Thoughts: --------- Traits and subtraits: See discussion at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/adamdray/34409.html Dice vs. No Dice: See discussion at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/adamdray/34634.html -- ALSO: Stack based/probability tables: http://www.livejournal.com/users/adamdray/34993.html Systems: -------- Calendar (suggested: 12 or 13 months @ 30 days ea, 5:3 time ratio) Chargen (wiz only, not necessarily required to be a room or series of rooms) Character death (ghosts ?) Cleric/miracles (Is praying worth it? (+pray) Does this provoke a type of magic?) Combat (idea from firan: speed is taken into account) Customization stuff (The general flourishes, etc, for horses, pets, ... ) Descing (Clothing. Purchase of a clothing will put it in the descer?) Eat/sleep (Optional stuff, UNLESS a person is on for longer than.. X hours?) Economy (Manufacturing, mining, etc. Swords, armor, clothes - NPC stuff, too) EXP system (How do people get EXP? What can they use it for?) Magic (Will based, component based, something else? Require inherent ability?) Mapping (? The "where am I" system. If we do quests, then yes.) Note taking system (to record important events) NPC controller / baddie system (to control NPCs, especially villins) OOC/IC (out and in of the OOC area) Pregnancy (Optional system. (1) Preg wanted or (2) % chance, Y uses, X is dad) Rostering (Getting characters on, taking them off, sorting them for choices) Transportation (mail coach, city carriage, etc. Getting around.) Watch-for (watching for who logs in and out) Finger (get the basic information on a person) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAGIC, HEALTH(1) and ITEMS(1) Sorts of Effects: Dictating stats and skills if it's open ended or closed. Open ended gives the ability to make things up as you go along; instead the desire is for "libraries" so that people can't make it up as it goes along. The libraries are able to be expanded as people find new spells, but no making it up as they go along. Players may make up new effects which may get implemented by coders if it sounds like a good idea. Magic is a measurale talent, what you can do and where your strenghts are can be determined. Almost everyone has a little talent, allowing them to do small "cantrip" type spells, one or two each. Not everyone has talent, and the ones who have a fair amount of ability can do more. They have to be the "standard" sort of basic spells. Cannot "remove" your ability (stilling self) Effects are either instant, or limited duration. EG: the floating booties WILL wear off sooner or later. However, an "instant aging" spell on a sword will take effect immediately (with side effects that might last). Spell Lists: Known spells are listed in an appropriate tree. Question of physics/components system or not. Note: Do not use effects dictated by primarily components system. Effects: Does magc affect items, people or other parts of the world? Yes For example, someone could use magic to 'age' or otherwise make more brittle a sword, encouraging the sword to break during combat. Breakage: All items have a "health" stat - how much damage it can take before it's broken. This includes people. For people, this may be broken up in ways that are yet to be decided. For weapons, etc, this encourages 'blacksmithing' - repairs. While there is only one health stat, there are multiple damage types (such as cut, burnt, bashed, broken (but not dead), drowned, etc). For people, this may be a little more complex. Materials: Do items get made out of different materials (YES). EG: Wooden poles vs. metal poles. Wooden ones break easily, or burn. Once an item has taken enough damage to be broken, it is a 'BROKEN ITEM NAME' (broken tent pole). Materials include methods of destruction. Item health can make a difference on item description - for example, a burnt book might go from book, to scorched book, to unrecognizable book to 'ash' (destroyed). Destroying props should be allowed, through naturally (or unnaturally) destructive methods. This is in large part determined by material type. Containers: Issues thereof. "Rating" of certain types of damage - fire intensity, water pressure?, smoke thickness, etc. COMBAT, DUELLING, CRIME, WITNESS Syncroncity: Asyncronus combat with time delays based on actions * Long term: War battles vs. individual combat. Async: Not at the same time. In this case, meaning that actions happen independantly of each other. * Allows for a quickness stat * Formalized duelling system - uses the same combat engine. NPCs respond to violations of the duelling system when it's actually a declared duel, whereas will respond differently if it's just a fight. Figure out the 'code duello' for this, the system will notice if you break it, and "witnesses" will be made. Duelling happens in specific areas for safety? Code will note "calling foul" but won't ENFORCE the system. * Punishments; No long term incarceration. Look up the Fal Moran justice system. * The Fraud Squad: Chases down people who're passing off short-term effects as long term enhancements. Also investigates ghosts, etc. Mainly magic-abled people working with magic-friendly. * All Combat should be logged one way or another. Non-duels get the watch called for by 'witnesses' watching. CHARACTERISTICS, HEALTH(2) Items and people have various characteristics, including breakability and size. Sizes are relative, use "something" (average adult human?) as baseline, things are larger or smaller from there. Larger is important -- can't fit through exits which are designed for size = smaller than they are. MAYBE! Must look into people who can "fold" themselves smaller to fit in. EG: a giant may bend double to get into a room. Also, wormlike - may be large but is very wiggly and squishy (ew). * Ladders and similar issues. * Body sized, number of feet, floating booties ability. (floating limited to less than a foot, anything which will give you push-tension, also limited duration) * Blessings from various priests may allow people to increase the stats of their stuff (or themselves) * Fatigue / Energy levels - Magic and other things do take energy and effort. After a period of using magic or long-term actions, the fatigue levels rise. While people are offline, they have their "eating" "sleeping" (bathing) happen automagically. If someone is on for hours and hours at a shot, or they have been working out, they are able to use the commands to 'eat' and 'doze' in order to restore some amount of their fatigue. They are also able to use some sort of ption of restoration in