Witcher MUSH Brainstorm (SPOILERS)
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And read the books, they are good. Next one translated in 2016. HYPE:
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Yeah, 1 only got good once you got out of the city. But if you have 20 hours to kill it isn't bad. 2 is awesome, though.
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Glad you didn't spoil it, told you it was worth the wait. Fantastic game. RL has hit me hard so I haven't come back to this thread in a while but I have few more ideas kicking around. I'm thinking the focus on Harry Potter with Tits and Swords, er I mean Witcher School is the way to go to keep the game manageable, always open to suggestions tho.
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This is one of those cases where I think that a system would be very cool (at a high level) that handled single-player mob killing, ala MUD. But with MUSH mentality. I know, shut up, Rook.
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I don't know, you might be on to something there. If you create some MUD-ish code to handle big monsters and such that don't need the guiding hand of an intelligent GM, it could work. I think now and then a GM would have to step in and do things like, "The Griffon flies away to its nest!" or such, but having a robust code base to handle things like that could be beneficial.
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Would basic single round of attacks and defenses being automated to resolve and alter records of health, action points, whatever, count as automated enough?
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@Bobotron had an idea about something like that, when he was kicking around the idea of a Log Horizon/SAO-esque MMO type MUSH. I really like the idea of it, and possibly an inventory/equipment/money/etc system but I'm not sure how you'd handle it. Edit : Note, a far more detailed/interactive inventory/etc than WoD MU*s have, before somebody mentions that system.
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I built a somewhat integrated +Sheet/Inventory system that would allow people to 'equip' or 'wear' items that altered their +sheet accordingly. That included purchasing items from vendors like magic swords, magic armor, etc.
I have also built a combat prototype system (that was never used) that allowed a DM/ST control 'monsters' and have them execute rolls, take damage, spend points, etc. Making this work with a DM/ST is not hard. Making it automated and truly 'hands free' combat becomes MUCH harder because... reasons.
Could even use the +Grid system that I built for miniatures-style round-based combat systems (in this case, a D&D MU).
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@Tempest
I worked for a while on the concept for it, and ultimately, it can be done. Hell, you can make basic AI 'NPC monsters' via objects and creative use of @listen and listen patterns if you wanted stuff that was persistent (I've done this and seen it done in a lesser capability, for troop objects or training drones on TF MU*s). There's not a lot of fine granularity to it in that manner, however, because it was something that was reactive; it reacted to the combat code's messages and attacked back the person who hit it (tied heavily into a coded combat system). I am sure that, with some further creative finagling, you could have it pick someone at random.Now that I'm thinking about it, the way I would have done it on the not-SAO MUSH would be on initiative. I'd coded an auto-tracking turn-advancing initiative for a MUSH before, which advanced rounds based on +-commands advancing the tracker (so +attack would advance the turn to the next person). It'd be code-intensive for every automated monster (though you could have a base template, @parent it to the template type and then add conditionals based on the more powerful monster or flatly rebuild one-offs like bosses), but you could give them conditions and a percentage roll on their turn, pick a non-monster target at random and have it do the +-command based on the 'likelihood to do <X> thing'.
The two things that kept tripping me up, in the end, were 1) advancement and 2) the inventory/money/equipment system.
I couldn't find a fair way to do advancement in the MMO environment, that was fair to the people who played here and there due to RL constraints but liked the setting, and the people who had hours in a day to, y'know go out and grind as if it was WoW. That's a factor of it, sure, but it just FELT weird to me (probably because I don't play MMOs myself).
For the money/inventory/equipment, it ended up feeling too gamey to me; I wanted the game to more be the 'here's the setting, this stuff is important but I'm not going to recode WoW in MUSHform for rare item drops, etc.'. Which ultimately led to the thing petering out. It can be done, but you have to have someone really interested in doing all the calculations, percentages of drops/rare drops/etc. and the interconnections between systems. Doing it isn't HARD, it's just determining exactly how gamey you want the gamey aspects of it to be, and if you have the layout for everything you'd potentially need. Inventory works well as a database storing all the potential items as individual attributes with the stats, stored on the character as a delimited list of some sort. Money is easy enough to store as an attribute and tie into the buy/sell/find code.
There are various RPG Maker programs out there that, their monster AI is a collection of 'if-then statements', based on a percentage condition. You might have a Goblin with two things it does: Attack or Goblin Grenade. Each would have a 50% likelihood of happening. A higher level monster might have eight abilities, with preconditions sch as 'If HP is less than 50%, do Giga Fire Blast 30% of the time'. It could be finagled into some (complex) MUSHcode on parents, and go from there.
