[MUD-Dev] Questions about my MUD design

[marsian at desert-island.m.isar.de]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2003Q1/msg00001.php

On Thu, 02 Jan 2003 17:17:10 -0800
Christer Enfors <qinxenc at ks.ericsson.se> wrote:
> Timothy Dang <tdang at BPA.Arizona.EDU> writes:
>> On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Christer Enfors wrote:
  
>>> There will be an extensive tradeskill system. This is how all
>>> equipment enters the world. NPCs will not be born carrying any
>>> "loot". If they want equipment, they'll have to buy it from a
>>> local producer like the rest of us.
  
>> These two features can interact badly. The potential problem is
>> that players will practice lots by making stuff, and thereby
>> flood the market with stuff, which may be given away or sold
>> below cost. That would make it very difficult to actually make a
>> living by selling these things.
 
> I was planning on at least partially solving this problem by
> introducing a "recycling" skill. This skill would allow people to
> recycle items, in effect converting it back into some percentage
> of the raw materials used to create it. Hopefully, people
> practicing tradeskills will generally recycle most of their own
> "practice" products immediately, in order to reclaim the raw
> materials to practice with some more.

Well, if you use a skill and attribute system try another approach
to this.  I use it in my rpg and it works well:

Let there be only an abstract form of "Wealth" - given as an
attribut. Assign an attribute "Cost" to every item. Now you can roll
an unopposed roll on the attribute "Wealth" with difficulty
"Cost". If this roll is successful, the item is bought otherwise it
is not.

I use the FUDGE rpg system for this - assigning a number of
advantages to the vendor and a number of disadvantages to the
customer on their next "Wealth" roll. FUDGE uses four 6-sided dices
with two +, two - and two blanks on it.  These are used to modify
the "Wealth"-roll - an advantage erases one minus, so that the
outcome is a little bit better; a disadvantage erases one plus, so
that it is harder to buy something next time. Usually I rearrange
the "Wealth" attribut, if there are an equal number of advantages -
say f.e. it would be 1000 for a "fair" wealth - so if someone has
collected 1000 advantages, I move the wealth to "good" and take all
advantages away. If there are half the number disadvantages (500 in
this example) I move the wealth to "mediocre" and take away all
disadvantages. - there is no money, all is managed by attributs.

This works well as long as a customer has only one try. If he fails,
he is not wealthy enough to buy this item. If he has another
suitable skill, e.g.  trading, I give him a second change to roll on
this with a negative modifier, assigning also (dis)advantages to the
trading skill after that.

Hope, this will help you with your skill-driven approach, even if it
looks a kind of strange at first. But, remember when you play - when
you buy an item, do you really want to know, how much it costs, or
only, if you can buy it?

And it is a lot easier to assign "Cost" to items - you can say a
starship is of legendary cost, a good sword maybe "good" to "great",
Excalibur would be a legendary one at least :-) a good meal is
"fair", fresh bread would be "poor".

A normal player with "fair" wealth will be able to buy bread and
meal and perhaps also a "good" sword this way, catching
disadvantages for this; and will be limited to "fair" or less with
his next few tries to buy something.

Try it, it's fun

greetings from Munich, Germany Marsian


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