Regarding stats.

[Lacutis]

Ok,

This is how I envision stats starting out.

Stats ranging from 1-100, giving lots of room for items and other affects. All stats start at 10 to start, with x amount of points spendable to increase your base stats. That gives everyone an equal footing, and allows them to choose what they concentrate in.

The stats I am seeing now are:

Strength (Physical Strength)
Dexterity (Agility, reflexes)
Constitution (Heartiness, Health)
Mind (Reasoning Ability, memorization, rationalization)
Perception (awareness, sight, hearing, etc)
Essence (Connection to the "magical" stuff)

Then the skills can be based on certain skills, as well as a minimum stats. So for example you can have a "sniping" skill that you can learn but in order to do it you have to have "basic firearms", "advanced firearms" and a min 40 perc. Something like that.

What do you think?

[Adar]

I'm not sure if this was a consideration for you, but you don't have to get pigeonholed by the *D&D stat system.

Check this out:

-Strength/Arms (Affects melee combat, your maximum weight, perhaps maximum bulk if you choose to keep track of an item's bulkiness, and health).
-Dexterity/Hands (Restrict this to be "nimbleness of the hands", so it would affect accuracy of ALL weapons, and skills that require good hands).
-Agility/Feet (This will be speed/reflexes)
-Health/Body (Affecting resilience to poison, diseases, the ubiquitous "hit points" construct , etc)
-Charisma/Face (Affecting interactions with NPC's, persuasiveness, cost of goods with merchants)
-Perception/Senses (your definition of perception)
-Mind (your definition of mind)
-Essence/Beyond/The Other/catchy name (a good way to introduce the mystery of "magic" into the MUD, present it as something that isn't well known or understood)

I used the convential definitions at first, but I think it would be nifty to find a unique way of representing the stats. In this case, I used body parts. You could use organs, or Indian chakras, or something else unique to add some character and set your MUD apart from the *D&D clones out there.

As for skills, same thing there. I'm thinking out of the box as much as I can, and here is an idea. Skills are learned through exercise of said skills. If you are wielding a pistol, and you fire, basic handheld firearms should increase (assuming you're using the pistol against a challenging opponent). This can be a simple percentage, with each slice of 10-20% representing an increase in your ability. So if I were to start a new player, and type 'skills', I would get:

-Skills-----------
-End of Skills------

Nothing. Then I equip my gold plated pistol, and kill a John Travolta. Typing 'skills' shows:

-Skills-----------
Pistols: 1% (Untrained)
-End of Skills--------

As I continue to use the pistol, my pistols skill increases. At 10% the qualifier changes from Untrained to Novice. Then at 20% to Beginner. At each such step, I become more accurate with pistols. When I hit 100%, I get a friendly message saying "Congratulations! You have mastered the use of pistols."

Now, suppose I wanted to use an experimental biologically grafted shoulder-mounted tactical nuclear warhead launcher. At first I wouldn't even be able to equip it (until my Arms/Hands stats are high enough). Now, suppose I never had 100% on pistol. I start using my launcher, and I check my skills, but I still haven't developed a launcher skill. In fact, I would only start improving on my launcher skill when I had mastered Pistol, Heavy Weapons, and Explosive Weapons (for example). Only then would the use of the launcher begin to improve my Experimental Weapons skill. Alternatively, you don't let players even use the weapon until they've mastered the necessary basic skills (they can equip it when they have the right stats, but until they have the basic skills, in combat they get "CLICK! Nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?").

In this way you can create skill trees behind the scenes, hiding them from the players, and compelling them to keep playing to reveil these skills. Partial reinforcement, they will keep coming back. You decide whether "Pistols" will be the hidden root node, or whether there will be multiple roots, such as "Pistols" (branches into other guns), "Hand-to-Hand" (branches into sophisticated martial arts), and "Melee" (branches into various melee weapons). At each step you can make it so that in order to even gain a single percentage in a skill, the player needs to reach some minimum stats.

