Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Away in White, Back in Black

As many faithful readers know, my coder and I stopped working on our new project for a while in order to go back to our first mud, Dark Risings, and help it get back on track. Then I took time off from that mud again to get married and spend quality time with my new husband. Here I am now, though, yearning for the soothing black screen of my beloved muds, pining for my DR fix, and most of all itching to get back to work on the new project.

It's interesting to be able to come back and begin looking at it again from a fresh perspective -- having set it aside for so long means that I have forgotten a lot of what we had worked out and planned. A few things that hadn't quite been sitting right with me have evolved into better ideas, I think, and it's very exciting to be back working on this project.

As my coder and I were chatting tonight, we came up with some good ideas we want to save and so I decided to break my too-long silence and post them here, both for our own reference and also for the many who asked us if this project was finished forever or just on hold or done forever. It's back in black :)

So, some of the ideas:

-- Remove Thief as a specific class and instead making thief-like spells and abilities available to every character, though in different forms (a Sunder Lock spell for Mages, for example, versus a simple Pick Lock ability for Merchants). These abilities won't be broadcast in a guild but will come up as options depending on how the player chooses to play the game. Hanging out in seedy pubs, for instance, seems like a great place to pick up these sorts of habits.

-- Create a special object type which holds only potions, and which, when looked into, indicates both the short description of the potion and also, on the second line following, lists the effects of the potion, to look something like this:
A magical potion chest holds:
( 3) a pink potion
* Sanctuary, Wild Heal
( 2) a green potion
* Sleep

-- Make scrolls only capable of having one spell, and create a chance, when recited, of giving the player +1% to the spell written on the scroll, assuming he meets the requirements. Spells already known to the character (but not quite perfected) would be affected by this, and it would also be possible for characters to learn new spells through this method, assuming they met the requirements for learning the spell. For example, a spell might require certain stat minimums (ex. Int 27), class specifications (ex. Fighters only), or even that the caster has knowledge of a prerequisite spell (ex. to learn Shield, you must first know Armour).

-- Really look at the races again. We are not sure we want to use fantasy races, with the host of problems it brings. If we are going to create original races, then we think we are courting trouble by giving them names of well-known fantasy races which have all sorts of history and background players are probably already familiar with from other sources. I like that mostly everyone is human in the Wheel of Time, with different nationalities accounting for different traits and customs, and this is the way I would like to go. This way we can make races which really are original and we don't run the risk of having players decide to play an Elf the way they think an Elf is (as opposed to the way the game environment portrays Elves).

There's a lot more (isn't there always, when brainstorming), but I will sign off for now and go get some work done.

xoxo,
Mrs. Sidonie

2 comments:

  1. My thoughts, at the cost of 2% of one dollar:

    -- If thievery is a sort of "learned" skill instead of a class, why have classes at all? A classless system would allow people to more finely decide how they want their character to be, versus trying desperately to be the special snowflakes we all want to be. I can imagine an energetic, indecisive child being mediocre at everything (but who can fault a wild spirit!), while those who truly focus on, say, physical fighting show their dedication through great power in that field.

    -- What does identifying objects to learn their effects do for the roleplay or gameplay experience? Gameplay-wise it just leads to classes that can't ID having to learn alternative methods (DR never told barbarians how to do this, so it was definitely frustrating at first). I'd say for the sake of making things fun and streamlined, a second "look" command of sorts gives you the details of any item.

    -- "and we don't run the risk of having players decide to play an Elf the way they think an Elf is (as opposed to the way the game environment portrays Elves)"

    The problem with this statement is, for a new player walking into a new mud, you really DON'T know how races are portrayed, so of course they'll end up being a little off. In addition, there's really not a lot of options if I want to play a certain character and "race portrayal" don't allow it to happen. Aside from not play, but I wanna play, lemme play dang it.

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  2. I too think it's a great idea to make classes w/o a basis for their RP already. Some good ideas here. Hope you guys keep it up.

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