[MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

[Corey Crawford]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Chatterley" <mpchatty at hotmail.com>
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

[ snip ]

> This opens up interesting possibilities. Your combat/battle mage
> character will likely be good at casting many types of spell, but
> poor at writing them. (Although a reasonably high degree of player
> skill will most likely be involved, Character skills and stats
> will adjust chances of failure). My very puny wizard might be
> hopeless in a tight situation or a fight, but could be the
> sword-forger, baker or sculptor of the magical community, writing
> spells for the battle mage to buy and use.

> On the more technical side, the portions of spells which can be
> played with are along the lines of: Range (touch, short, medium,
> long), Area (Caster, one target, targets within area, area
> itself), Base effect (damage, augment, afflict - where these
> encompass confusion, healing, harming, blinding, boosting
> stats/skills, shielding, and so forth), Element (fire, water,
> earth, air, energy) .. yadda.

[ snip ]

I've almost completed a magic system of my own, so this thread
interests me.  The focus is different (creating spells rather than
how magic works in general) but it still piques my interest.

The first thing I thought when I read this was, "Ok, so the first
mages who play the game for the first few months will be creating
the spells everyone else will be using". Where do the newbies come
in and create spells? They have already been written by older
players!

My second thought was, "How are you going to label and pre-create
all affects the players can think of?" Talk about a nightmare.

Now other than the fact that making a pre-created list of all the
affects will be insane, I think it could work really well if you did
it the other way around:

Let higher level mages create spells, not just any mage.

Then focus the game play with groups of players vs other groups of
players, possibly evil vs good, or one kingdom against the other,
clan wars, whatever. Then, the higher mages would only give the new
more powerful un-defendable spells to their mages, creating a
dynamic of "who can create the unique spell that the other team
doesn't know about and thus can't counter" when they fight. Sounds
fun!

Anyways, I'd be interested to know how it goes if you implement it
:)

--- Corey Crawford | myrddin at seventh.net | www.seventh.net


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