So how does magic fit in? Treat it separately and even more mysteriously. It's allure will be much stronger that way. Players can go on some quest to learn the first spell, pick something very basic here. Basic, but useful. I would shy away from numerical spells (healing spells, damage spells) and pick something that creates an effect, or maybe a modular spell that can do multiple things. After they've mastered it, they can go on another quest, and at the end, they are presented with a choice of one of 5-10 spells. Each one sets them on a defined spell path. Or perhaps there is more branching further down the line. The point is that they can't learn all the spells; they pick one at a branching point, and the rest are locked from them, permanently. Then you can reward people who chose the crappiest spell with the most powerful spell in the game, at the end. That is an issue of balance, but I think this would make for a really cool magic system. It is mysterious and alluring because you have to go on quests to even begin to improve it, instead of just wielding some weapon. Be creative here, but just try and stay away from turning magic into just another numerical device: a skill that changes HP/MP and spits out a line of text.

What about skills that aren't weapon-using skills or magic? I would again opt for a mini-quest/find-the-faroff-npc-trainer in order to gain that initial 1% in the skill, followed by exercising the skill in combat somehow (this can be tricky for a passive skill like dodging). Likewise, skills would branch, with a set of initial hidden roots, each one perhaps branching to another 1-2 skills. You wouldn't be able to gain the initial 1% in a skill unless you had mastered the skills directly under it.

Whew, that's all I got right now.

[Lacutis]

I'm not sure if this was a consideration for you, but you don't have to get pigeonholed by the *D&D stat system.

I didn't think I was, Str Con and Dex are common in a ton of game systems, I can just couldn't think of anything better there. Also, the mental D&D stats are Wis, Int, and Char, which I didn't use at all

Check this out:

-Strength/Arms (Affects melee combat, your maximum weight, perhaps maximum bulk if you choose to keep track of an item's bulkiness, and health).
-Dexterity/Hands (Restrict this to be "nimbleness of the hands", so it would affect accuracy of ALL weapons, and skills that require good hands).
-Agility/Feet (This will be speed/reflexes)
-Health/Body (Affecting resilience to poison, diseases, the ubiquitous "hit points" construct , etc)
-Charisma/Face (Affecting interactions with NPC's, persuasiveness, cost of goods with merchants)
-Perception/Senses (your definition of perception)
-Mind (your definition of mind)
-Essence/Beyond/The Other/catchy name (a good way to introduce the mystery of "magic" into the MUD, present it as something that isn't well known or understood)

Theres nothing wrong with those except I really don't want a "Charisma" type ability, mainly because I think its a cop-out for not roleplaying.

I used the convential definitions at first, but I think it would be nifty to find a unique way of representing the stats. In this case, I used body parts. You could use organs, or Indian chakras, or something else unique to add some character and set your MUD apart from the *D&D clones out there.

As for skills, same thing there. I'm thinking out of the box as much as I can, and here is an idea. Skills are learned through exercise of said skills. If you are wielding a pistol, and you fire, basic handheld firearms should increase (assuming you're using the pistol against a challenging opponent). This can be a simple percentage, with each slice of 10-20% representing an increase in your ability. So if I were to start a new player, and type 'skills', I would get:

-Skills-----------
-End of Skills------

Nothing. Then I equip my gold plated pistol, and kill a John Travolta. Typing 'skills' shows:

-Skills-----------
Pistols: 1% (Untrained)
-End of Skills--------

As I continue to use the pistol, my pistols skill increases. At 10% the qualifier changes from Untrained to Novice. Then at 20% to Beginner. At each such step, I become more accurate with pistols. When I hit 100%, I get a friendly message saying "Congratulations! You have mastered the use of pistols."

No offense, but I REALLY, REALLY hate this way of handling skills. It's really horrible for casual players and rewards spending large amount of time hitting a combat dummy with a stick (See Ultima Online). I would rather have it skill *point* based and allow people to pump extra skill points into a skill in order to "be better" at it.

Now, suppose I wanted to use an experimental biologically grafted shoulder-mounted tactical nuclear warhead launcher. At first I wouldn't even be able to equip it (until my Arms/Hands stats are high enough). Now, suppose I never had 100% on pistol. I start using my launcher, and I check my skills, but I still haven't developed a launcher skill. In fact, I would only start improving on my launcher skill when I had mastered Pistol, Heavy Weapons, and Explosive Weapons (for example). Only then would the use of the launcher begin to improve my Experimental Weapons skill. Alternatively, you don't let players even use the weapon until they've mastered the necessary basic skills (they can equip it when they have the right stats, but until they have the basic skills, in combat they get "CLICK! Nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?").

