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

[Nick Williams <njw@cs.city.ac.uk>]

In many of the recent discussions about how good artefacts should be
(with associated fairness of distribution to players), it seems that
people tend to think in terms of how the crossfire code works; what
would make it easier, or harder for people to play, etc.  Isn't this the
wrong way to go about it?  If crossfire is even remotely related to D&D
and those kind of things, then why not take a few leaves from their
books and attempt to get some rationale behind what's going on (even if
it's completely bogus rationale :).  I hesitate to say "make it
realistic", coz it's just a game after all, but I'm sure you know what I
mean.

For example, the problem with people killing other players: if you're
not watching what you're doing, you're panicking, wielding some fearsome
weaponry and on the run from some monsters, isn't it possible that
tripping over a member of your party you're going to cause some damage? 
If people aren't watching what they're doing, then what do they expect:
they *knew* that there was a friend outside the door!  We've often
killed each other when playing here (usually with fire/ice), and it's
just made us more wary of other players.  With monsters which may be
friendly nowadays, it's more important to watch who you hit all the time
(e.g. the skeleton who opens the door in the Old City quest), and
players shouldn't be an exception. In other words, I think it should be
left as it is at the moment.

Applying the "reasonableness" argument to distribution of artefacts,
where people are worried that all the good stuff (especially with
uniqueness on) just gets grabbed up by the higher level players leaving
the newbies to struggle along for little reward: I think it's entirely
reasonable that there should be only one sword called "Mournblade" or
whatever (after all, I don't see any factories churning out highly
magical weapons anywhere) (unless of course it's "Mournblade (TM) made
under license to Moon Manasystems Inc").  However, is it reasonable that
someone should be able to be carrying around an arsenal of these
weapons?  For one thing, how the hell is some mage supposed to carry 5
swords without chopping their legs (or something more important) off? 
What about magical effects? I mean, you have Frostbrand and Firebrand
sitting right next to each other in your backpack (somehow), aren't
these two magical weapons going to explode in a matter/anti-matter kind
of way?  From this thinking, there are a couple of ways of modifying the
code:
	* "improve" the encumbrance code to take better account of what people
are carrying.  If people are forced to carry only a small amount,
they'll have to use unique-homes to store all of their goodies they're
not using... and then these homes should be rigged with traps, etc...
and you suddenly don't need to create lots of weird non-sensical quests,
you can just start attempting to raid deceased people's homes, with real
traps and real treasures.
	* implement some new code, based on magical "auras" of items, whereby
any item which is magical will give off an aura and affect all items
with 1units range  (this would explain how wearing a small ring of fire
gives your whole body protection).  Then whenever a player picks up a
new item, it is checked for clashes with anything already held. (You
pickup a sword (unidentified).  Your sword "Frostbrand" reacts violently
and explodes.  You are caught in an icestorm.  Your sword (unidentified,
but probably Firebrand) explodes.  You are caught in a firestorm. 
Ooops). To make such events less dangerous for players, perhaps the
"detect magic" spell would provide clues that a magical item clashes. 
For example, you cast detect magic and while "sword (unidentified)"
glows red, your Frostbrand will also glow violently blue.

Next in the list: polymorphing.  By changing the shape exhibited by an
item, you may end up with a completely different artefact/item, sure. 
However, you shouldn't be able to polymorph a ring of ice into a ring of
fire without some really weird reason for doing so.  How could a simple
polymorph end up converting a ring of adornment into a "Ring of Acid
With Added Damage (TM)  Moon Manasystems Inc", without using up all it's
polymorphing energy in one go: that's a major change.  And surely during
all this radical change in matter and energy, things are going to blow
or be destroyed fairly often: mucking about with matter like that is a
risky business.  Translating this into implementation words, how about
letting polymorph destroy items more frequently (as has been suggested),
making polymorphed items keep more-or-less the same abilities
(occasionally, you'll get a better weapon, occasionally worse) but
guaranteeing any new item will be on the same spellpath as the original.
 Final note on polymorph: how about making polymorph more rare (it is,
after all a very complex spell) and making it use more charges dependent
on how much change it actually does (with discount if you do 'morph in
bulk).

Overall, why not sort out some sort of reason behind the way all of this
magic and artefact stuff works (maybe by just stealing it from other D&D
or game systems) and then use that reason as a coding constraint (or at
least advisory constraint).

Phew, I'll leave this for comments for now: I could go on at length on
much of this, I've been thinking overly much of crossfire features in
the last week :)

Nick Williams, Systems Architecture Research Centre, City University, 
London, EC1V 0HB.  UK.

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