[MUD-Dev] Mass Creation OLC Functions (idea from Elder Games)

[Quzah]

From: Martin C Sweitzer <msew+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 10:34 AM


>Excerpts from mud-dev: 17-Mar-99 Re: [MUD-Dev] Mass Creation.. by
>Brandon A Downey at sprynet 

>> wandering kobold than in outwitting the fiendishly planted traps in the
>> diabolical dungeon, filled with the pent up rage of caged implementors,
>> maddened by long exposure to hordes of newbies.  Imagine if they made AD&D
>> modules by
>> random description generators -- now imagine this is basically what
>> you're doing  with a randomly generated world.
>>  
>
>In the first edition of the AD&D DM's guide there is a radnom dungeon
>generator at the end of the book.   I had quite a few wonderful kick ass
>session with my first DM and that random generator!


While I can't say for D&D, I can say from my own pen and paper game I
wrote a long time ago. The entire game was random, and it was loads of
fun. Sure you could plan out your town/encounters/etc, but we found it
to be much more fun to do it randomly. I'd grap a piece of  graph paper,
scetch a bunch of rectangles or L shaped boxes on it, number them all
and call it a town. Then when they got in rang of sight of the structure,
I'd roll on a table I had created of building types. It was loads of fun.

All encounters were rolled at random, again you could plan it all, but
it was way more fun to deal it out randomly.

>Having a world that is hand designed can be totally kick ass.  Well
>thought out.  Have nice quests and devious traps and you get to have
>that one or two times exploring that dungeon.  Afterwards that dungeon
>is just:  4n,3e, open crack, 6n, kill mob, rest  continue.
>
>Having the ETERNAL CAVES OF DOOM that is a randomly generated seems
>pretty neat for those adventurers that have seen it all.  Just head into
>the caves and you get an angband type of thing where you go deaper and
>deaper and it gets harder and harder.  Then there are tales to tell of
>the things you found this time down.
>

I'm not sure if I understand your meaning correctly. Do you mean to
have a plotted out, specificly designed structure that pops up now
and again at random coordinates? If so, that was one thing I hated
about 'arena'/'daggerfall' - I suppose it was too much to ask that
the structures and dungeons you encounter are designed totally at
random, but personally I got tired of walking in a dungeon door and
looking at the immediate surroundings and saying, "Oh this is the
dungeon with the medusa at the bottom. This is far too much trouble
for what you get out of it." At which point, I'd turn around and
leave.

>I also think that randomly generated rooms/areas can be used for either
>place holders or go betweens.
>
>
>ie
>
>
>hand                                      hand
>designed ------  random zone ------------ designed
>zone                                        zone


Agreed.

>Building a city or huge area takes A LOT of work and time and proofing
>and typing.   Why not have a code generated zone be a place holder until
>the real zone can be put in?


Why not just use a generated town built on a set of guidelines. Set
the average level of the folk at Y, town richness at Z, town size at N,
and so on and so forth. Do you really need to hand write every inn,
bakery, weapon shop, and stable?

Quzah.



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