In this way you can create skill trees behind the scenes, hiding them from the players, and compelling them to keep playing to reveil these skills. Partial reinforcement, they will keep coming back. You decide whether "Pistols" will be the hidden root node, or whether there will be multiple roots, such as "Pistols" (branches into other guns), "Hand-to-Hand" (branches into sophisticated martial arts), and "Melee" (branches into various melee weapons). At each step you can make it so that in order to even gain a single percentage in a skill, the player needs to reach some minimum stats.

Now I *do* like the idea of skill trees in the sense of Getting the "pistol" skill opens up several skills like "revolver", "semi-auto", etc that you could spend points to specialise in, making you alot better at those type of weapons ala shadowrun.

So how does magic fit in? Treat it separately and even more mysteriously. It's allure will be much stronger that way. Players can go on some quest to learn the first spell, pick something very basic here. Basic, but useful. I would shy away from numerical spells (healing spells, damage spells) and pick something that creates an effect, or maybe a modular spell that can do multiple things. After they've mastered it, they can go on another quest, and at the end, they are presented with a choice of one of 5-10 spells. Each one sets them on a defined spell path. Or perhaps there is more branching further down the line. The point is that they can't learn all the spells; they pick one at a branching point, and the rest are locked from them, permanently. Then you can reward people who chose the crappiest spell with the most powerful spell in the game, at the end. That is an issue of balance, but I think this would make for a really cool magic system. It is mysterious and alluring because you have to go on quests to even begin to improve it, instead of just wielding some weapon. Be creative here, but just try and stay away from turning magic into just another numerical device: a skill that changes HP/MP and spits out a line of text.

I gave my ideas regarding magic in the premise thread.

What about skills that aren't weapon-using skills or magic? I would again opt for a mini-quest/find-the-faroff-npc-trainer in order to gain that initial 1% in the skill, followed by exercising the skill in combat somehow (this can be tricky for a passive skill like dodging). Likewise, skills would branch, with a set of initial hidden roots, each one perhaps branching to another 1-2 skills. You wouldn't be able to gain the initial 1% in a skill unless you had mastered the skills directly under it.

Ive played a lot of games that have the "% skill" approach and they all suck for playing casually, theres a neverwinter server I occasionally play on, and in order to make the really awesome items you have to spend like 40 real days mining gems and chiseling them, or smelting ore, a lot of repetitive nonsense that detracts from gameplay.

However, like I said before, I wouldn't mind allowing people to spend multiple skill points on the same skill in order to increase its effectiveness. I could even approach this like the F.U.D.G.E. system, which has a really unique approach to skills.

Whew, that's all I got right now.

Me too

[Adar]

The problem is that without a defined cap for each skill, it's difficult to say when you can unlock the next skill. Suppose that skills were uncapped. Now I get my first skill, called Pistol. I really want to use my hunting rifle. But when I tried to get Rifle, it said something about being too unskilled.

So I went and improved my pistol skill. With a % system, it's easy to say "Oh, you unlock the next skills once you reach 100% in this skill". Without it, you have to pick an arbitrary threshold, like, 200 skill points. There isn't the concept of "Well, now that I've MASTERED this skill, I could presumably learn a new one". Furthermore, I think you'd have to expose the player to the list of skills he can learn, from the most basic to the most advanced, all at once, which is one of the things I was trying to avoid in my proposal. I think if the players don't know ahead of time just what kind of cool high level skills they can get, they'll be more motivated to play and unlock those skills.

So perhaps a hybrid solution is best. You can only "train" (spend skill points) on the skills that are currently on your list. The "trainers" will only offer to train you on skills in your list. You begin the game with an empty skill list. When you wield a pistol and fire it once, you get that first 1 skill point on Pistol. Then you can start training in pistol. At some point, you ought to tell the player something like "You feel so comfortable with pistols that you want to try your hands at something bigger and better". This is his signal that he's unlocked a higher skill in the tree. He can still train and get better in pistols, since you said no cap. But now he can finally wield that rifle he's always wanted to use, go into combat and suck it up a bit (but to get that 1 point to show up), and begin training his rifle skill.

