[MUD-Dev] Animals, Animal Handling, and Unexpected Side Effects

[Travis Casey]

On Saturday 29 June 2002 11:58, Sean Kelly wrote:
> From: "Travis Casey" <efindel at earthlink.net>

>> Triggering more reminiscing here...

>> There's a lot of tactics along these lines that people use in
>> paper games:

>>  - turning fallen foes into zombies and using them to look for
>>  traps

> Ugh.  I regularly DMed for a group of friends, and this kind of
> stuff happened regularly.  On the way to one dungeon, their party
> encountered a random patrol in the mountains, who warned them of
> some goblin activity in the area.  My friend Todd levitated up
> from his horse and cast cloudkill on the patrol.... then spend the
> next few days animating them all as zombies.  Needless to say,
> when they got to the dungeon he had plenty of cannon fodder.  This
> is a very effective trick and one that I applaud.  It can be
> pleasantly challenging as a DM to try to come up with ways to
> defeat these tactics while maintaining the continuity of the game.

That's one of my favorite parts of being a GM -- putting my wits up
against the players'.  This happens in muds as well, but in a less
real-time way; players come up with new strategies, you hear about
them or see the effects, and then you have to think of a counter.

Of course, after a while, you get to where you anticipate, and start
thinking of such tactics in advance.  And, of course, you start
having NPCs and monsters use them too.  But there are always
surprises, and to me, that's part of the fun of being a GM.

>> Robert Plamondon's book _Through Dungeons Deep_ describes some
>> tactics for real paranoids -- e.g., his recommended handling of
>> chests in dungeons:

> Great advice, though as a DM I would punish a player for being so
> paranoid.  I appreciate (and reward) intelligence and creativity,
> but taken this far the game slows to a crawl.

Well, Plamondon himself says that most of the time, such tactics
aren't needed -- they're the ultra-safe extreme.  And they don't
need to slow the game to a crawl.  If such tactics are the standard
method the characters use, then you can simply gloss over them after
the first time or two, with an "Ok, you guys handle the chest the
usual way.  Twenty minutes later, you're done."

> My favorite trick towards over-powered characters was to have them
> find a cubic gate or amulet of the planes and trick them into
> using it.  There's nothing quite so fun as a panicked flight
> across hades.

Heh.

>> For the reasons *why* gamers sometimes got this paranoid, see
>> Flying Buffalo's wonderful "Grimtooth's Traps" series of books.

> Clever traps are so much fun.  I remember reading about one
> particularly nasty one that was a standard pit trap that had thin
> layers of slate every few feet with a glyph of warding inscribed
> on each.  Needless to say, it's unlikely anything would make it to
> the bottom.

The second "Grimtooth's" had a set of traps called the "various
killers of paranoids".  These were traps for chests which were
designed to leave someone right next to the chest alone, but hurt or
kill characters who opened the chest from a distance.  Arms races in
games can be so much fun... :-)

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

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