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

[Andy Cink]

From: "Peck, Matthew x96724c1" <x96724 at exmail.usma.army.mil>
>> I have a question for you, did you get rid of hit points as well?  Is
>> there some method for your players to gain them as they proceed down
>> the course of the game?  If not, how do you explain that a person who
>> has just started has x number of hitpoints, where a player who has
>> been there a week has 3x hitpoints?  When I think about hitpoints, the
>> concept seems absurd.  The ability for certain people to take more
>> damage than others simply doesn't exist (for the most part) in the
>> world.  Granted, some people (boxers and the like) can take large
>> amounts of physical abuse.  However, there are limits to that.  And a
>> gunshot to the head will kill the boxer just as much as a "normal"
>> person.  This gunshot does the same amount of damage to both, so where
>> do hit points come in?

We're straying dangerously close to a holy war here, and I know that
is not what we need on a list of this caliber, so I will be brief.
I find the level concept to be a bit weird, because it draws so
heavily from the AD&D model. That is, you start a typical mud with
25-35 hp or thereabouts. At level 10, how many do you have? Probably
80-100? And at 20th? 200? 250? How does a level 1 have 25hp when a
level 20 has 250hp? You made an extremely valid point, a body cannot
take more than a certain amount of damage before dying. If it was
a sheer matter of skills people learn to take damage, then I would
think you would still have 25hp, but you would be missed a lot more,
or a blow would be reduced in factor of damage, or some such.

I think in most people's minds, it's a willing suspension of
disbelief. We all know that people can't really slash each other
50 times with a sword before one of them dies, but it wouldn't
be fun for a lot of us if you died in a hit either. So we can
debate the necessity of hit points, as well as levels. However,
I resent being told "Stop! Don't you dare get rid of levels!"
That was my point :) I don't want a holy war, I was just trying
to point out it was a somewhat shortsighted point of view, and
was trying to point out levels aren't the end all be all of the
mudding universe.
 
>> Levels are the same way.  A person who is level 10 will have a
>> generally more alert stance than a level 1 person, allowing him to do
>> more with the same abilities.  So he might hit harder, ride a horse
>> better, etc., than the poor newbie.  Going back to my example with the
>> gunshot to the head.  Someone of high enough level could theoretically
>> judge that someone with a gun aimed at them is about to shoot (seeing
>> their stance, seeing the muscles tighten on their  hand) and take
>> steps to evade, allowing him to survive a gunshot.

While this is certainly possible, if you're going to debate
gunshots.. I'd say even a skilled fighter is going to have
to be very VERY good to dodge a bullet.
 
>> I consider hit points, levels, and all those other things to be
>> abstractions.  They don't exist in real life, but they make the lives
>> of many people easier.  It also gives the players a sense of
>> accomplishment.  People can point to certain benchmarks of their
>> character and know that they are getting somewhere.  When I play a
>> mortal character, I become heavily involved in role-play, to the
>> extent where I will not step out of character to fight a mob I know
>> has something I want or can give me some experience.  Yet, I still
>> find gaining levels to be strangely satisfying and rewarding.  

Levels can be a useful abstraction, but there's more out there of
interest than just levels :) I'm not going to argue about it, I
was only trying to show the other side of the coin.

>> I would like to point out that I have nothing against level-less MUDs.
>> If you can come up with some kind of model that allows people who are
>> generally more wise in the ways of the world to have greater
>> abilities, then more power to you.  But for me, they make my life
>> easier, so I retain them.  and the end result is nearly the same.  A
>> level 50 person can still kill a level 15 person (under normal
>> conditions) and someone on a level -less mud who has spent time
>> developing their character can still kill a newbie.  Its just a matter
>> of what you prefer.

It doesn't seem very complex at all, to me. A level based system is
somewhat fortunate in that it has a magic number to use in computing
almost all other values on the mud. (Attack? Use level d4, d6, d8.
To hit? Use level(ch) - level(victim), etc, etc) When I took stock
code and started removing level from it, only then did I realize
how pervasively that level factors into diku type muds.

For my mud, I simply set it up to run off of skills and stats
rather than "level". Your stats and skills go up through use,
and they determine how well you do what you do. The more skill
you have at task X, the better you will do. Skills and stats
are effectively limitless, with some boundaries imposed by
race. (And they do get exponentially harder to raise, so at
some point people will either cap out or get so high it takes
an eternity to get another point) I'm still debating on what
to do about things like hit points and such, but for now they
will probably remain. But they can be based off of stats and
other abilities, rather than level. This cleans up a lot of
inconsistency, at least in my mind. To each his own.

I'm all for intelligent discussion, but let's not get into
a holy war here. Codebase vs codebase is bad enough, let's
not go into levels vs leveless, it was never my intent. I
only wanted to expand the topics at hand.

Andy



------------------------------------------------------
EARTH FIRST! We'll stripmine the other planets later.
Head Coder for Renegade Knights MUD
Ranthor at earthlink.net