[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills

[quzah]

From: Vladimir Prelovac <tomcat at galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu>
Date: Saturday, January 16, 1999 5:16 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills 


>[Quzah]
>
>>Anyway, the whole point was that combat was very leathal, very final,
>>damn fast, and loads of fun. I hope to bring this aspect to MERC,
>>because combat takes far too long. There is no way I should be hacking
>>some one with a sword for 50 hits. One good hit is all it takes.
>
>Then you will have trouble with clerics being obsolete, having no time to
>cast healing spells; most of offensive skills useless (you have no time to
>react); player killing depending on who first typed "kill Bubba"; and chance
>of you getting killed greatly depending on how much you lag.  And can it be
>fun, lasting only a second or two? Maybe you have in mind other ways of
>gathering exp? :)
>If you put armors that would absorb damage, you would return to having long
>combats. I did this, and players like it (most of players were angry with
>diku-mud based armor that lowers the probabilty of you getting hit not the
>actual damage done to you). I also did split a player body to four regions
>(head, body, arms, legs) and did an aproximation of this with NPC-s. Head
>damage goes x2, body armor is multiplied with 1.5 before substracted from
>damage. Simple and fast model can in many situatutions prove to be a better
>one then a detailed and slow one.
>
>Vladimir


Well, for my use, there were no clerics. If you wanted to heal, you went
to the hospital, or if you were missing chunks, you could go and get a
cybonic implant/replacement. The basics of the game was a kinda screwie
future setting on another planet, where no one really cared WHY it was
the way it was, it just worked, and was a lot of fun. We really didn't give
too much though to the setting, they just took the facts of the enviorn
and ran with it.

However, if put in a mud, as I plan on trying, I haven't decided what type
of healing there is going to be. There was no magic, so there was none of
the healing spells to deal with. It was just a Hand to hand, firearm to
firearm, vehicle to vehicle, cyborg to cyborg, robot to robot, or any 
combination there of. They spent most of their time getting into trouble
and wrecking things, which was a great deal of fun to DM.

It would work well for a hack and slash, though I am again undecided how
the combat [re: healing] will work. It worked fine in a pen and paper
because of some thing you cannot pull off in a mud -- Variable time.
"I want to rest up in this building for a week while my shoulder heals."
You can't just do that (and have it be interesting) (in a mud) as easy
as you can in pen and paper RPGs.

When I drop it into a mud I plan on trying to make it so there is more
to do than just wreck things, because people that do that in a constant
time setting will wind up dead quick. And since I plan on perm-death,
that won't go over too well for some people.

I plan on trying it in two types of muds: standard medieval with magic
and the works, and also my old game, as it holds a load of great times
for me. It will be interesting to see how it works, but I'm all for the
short and deadly combat. Shrug.

As for experience and levels, the only thing they ever did was kill and
destroy things, so that is the only way they got experience. You got a
flat 60pts per adult, 30pts for children (hey, it's their character, I
don't make them be moral), 100+ pts for a special type person (enforcer
or officer or some sort of peace keeper, non standard adult...) and
more for the robotic guard (re: picture robo-cop without the human side)
which were really hard to kill, and they always called for help. I have
not played it for six years or so, but that's the best I remember it.

When it goes into a mud, I may just do away with "levels", but then again
I may not. After all, it was no easy feat getting a level. Say you took
out a building full of people. (explosives/whatever) Since all of the
people inside were "indirect kills" (you did not have them specificly
"in your sights" or "in mind" -- not specificly targeting them) they are
only worth 1pt each. The building itself was worth some exp though. Not
a lot, but some.

Since it was no easy task to level, and since healing was not a fast
process, I think I'll just leave my kill-exp the way it is. In addition
to that, I'm thinking of a job/profession (which will fit in nicely
with the skill system I used to use) and possibly give experience for
that. 

Quzah.