If I can find my notes on it, I'd be glad to pastebin them somewhere if you want to review some of the prelim stuff I'd poked about with.
@Misadventure
I'd think so. That's the typical method for one of the heavy combat coded MU*s like Transformers (+-commands tied to code do the heavy lifting, the commands set damage, deduct fuel, calculate hit/miss, inflict status effects, etc.). You can also make it advance a turn order with an initiative system.@Rook
I think you're onto the right angle there; this type of thing is part of why I've built an extensive, softcoded NPC system (I built it for a TF game to represent Micromaster Teams originally) that I was going to use on the not-SAO game. It essentially ties into all the code, from room parents to +finger to +-commands for combat, using attributes to create virtual NPCs that don't require a login or an @created object. Not able to be made automated ,but easy for a GM to go +NPC/get goblin|goblin|goblin captain|Tiamat|TEMPEST GOD OF STORMS and get those NPCs to use during a scene. In using it for Micromaster Teams and even just as a test for NPCs tied into the combat system, it worked quite nicely. -
@Bobotron
Your notes and approaches with the AI coding was exactly what I was working toward before it became clear that the game wouldn't use it at the level that would justify the amount of coding and data work to build the bestiary, the objects, and the system. Lots of questions arose about reach, weapon sizes, cover and concealment, and all sorts of combat modifiers that could affect not only AI decisions on attacks, but resolution of dice rolls. -
On the topic of advancement, there'd probably need to be X (small) amount of XP auto gained each week, with the possibility of Y (maybe 3/4/5 times as much as X to be gained via Doing Stuff) and capping the amount you could gain. But maybe letting people farm gold or crafting materials as much as they wanted.
I know that Kingdom Hearts MUSH and Super Robot Wars MUSH have 'coded' combat, but yeah, it's not very detailed at all. Hell, even Firan's coded combat wasn't all that detailed.
I am 100% code illiterate, so I wonder how hard it'd be to code some sort of rudimentary Final Fantasy Tactics-esque grid or something. I know the d20 Star Wars games have a pretty fancy +map system (it's only for looking at though), but I don't know if it'd be possible to code a game to factor in stuff on it. Like if I have a sword, my token has to be next to the goblin's to hit it. But if I have a spear, I can hit it from 2 squares away.
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Would boil down to 2D math, @Tempest, and data attributes on your weapons. D&D, for example, handles 'Reach 2' weapons cleanly.
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@Rook
Yeah. As much as it's a cool pipedream, it's really just that. Part of why I was backing away from that and more relying on staff-run and PRP stuff combined with the VChar/VNPC system, and a lot of templates for NPCs and a way that someone could submit their own int othe database.@Tempest
Most games with 'coded' combat (especially in the M3/SRT/TFMU* circuit) really only cover the basics overall (and hell, stuff nowadays has come a LONG way from what we had on TF MUSHes in the early 90s). But most of the RPG-styled stuff like cover, reach, etc. tends to not matter mechanically in those games, as the combat system is supposed to be a cinematic representation and used as a tiebreaker/method to determine the outcome of a battle if people can't agree to an RPed outcome. -
https://rtalsoriangames.wordpress.com/
So seems they are making a Witcher P&P RPG. Might help with this.
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@Olsson said:
https://rtalsoriangames.wordpress.com/
So seems they are making a Witcher P&P RPG. Might help with this.
Yes! I saw that a while ago. Hopefully its a good system. Does anyone know much about Cyberpunk 2020? (Its the system the Witcher RPG will be based on) I love the cyberpunk genre but have never played in the actual RPG rule set.
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I recall Cyberpunk 2020 being alright but not great but it's been years. Wonder how they'll handle magic I that system though.
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CP2020 was highly equipment/cybernetics/deck oriented. The basics were you have skills and attributes, you add those up, roll a d10 and that's your result for a test. Gear and situation modifiers applied. Stats and skills cost in an increasing scale. Classes/archetypes had a class skill that added to specific rolls, so anyone could become a solid shooter or negotiator, but the class types would usually excel in their areas. It had decent armor and damage mechanics.
They had Humanity to measure how close to going nuts you were because of how much of you was cybernetics. It was a purely game balancing consideration, since you are already playing murderhobos.
Some of the third party source books expanded on Humanity loss, making it support other ideas and being more specific, similar top comparing Morality in White Wolf products to Madness Meters from Unknown Armies.
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Saw this this morning, thought you might like it.
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/07/29/cd-projekt-announces-witcher-tabletop-rpg-game/
Edit aha derp, someone posted the same announcement up the page.
