[MUD-Dev] called shots

[Ling Lo]

[Josh Rollyson: Thursday, April 26, 2001 8:38 AM]

> Just out of curiosity, I haven't seen any muds implement "called
> shots".  (Where a specific area of a player, mob, or object is
> targeted)

> When I played D&D we had called shot rules, you could try to aim for
> a percieved weak spot in an opponent's armor, or for the opponents
> head (possibly getting a critical hit of successful) or to maime the
> opponent, so that they couldn't fight effectively - cutting off an
> unprotected hand for instance.

Pen and paper tactical games tend to have such rules, optional or
otherwise.  Frex: FASA's Battletech, call aim shot, +2 on to hit roll.
FPS games, like Quake, have called shots by nature.  Er...  Obviously.
3rd person tends to be different, dependent on controls.  Oni has a
mouse controlling the aim.  For something like Tombraider, aiming
would have to be an extra option the player can toggle.  Feedback on
the options is important.  I suspect, for a Tombraider-esque game,
aiming would be difficult to gauge and wouldn't add much to the
gameplay experience.

It has to be noted that in graphical games with aiming, as soon as the
player discovers that the mechanics support it, most players change
tactics to exploit this fact.

> Does anyone have such a system in use, and what issues has it
> created?

I do not have an existing mud running so cannot comment from
experience.  Although, my initial thought is that, for a text medium
with automated combat (player does not need to type attack for each
attack), the player should be able to switch from one tactic to
another easily.  That is, define a set of tactics then flick from one
set to another.

Now I've thought about it more, I believe the LP mudlib, Nightmare and
some associated offsprings/derivatives/copycats have a limb system.
It was a wee unrealistic though.  Like it was possible to lose limbs
from blunt attacks.  It was also possible to hop around on one leg.
In a vanilla Nightmare, limbs were more like extensions to a
character's physical presence within the mud.

--
  |   Ling Lo
_O_O_


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