[MUD-Dev] Re: DGN: Why give the players all the numbers?

[Rayzam]

From: "David Hunt" <david.w.hunt at comcast.net>
> From: "Rayzam" <rayzam at travellingbard.com>

>> In fact, you can do both. What we do on Retromud is to give
>> descriptive scales for many stats [though not player stats]. Then
>> we have helps that list all the descriptions in order. Players
>> can then rank them, assign numbers to them, use any sort of math
>> they want. But when it first hits them, it is in descriptive
>> words.

> A better alternative is to provide both with a means for the
> player to choose. While descriptive scales alone are useful for
> immersion, they hide the underlying game mechanics. It has been
> pointed out repeatedly that players will eventually reverse
> engineer at least a reasonable approximation of the game.

That's pretty much what I've been saying: at some point they'll be
converted to numbers anyways. Why not just give the players the
ordered scale of descriptions. That way they don't have to go to the
effort. Glad to hear you agree with me :) I consider a descriptive
scale that is used, but also listed for the players is the same as
giving them both methods. I suppose one could code a flag that
either gives the description or the numbers.

But as I also was saying, there's an advantage to also putting them
in descriptions, in terms of immersion, or roleplaying. Words can be
taken that way, or converted to numbers, but it's harder to
immersively convert numbers to descriptions.

And my final point, reiterated, was that some stats should be given
in numbers: such as player stats or exp. The rule here is that any
thing that tracks player advancement, i.e. all the pieces of cheese,
need to be visible to the players, or else the stepsize of the
descriptions has to be larger than the advancement increments, or
else the players won't see or feel that they are advancing.

    rayzam
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev