[MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences

[Travis Casey]

On Saturday, January 20, 2001, Ben Chambers wrote:
> Rayzam wrote:

>>> okay, i enter a forest... a gain 100 exp (numbers don't matter).
>>> I take 1 step north, get another 100 exp.  Go east, get another
>>> 100 exp... go west, am ambushed, remain there get 100 exp.  This
>>> doesn't make ANY sense to me.  Once you enter an area you may get
>>> experience.  But well we are focusing on that how is exploring the
>>> world going to teach me how to use a sword better?
 
>> In the sense you mention it, then you want to have a usage-based
>> advancement system.

Another alternative would be a system with "flavored" experience
points.  That is, where experience has a type associated with it, and
can either only be spent on skills that are of that type, or has
reduced effectiveness if spent on something else.

Thus, you could have (as a simple example), "Combat" experience which
can only be spent on combat skills, "Exploration" experience which can
only be spent on exploration skills, "Social" experience which can
only be spent on social skills, and "Magic" experience which can only
be spent on magic skills.

>> Otherwise, the reverse applies: how does killing
>> something with a sword help you learn anything else better?

A skill tree or web exists in part to answer that question -- using a
sword may be a subskill of "armed combat", which in turns is a
subskill of "melee combat".  Thus, killing something with a sword
teaches certain things that are of value with any weapon, or in melee
combat in general (e.g., timing, spacing, how to read an opponent, how
to swing to get more force, etc.)

>> Experience systems often allow you to 'spend' it on skills/spells as
>> you see fit. Not realistic, but it's a method many are familiar
>> with.

Yep.  This is also sometimes used in combination with other methods --
for example, a character might be given some experience points which
can only be spent on certain things, and some other experience that
can be spent on anything.  How these are gained might be different...
for example, flavored experience might be gained by adventuring, while
"unflavored" experience might be called "training points" and be
gained through time and spending money on training.

>> On the flip side, why not have experience fighting in specific
>> terrains increase your ability to fight in those terrains again? [we
>> do, called unimaginatively: 'stalker' skill, and you gain
>> usage-based levels in the various terrain types]. Fighting with that
>> sword indoors for training shouldn't let you be just as good with it
>> on the deck of a ship, or in a jungle, or on rocky terrain, etc.

A couple of concepts from paper RPGs might be useful here:  averaging
skills and limiting skills.

An averaging skill is one that is averaged with another skill to get
an effective skill value in certain circumstances.  A limiting skill
is the same idea, but it acts as a limit on other skills instead of
averaging with them.  Some games combine the two concepts, with skills
that are averaged in if they are less than the skill being used.

So, for example, in some systems, "ride horse" is a limiting skill on
combat skills being used from horseback.  In such a system, if a
character had a "ride horse" skill of 20, then any combat skill they
used from horseback would be used at a value of 20 or its own value,
which is lower.

You could get more complicated -- e.g., have a "ride horse" skill that
covers normal riding of a horse, and a "mounted combat" skill that
covers fighting from a mount.  "Ride horse" could be a limiting skill
which limits the value of "mounted combat" while on a horse, and
"mounted combat" could in turn be a limited averaging skill (i.e.,
average with if mounted combat is lower, use the other skill if
mounted combat is equal or higher) for combat skills used while
mounted.

So, you might have a character with skills like:

ride horse - 32
ride donkey - 15
ride gryphon - 0
mounted combat - 23
sword & shield - 41
axe & shield - 8

So, if this character is riding a horse and trying to fight with a
sword & shield, his/her effective skill is 32.  If he/she is on a
donkey, mounted combat would be limited to 15, so sword & shield skill
would be effectively 28.  In either case, axe & shield would be 8.  On
a gryphon, all combat skills would effectively be cut in half, since
the character has no skill in riding a gryphon.

(There are plenty of other ways that you could have one skill effect
another... e.g., use one as the numerator of a fraction with a fixed
denominator and multiply the other skill by it.  Once you have the
concept of skills that exist to modify other skills, coming up with
more ways for them to modify other skills is easy.)

> I like the idea of terrain based.  Skill based systems are as you say
> only more realistic if you force the category for experience.  I am
> using a system on that, in the ideas for a codebase I have been
> writing.  I have been working on writing a kind of concept for it for
> many weeks and soon hope to begin work on coding.  To see the ideas
> got http://aexeon.virtualave.net, tell me what you think...

Just looked over the ideas there... the description of the skill
system is pretty short, so let me see if I understand it correctly:

 - Skills are divided into categories

 - Skills are raised by use

 - Each skill eventually hits a limit, at which point a new skill is
   opened to the character, and uses of this skill go into that new
   skill

 - Some skills, and some categories, require a teacher.

The picture I'm getting is that each category has one basic skill, and
then a chain of skills following it.  Is that correct?  Could you give
some examples of the setup?

I won't comment on it yet, since I'm not very certain that my current
understanding is correct.


A couple of small comments -- you might want to credit the rpg-create
list (rpg-create at egroups.com) for the list of combat system
requirements, since it comes from a discussion there.  The triangular
hit point system also comes from rpg-create.  In both cases, JCL
re-posted the messages to mud-dev.

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


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