I guess the two big things that I am trying to promote are:
1) Hide as much about the higher level skills as you can from the player.
2) Require the player to be x good at skill y before he can hope to get or even see skill z.

The first is the allure and the desire to "see what else there is", and the second is the skill tree. Both are popular with gamers.

[Lacutis]

The problem is that without a defined cap for each skill, it's difficult to say when you can unlock the next skill. Suppose that skills were uncapped. Now I get my first skill, called Pistol. I really want to use my hunting rifle. But when I tried to get Rifle, it said something about being too unskilled.

So I went and improved my pistol skill. With a % system, it's easy to say "Oh, you unlock the next skills once you reach 100% in this skill". Without it, you have to pick an arbitrary threshold, like, 200 skill points. There isn't the concept of "Well, now that I've MASTERED this skill, I could presumably learn a new one". Furthermore, I think you'd have to expose the player to the list of skills he can learn, from the most basic to the most advanced, all at once, which is one of the things I was trying to avoid in my proposal. I think if the players don't know ahead of time just what kind of cool high level skills they can get, they'll be more motivated to play and unlock those skills.

I see your confusion, let me explain it this way:
Spending one point on a skill makes you "proficient" with the skill. You can use it as well as any average joe.
Spending more points in a skill gives you a bonus to the use of the skill for each point spent on it. Want to be a REALLY badass shot? put 3 points into pistol.

I envision rifle skill as a seperate tree than pistol, but I never considered making some skills require multiple points in a skill, although I guess its plausible.

read this: FUDGE in a nutshell (2 pages)

Specifically the section "Characters and Traits" its like two paragraphs long. Thats sort of what I envisioned with skills.

So perhaps a hybrid solution is best. You can only "train" (spend skill points) on the skills that are currently on your list. The "trainers" will only offer to train you on skills in your list. You begin the game with an empty skill list. When you wield a pistol and fire it once, you get that first 1 skill point on Pistol. Then you can start training in pistol. At some point, you ought to tell the player something like "You feel so comfortable with pistols that you want to try your hands at something bigger and better". This is his signal that he's unlocked a higher skill in the tree. He can still train and get better in pistols, since you said no cap. But now he can finally wield that rifle he's always wanted to use, go into combat and suck it up a bit (but to get that 1 point to show up), and begin training his rifle skill.

the skills a player has in his list at start will depend on his stats because skills will have stat requirements for the most part, except for like "bandage" which anyone should be able to figure out

I imagined you walking up to a mob and typing like "ask mobname train" and he would say something like, "Train? I'm one of the best pistol trainer in the city! I also know a thing or two about rifles.."

That would let you know he can train people in pistols and rifles. Lets say you dont have rifle in your list because you dont meet the perception requirement. if you typed "ask mobname train rifle" he would say something like, "I can't train you how to do that till you improve your aim!". Which would be an indicator that your perc isn't up to par.

I guess the two big things that I am trying to promote are:
1) Hide as much about the higher level skills as you can from the player.
2) Require the player to be x good at skill y before he can hope to get or even see skill z.

The first is the allure and the desire to "see what else there is", and the second is the skill tree. Both are popular with gamers.

Thats why I like the fudge system, it has a non number based scale, with a limit. If you read the full fudge rules it talks about how depending on your stats that a skill is based on, determines your starting skill level.

So if you put a all your stats in dex, and take "basic martial arts" you will start at probably fair instead of mediocre.

Something like that.

The benefit there is that you can learn skills outside your stat focuses but you will be really sucky with them.

[Adar]

Sounds good. I've got a final in a few hours so I'm out for the day.

[PsychoX]

Another interesting thing would be the introduction of special abilities independent from your skills, similar to the system in Fallout.

For example, after you reach a certain experience level, you can choose between special traits such as
"Lucky Guy", which gives you small boni on all that is somehow randomized,
"Jinxed" which greatly increases the chances of making a critical mistake for everyone,
"Quick Learner", which makes you learn skills a little quicker (duh)
and so on.

[Guest]

Yeah, you are right man! :(