[MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Corey Crawford" <myrddin at seventh.net>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 5:10 AM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

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

>> 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.

> 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 Effects the players can think of?" Talk about a nightmare.  ^

It isn't as difficult as you may think. First, you have a go using
your imagination. Then take some existing large, varied magic system
(AD&D would do nicely), and analyze it looking for common elements,
and probably discover lots you hadn't thought of.

Finally, you end up with a very large number of possible effects,
many of which are similar, so you categorize them together. At this
point you notice that many of the grouped effects represented ranges
of applicability for a single effect (e.g. range: touch, short,
medium, long - as given above by Matt). You can then merge these
into a single effect and grade it using a function, so that people
can attempt things at arbitrarily near or far range.

Then you try to invent the weirdest set of new spells you can, and
look for anything that breaks it. Feel good when you can't. Feel
better if none of your friends can either.

Adam M

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