Re: Rhyme and Reason behing the game... (artefacts and player killings)

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>]

In message <giR5NIK__5g8Q_z5xX@cs.city.ac.uk>, Nick Williams writes:
>Excerpts from games.Crossfire: 12-Sep-94 Re: Rhyme and Reason behin..
>
>Isn't it time to add in alignment of some sort to the game? Rather than
>a simplistic toggled flag to say if they are going to attack you or not.
>Admittedly, with a more complex system, some quests may be more
>interesting: how to get the skeleton to open the door for you if all he

"more interesting" == "broken"

All the maps would need to be checked.  This is a herculean undertaking.

>I've been thinking about adding this into the game, and my current idea
>is that alignment should be based as follows:
>there are three "poles" of alignment: 
>1) good/lawful: characters don't kill other good characters/monsters.
>2) evil: characters kill everyone they see, but are less likely to kill
>other evil characters
>3) chaotic: characters do whatever they want to.
>
>You also have a second parameter which defines the magnitude of a
>creatures alignment (this is getting very similar to polar geometry),
>ranging from (MINIMAL to TOTAL).
>

Well, if you're going to do the work to implement this and fix all the
maps, fine.  But this is such a big project you might want to think
twice about doing it, and concretize your plans a bit more.

>Firstly, some maps become broken, as as soon as the player enters the
>map and activates it, the different monsters notice they're living with
>radically different alignment creatures and start killing each other
>off!  However, this isn't neccessarily a bad thing: it'll get the really
>weird maps fixed and it might make people create more sensible maps in
>the future.

I think you're underestimating the problems.  Monsters killing each other
off would remove much of the guard from treasure troves.  Evil players
could walk right past the guards to the treasure and take it unopposed.
Monsters should really attack any non-natives, not just those misaligned
with them.  If you were evil, would you allow some other evil creature
to rummage around in your home and take your treasure without a fight?

Additionally, most of the monsters now could be described as 'chaotic'
or 'evil', and so 'good' monsters would have to be added.  The only
examples of 'good' monsters are guards, unicorns, dogs, and people.
Unless lots of good monsters are added and put into the maps, we'll
have a more complicated system for doing what we do now:  essentially,
players vs. monsters, a bipolar system.  Evil characters would
have nobody to fight.


Regards,

PeterM