Re: [Adonthell-general] rules miscellany

[Nils Fohrbeck]

Sounds good! As far as the controlls are concerned  we should try to allow for 
both mouse steernig, as well as keyboard steering and even a joypad only 
variant. The joypad only variant is also useful, if adonthell ever gets ported 
to some linux PDA. :-)

Concerning the luck skill, I think your suggestion with the 2 to 7 range is 
quite good. As far as the layout of the gui is concerned you might also talk to 
ben about it. When we worked on the rules, we also designed a rough draft of a 
character sheet in the book format we talked about earlier.

By the way, have you heard of Neverwintern Nigths? It is a commercial RPG out 
now for Windows, but the Linux Version should follow soon. Very enjoyable and 
inspiring.

Nils





> Implementation:
> ===============
> 
> All the stats, properties, attributes and skills would be stored in the
> character's storage. A python module could be written to ease
> manipulation of them. I imagine for each variable we'd have a current,
> max and bonus value.
> 
> max would naturally determine the upper limit. E.g. the maximun health
> or power, or the maximum rank a character can gain in an attribute or
> skill. This is sorta fixed. For derived properties such as health it
> will of course change whenever the underlying stat changes. But
> attributes and skills maxima always remain the same and can be kept in a
> table, not with individual characters.
> 
> cur would be the current, unmodified state of the variable. E.g. the
> current health or power, or the current rank of an attribute or skill.
> It can range anywhere between 0 and max.
> 
> bon (or maybe mod) would be a modifier to cur. That is for items that
> give boni or mali to certain variables. For curses or blessings, spell
> effects, etc. All such modifiers are simply added up and finally added
> to cur. Therefore, a variable can be boosted above max in certain
> circumstances (and drop below 0 as well).
> 
> Both cur and bon/mod are needed for each character.
> 
> 
> GUI:
> ====
> 
> The gui allows viewing and changing variables (when levelling up). Most
> constrains we have would be implemented through the gui. It would
> possibly nice if each stat, property, attribute and skill would have an
> accompaning icon (possibly b&w, but overlaid with a color denoting the
> group it belongs to). It also should have a tooltip the displays
> information what it does when selected. Possibly the same as given in
> the rules document, where that is fitting. How the gui will actually
> look like is another matter. Guess I leave that to James :).
> 
> One thing I was wondering was whether any gui should be completely mouse
> controlled, with gamepad or keyboard moving the cursor via
> direction keys. But then again, maybe not ;).
> 
> 
> Luck:
> =====
> 
> I think the luck skill is different from any other skills. I don't
> really know whether we should have any specific test for luck. Instead I
> would suggest that luck effects all other skills in some way.
> 
> Either, each rank of luck will add one point to the outcome of other
> skill tests. That means, a luck of 5 would always give 5 point bonus to
> every other skill, which might be a little too much.
> 
> A weaker thing might be that for every rank of luck, one dice would be
> numbered from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. In that case, even a rank of 5
> in luck wouldn't help much if one has few ranks only in the skill that
> is tested. (Because more dice could be affected by luck than are
> actually thrown).
> 
> A thing in between the two is that the rank of the skill tested limits
> the bonus given by luck. E.g. even with a luck of 5, only 1 point would
> be added if the skill used has rank 1 only. But that point would be for
> sure.
> 
> 
> Errors:
> =======
> 
> In the property dependencies and calculation table, "ranged damage" is
> missing.
> 
> 
> NPC attitute:
> =============
> 
> We have a number of variables that influence NPC's attitute towards the
> player. Most notably alignment stat and charm skill, but the race of
> player and NPC plays a role as well. Then there are 'personal' factors
> as well, e.g. helping NPCs, admiring or insulting them (through certain
> dialogue options).
> 
> I think all those factors should be forged into a single number that can
> then be used for all kind of things:
> 
> * reaction of NPC in dialogue
> * offering of quests/training/etc. through dialogue
> * modifier for prices charged for services the NPC offers
> * ...
> 
> For that it is essential that there is a single value we can query. (Of
> course, certain descisions can still be base on a specific attribute
> like race of alignment where this becomes necessary)
> 
> A number of things are clarified by the rules doc yet, for example how
> NPC and player alignment interact. Put in a formula, it could read
> 
>       10 - abs (player_alignment - npc_alignment)
> 
> If player and NPC alignment match, the value will be 10, the more they
> differ, the lower the value will be. Directly opposite alignments will
> result in a value of 0.
> 
> The next thing is charm. I imagine that can simply be added to the
> result of the value above. So that'd add a value between 0 and 5.
> 
> For the races I would suggest a fixed table that determines how much
> each race likes the others. Possibly also on a scale between 0 and 5.
> The benefit of such a table is that not every NPC needs a variable
> telling how much he likes either of the races. However, we could allow
> optional modifiers for individual NPCs that change the values given by
> the table.
> 
> Remains the personal component. Guess that would be a on a range between
> 0 and 10, starting with a value of 5.
> 
> If you add up all of these, you'd end with an NPC attitude somewhere
> between 0 (hates the player) and 25 (would give his life for the
> player).  Such a value would be easy to work with and very useful, I'd
> say.
> 
> 
> Well, that's all for now. Please let me know what you think!
> 
> Kai
> 
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