order to temporarily banish fatigue * Herbal potions vs. magical potions from Qini (see also: Fraud Squad). * Addiction: Cannot become addicted to Qini's true potions. Can become addicted to herbal potions, alcohol, drugs, etc. Find some way to track the use & addiction possibilities? Effects of addicition: Can effect the skills, stats, abilities, etc. Withdrawal affects. Not able to get addicted to magic, but may get addicted to certain magical effects. * Stats: Fatigue/Energy, size, health, will, quickness, strength, intelligence (affects ability to learn some skills or magic, can be overcome by specific 'knacks' - make sure that there are real penalties for low stats). Perception? -- needed for 'search' and similar stuff (quests, etc.) Mechanics: Higher perceptions or someone closer to a sound hears it? Overhearing messages? etc. -- Dexterity (combat, etc? DTs for addiction?) * Telepath ability? broadband broadcast vs. narrowbeam? Not necessarily a good idea - but why not? Just because of the warping of magic? (IC Page! NO) * Plague, colds, other illnesses (Attr trees!) - how are they communicated? * Display! How? Numerically, discriptively? Inclined to numerics. Possible to make a web display for roster and characters? (Poll: Webster?) Look into web-links. BBoards, sheets, etc. (Dennis DeMarco: Married the MUSH and Web BBoards together so that they had the same base data. readable in either location) SKILL LEVELS, STATS LEVEL People have a hard time seeing 0 as average; as a result, we want all Stats to be positive, with 0 being base-incompetant. Negatives are possible (curses, poisons, etc), but not terribly common. Also be careful of too fine a granularity - in a 100 point systems, there's no obvious difference between 17 & 18, but in a 20 point system, it's more obvious. Possibly stats from 0-10, and skills from 0-15. Always have some element of luck. The higher trained you are, the less chance you have of failure. Someone who is highly skilled but moderate stats has less of a chance of failing; where someone with high stat and lower skill has a larger chance of failing. There is always a 'chance of fucking up'. Also having a chance of brilliant success. Stats shouldn't add in straight, but also needs to not be stepped - number crunching? Player stats: Can players up stats with just experience? In general, no, it requires training and other sorts of work. For each stat, each player has a range - the minimum of 'couch potato' (their basic intrinsic stat, just from being alive) and the maxium of when they are spending an obsessive amount of time working on that particular stat. Based on how much time they spend on related activities, their effective stat is somewhere between these two numbers. Illness or slacking off may make it drop; work and practice may make it rise. Temporary spell effects may act as simple additions or subtractions to the effective stat. Permanent spell affects on stats affect the cumulative balance of activity time for that stat (place within the range). A permanent spell effect cannot send over max or under min; a temporary can. Luck? Fatigue, health, etc - possibly higher, or percentages (Avoid 'hitpoints' and 'damage dice', etc). One combined health score for everything (not including fatigue?) Multiple types of damage is applied against it, so that 'first aid' doesn't help the common cold. Attr tree: Body. Underneath, descriptive and information sections (arm: broken, scar, whatever), can be included in the description system. Social stats: Point of playing the game, don't really want the numbers being too influent. Current social score might not be a bad thing to track of, so that ranks can be compared (general rank sort of thing), and guides NPCS, but that RP is based on individual personalities. NPCs react to people based on their social rating - social ratings therefore broadcast "People are reacting (X) to (Y) - their social rating seems to be (higher/lower/equal to) yours" rather than a straight number. Also possibly: If there are no NPCs, what then? Clothing? People guess? How to tell? The skill "identify social rank" may have a problem when there isn't enough information. ADMIN: there are "numbers" available, so that NPCs can react appropriately and the social rank skill can give a response.Social rating can be affected by logs submitted to admin. Training requres a trainer up to a certain point. It works better when training with a mentor or some explicit source of knowledge. Higher chance of sucess. Also costs less. Track who's training what, to maintain some miscellaneous consistancy. Do players get to assign their own EX points, or do they indicate their priorities, and the wizards place the points? See training as part of spending. Speed of skill raising depends on if you can get training and experience points. There should be a certain amount of time between how often you can train levels in skills; also not being able to train on multiple skills in a set period time. Experience needs to have limitations on how often it can be. There needs to be different ways of getting eperieince, including RP, theme questions, logs, quests, etc. ADMIN: Player helpers, plot helpers, admin helpers. Admin helpers review logs, specialization/customization requests, other similar aspects of the work. Possibly given commands so that they are able to do the things. These are people who have shown that they are willing to do the boring admin shit and can be trusted. The royalty bit will be given to these people so they can get other information. Admin helpers are most likely to be promoted to wizards. Have to earn one's way into the admin helpers position. WITNESS: (Firan concept) You do something, it gets 'witnessed' by NPCs. Some of it can be remarkably stupid (sex with spouse at a hotel). Some can be useful (sex with mistress at hotel, gossip rag, theft/justice system). Firan has a 100%% chance of witnessing, especially with failure. Also: Can we bribe the witnesses off? Must also be able to see how many 'witness' accounts can be seen by player, also the reputation be affected by the witness accounts. Reputaton system needs to be multifaceted: criminal vs. immoral, vs. upstanding, vs. religous, leaderly, etc.. A number and a description, or several for various groups, or numbers based on differet types of reputations (leaderly, gentility, criminal, etc). Support for multiple (context-dependant) reputation trees. One reputation for each persona, where any given character has at least 1 and possibly multiple personas (Gina Templeton, who is also "The Black Fox").