Re: Giving away info

hal@ll.mit.edu
Mon, 6 Dec 93 11:33:01 -0500

>I would like to give away more information about units, since it
>differentiates them. It seems boring to be in a location full of
>identical-seeming units.
>
>On the other hand, players want to be as secretive as possible.
>
>Here's another idea I'm considering:
>
>Display a tag identifying magicians.
>
> tag spells known
> --- ------------
> mage 1-6
> wizard 7-12
> sorcerer 13+
> necromancer any necro spell
>
>There would be a [160] skill "Appear common". n aura used would
>give n months of magician-tag suppression.
>
>--
>Rich Skrenta <skrenta@shadow.com>

I like it.
How about

tag spells known
--- ------------
adept 1-3
wizard 4-7
mage 8-12
sorcerer 13-20

and drop the necromancer tag.

Along similiar lines, the stealth skills need to be strengthened.
The non researchable skills need to be changed so that there is at most a
5% chance of detection, and no chance of capture or harm. After all they
really don't tell you much. I'd prefer 0% chance of detection. If you want
to limit the skills power only list the most prevalent items, ie. notice
100 stone but not the 2 potions, and/or only give generalizations such as a
couple potions(=1 to 3) and 50+ wood (=50 to 100). There should then be
researchable skills which give a better estimate of what others are
carrying and what their skills are. Stealth should also be very
experiencetial (sp?). What I mean by this is that a master should learn far
far more and with less chance of being discovered than an apprentice.
Skills that would be nice are 'Observe players actions', 'Learn players
specialty' = the field he is best at, 'learn players skills' = find out
all, or most of the targets skills', 'Watch locations' = ranges from
finding everyones skills to finding everyones possesion needs either
multiply skills or experiential ratings, etc... . There of course need to
be a counter set of subskills 'Hide Skills', "Fake Skills'=make it look
like I'm a grand magician, or vice versa' 'Detect observation' = watch for
those who are spying on me or others in my faction, etc...

In all of this I think it would be extra nice if an adept stealther would
easily observe what an apprentice was doing without the apprentice knowing,
while say another adept would know they are being watched and say a master
would know who was watching them and of course be able to fool the adept
stealther :).

As a side note, grand master at 9+ uses is too low to be the maximum level,
there either have to be higher grades or the differentiation needs to be
based on the number of uses. That way a grand master with 30 uses is better
than a grand master with 20 uses. Of course the difference wouldn't be so
great as the difference between 1 use and 11 uses.

Well, I've rambled on a bit long, so let's see what everyone else thinks.

Harold


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