards the first option. In this context, that would mean
that the players themselves do the actual spellcraft or research
themselves. (This could be done off-line, but experimenting must be done
in-game. You don't want to march into Smaug the Dragon's lair without
having tested your neat new "Wyrm-BBQ" spell under safe circumstances...) 

My vision of a system like this would be a sort of programming language
used by the player to create spells. Each spell would consist of a single
function, and also be named accordingly. When defined, the player can
commit the function to memory (memorizing the spell) or write it down into
his spellbook or grimoire. Of course, nothing would stop the players from
calling already defined spells/functions in their spellbook/memory in new
spells. 

Ideally, there would be no fixed or predefined spells hard-coded into the
MUD. All spells would be interpreted and analyzed by a complex
physics-magic system (I think there was a thread on the Physics of Magic
earlier, probably spawned by Nathan Yospe, if I am not mistaken...) which
calculated the effects of an action and spawned a reaction. In the end,
players would be forced to experiment heavily with their spells while
in-game: "oops, doing a circular hand movement while channeling Fire into
the feather results in singed eyebrows... I wonder what happens if I do a
Z-motion instead?"  Also, existing spells developed by other magicians
could be optimized: "it seems I get more power out of the classical
Fireball spell by invoking a Pool of Ice as a counter-weight..." Or why
not: "Ahh, I could just as easily use cow milk instead of Endormian yak
milk..." Needless to say, I would absolutely *love* to get a
Discworld-like Unseen University run by the players in my MUD, see
"scientific reports" on how best to invoke Death while submerged, and
discover spells which I had no *idea* my system would allow beforehand. 

Of course, this leads to the problem of new players downloading some neat,
diabolic spells from a webpage somewhere, creating the spell and then
wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting world (in addition, you'd get a terrible
spell inflation). However, this could probably be remedied in some way...

a) Use a spell balancing system such as in Turbine's new graphical on-line
RPG Asheron's Call -- the more people that know and use a spell, the less
effective it is. This means that diligent mages living secluded in towers
will guard their secrets jealously, and when a spell gains in popularity,
people will stop using it. It also means that clans/guilds will commit
large resources to obtaining spells through research or trade and train
their members in their use -- spells will become a valuable commodity. 
When a spell loses in efficiency, people will become disinterested in it,
and a few (game) years from then, the spell could be
reinvented/rediscovered and put to use again (until it becomes inefficient
again).

b) Introduce level or skill restrictions on the spell commands (as
described below). As a magic-user grows in experience, s/he could get
access to more powerful Magic API calls ("wow, I now get to use while() 
constructs as well as call the Magic::Necromancy API!"). In addition, the
use of exotic objects (bat blood, rabbit's paw or tiger's tooth, anyone?) 
in spells would make sure that a newbie could not create the "Vlad's
Delightable Armageddon" spell in no time. In addition, each call in this
"Magic API" could be accompanied by a skill check affecting the outcome.

>  - Make spell research take time.  That is, "Ok... you can research
>    that Apocalypse spell, but at your skill level, it's going to take
>    you sixteen years of game time."

Hmm, I would also like to introduce some notion of time into my concept...
However, I dislike typing "research Armageddon" and then just wait for two
hours while my character is busy researching.

> There are several methods in use in different spell creation systems:
> 
>  - Players define material components to make spells easier.  There
>    may be a list of possible material components which depends on the
>    classification of the spell (e.g., "feather" might be a possible
>    component for "air movement" spells).  Different components might
>    have different effects on the difficulty of the spell -- e.g., a
>    feather makes it a little easier, but a feather from the Simurgh
>    makes it *much* easier.

So materials, in my programming-language analogy, would be sort of like
precompiled libs or modules which could be called by the players spells?
Neat. Then, continuing with the analogy, the efficiency of all calls
inside the material would be set to a fixed level -- in a normal feather,
the efficiency would be quite low, but in a Simurgh feather, this rate
would be considerably higher. Of course, a master mage could probably just
skip the material step and perform the required invocations on his own and
maybe even get better results -- materials could be sort of a shortcut for
less skilled magic-users.

Come to think of it, associating magic "code" or "methods" to materials
would make it easy for the builders to add support for all kinds of
materials. Otherwise, in a magic-physics engine, you would have to
hardcode stuff like "iron does this and that..." and "copper attracts
this..." and so on. 

>  - Players are required to choose a certain number of material
>    components, decided by the spell creation system.

Well, a master mage, as mentioned above, should be able to make do without
any material components and instead use his raw skill to and magic
affinity to cast the spell.

>        |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
>  ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
>       |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
>      '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)

-- Niklas Elmqvist (d97elm at dtek.chalmers.se) ----------------------
  "Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. 
   Well, you never knew your luck."
		-- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies