[CF List] BIGworld

[Todd Mitchell]

Boy am I a pest...
I am enjoying this discussion very much.

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     That all sounds good, but it would seem to be a lot of work to do right - a
     
     lot of maps to get updated with these restrictions.

These ideas about roads and areas around cities are mainly geared to avoid
having monsters wandering into areas where players would not be able to deal
with them.  I don't really want to see random monsters being generated when
you walk through the outside map, but I would like to see areas where there
are some trolls or some goblins or some such.  Some of these areas should
have some pretty heavy duty creatures or it is just an annoyance/joke to
players of higher levels.  The problem is that unless you build a river or
other blocking landscape totally around these areas, the monsters could well
wander into places you wouldn't want them (like the Scorn city gates or
lower level dungeon entrances or along the road to Navar) and where low
level players should be able to go.  Cutting up the landscape with blocking
will take a lot of the benefit of having the bigworld maps - players would
have to make huge detours around areas to find the entrances or to skirt the
area and any single tile powerful creatures could get out the same way the
player got in. People couldn't stumble into an encounter with a troll since
they would have to find the entrance to the blocked off area (a pretty good
indication that something it there).  Since this is only on the world maps
and there is not much on them currently, I didn't think it would be that
much work and certainly it would be less work to do it as it gets populated
than to do it later.
Anyway it was one suggestion, there are otherways to achieve the same goal.
Having monster blocking tiles would help since certain 'ranges' could be
blocked off that the monsters would not leave but players could cross into
these areas without knowing.  I would suggest that the level of monsters in
an area like this should take into consideration the distance from a road or
town (a band of orcs in the forest could be alongside the main road or just
outside of town, but a troll in the woods should be a bit further into the
wilds.  I guess it makes more sense to block in the monster ranges than to
block in the players.  This way you could have a troll in the forest without
worrying that some level 3 player is going to get eaten up on his way to
Navar.  Now if he leaves the road then he could be in trouble since he might
stumble onto dangerous territory - but that is cool.  This is pretty easy to
do too if there are the appropriate arches for map making.  This second way
is probably the better way to handle this actually.

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     I'm also a little concerned that you could get situations where players see
     
     the monsters but the monsters don't come any closer...

This is a problem, but it is often a problem currently as well, many
monsters are trapped in rooms with small doors already.  At least with
monster blocking tiles the monsters could fire ranged attacks back at the
players - giving them more chance than they have if they are blocked by
walls.  Map makers have to take these things into account when they are
building stuff.
Perhaps a monster movement method would work to encourage the monsters to
avoid hanging around such areas. (check if they can move towards player-
check if they can attack player- if not - run away...?)

>
     
     There are already spells that do that - conterspell and counterwall...
     
     - Yes, but if it there was an arch that had this property would be nice for
map making (one idea: triggered magic forcefields)- I suggested the spells
as a bonus side effect of having the arch available.

>
     
     Perhaps in addition to the other stuff, add terrain flags...
     
     That could be ok so long as it wasn't too simple to get proficient in every
skill.  It would be a bummer for all the terrain effects to be in effect
meaningless to players at level 30.  I don't think the rate of impedance is
so great now, so cutting it down more may not be so good since terrain
should have an effect on movement, combat and life in general to make things
interesting.
I was suggesting all the different pass/nopass conditions I could think of
(like mountains (mountain climbing), shallow water (swiming) deep water
(pass for boats and sea monsters)) so that if someone was to change the
blocking code (and the monster movement code) there would be as much on the
table possible to make the changes as robust and useful as possible.