[CF-Devel] Re: Suggestions

[Mark Wedel]

  this was sent to me, thought I'd send the reply to the list since it didn't 
have a valid return address anyways.


Chris TheMan wrote:

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      Hello.
     
     
<snip>


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      He has told me that your organization accepts suggestions on 
     
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      possible improvements.  I realize this may be premature of me, 
     
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      but from how I understand the nature of this game to be, I 
     
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      thought I might suggest a couple of mechanics that you 
     
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      probably won't, but hopefully will, find useful.
     
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      I think this might already exist, but what about allowing for 
     
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      contractual elements that would form players into "adventuring 
     
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      companies" who would share the spoils of their conquest 
     
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      according to an agreed-upon formula that, in practice, would 
     
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      depend on the combat power contributed to the group.  This, I 
     
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      believe, would make for some great group play.
     
     

  There is the ability to form groups which share experience.  I suppose that 
could be extended so that different people get different shares of the experience.

  The sharing of loots (treasure) is much more difficult.  Cost on many things 
is variable, and probably only a small portion of loot is in actual money - most 
is is in items.

  My personal thought is that the players can make whatever agreements on the 
loot.  The gaining of exp and how it is divied up is something that 
automatically happens through the server code.  Treasure is all what people 
decide to pick up.  It seems reasonable that that could be a more 'social' 
enforcement.  Eg, the party agrees the treasure is split evenly, and if one 
member is apparantly ripping them off, the other party members can try for 
revenge or to get the money out or whatever else.



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      Another would be to have a sociological context, with elements 
     
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      under the computer's control.  What if someone was elected as 
     
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      town mayor?  They could potentially have control over 
     
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      computer forces.  This one's a little more ambitious, but there 
     
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      you go.
     
     

  I think things have been slowly going in this direction.  You could certainly 
add any number of elective offices.  They are only really interesting if those 
offices have some powers, and those powers should still exist even if the mayor 
is not actively playing.  Some simple things could be the mayor 
allowing/prohibiting spellcasting within the town, maybe having tax rates, entry 
fees, etc.

  However, I think if any of that is done, it should not be done in scorn. 
Perhaps navar city or santo dominion or whatever, but new players/characters 
should come into a place that is reasonably consistent.

  Of course, there is always the interesting idea of different starting 
locations.  This could actually be synthesized pretty easily right now - the 
class changers could teleport the player to another map that then has different 
choices.  OTOH, as said, I'd much rather change the character creation process 
to get rid of the hall of selection thing.