Re: Weapon Skills (was Re: Skills hack)

[woodruff@cadence.com (Ken Woodruff)]

PeterM writes (in response to me):
> >It seems unnatural to me that any character can pick up any sort of weapon
> >and immediately use it to it's full efficiency. 
> 
> Tell me what is natural about playing a Wraith to go beat up on Goblins,
> trolls, and Faerie Dragons.  The game is supposed to be fun, not realistic.
> Let us not lose the playing simplicity by installing a morass of skills
> and bookkeeping.

First of all I think it should be clear that everyone who bothers to play, modify or
comment on Crossfire thinks it is fun and should continue to be fun.  We may differ
on what particular features we find more or less fun, but to date much of what's 
in Crossfire is a compromise among a variety of desires, and this will probably
continue to be the case.  As for whether Crossfire should be realistic, well this
is a fantasy role-playing game--realism is not the point. 

That said, you might notice that I didn't say instant weapon proficiency is
"unrealistic", I said it was "unnatural". Since to some extent the objects and
activities which make up the Crossfire universe are based on the real universe
the issue of "natural" behavior is already a large part of the game, and, in fact
contributes to the simplicity of play by leveraging everyone's knowledge of their
own universe.  For example, some care has been taken to assign weights to all of
the various weapons which are fairly accurate in a real world sense, and more
importantly the ratio of various weapon weights is as expected.  I'm willing
to bet that if I created a "giant solid lead battle club" archetype that 
only weighed 10 grams the readers of this list would gripe about it, and
players who had become accustomed to big, dense things being heavy would
wonder why it was so light.  I don't think anyone would be satisfied if I
simply replied "This game is supposed to be fun, not realistic."  Such an
object is simply unnatural--it conflicts with our general understanding 
of our universe and the Crossfire universe.

As to your comments about code complexity, the weapon skills I describe would
be no more complex to maintain than spells are today.  This doesn't exactly
make them simple, but if we're seriously committed to making it worthwhile to
play the fighter classes it seems like a reasonable price to pay.

--Ken

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Ken Woodruff           | "In every jumbled pile of person    |
| woodruff@cadence.com   |  there's a thinking part that       |
+------------------------+  wonders what the part that isn't   |
| Disclaimer: What tote  |  thinking isn't thinking of."       |
| bag full of $20 bills? |          --They Might Be Giants     |
+------------------------+-------------------------------------+