From: jvp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Jeremy Pitt)
Newsgroups: rec.games.moria
Subject: My brain's erasable
Date: 6 Apr 92 08:38:04 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.

It's been sometime since this was posted, I've only just read it, and
there's been a bit of flaming going on since, but I had quite a laugh 
about this comment:

In article <1992Apr3.151415.15617@acsu.buffalo.edu> mjb@acsu.buffalo.edu (Matthew J. Bernhardt, the Mad Scientist who lobotomises himself after each game
of moria) writes:
>In article <1992Apr3.084930.18136@doc.ic.ac.uk> jvp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Jeremy Pitt) writes:
>>The problem is that the game cannot distinguish from an `expert' haggler
>>_player_ from an `expert' haggler _character_. If the game can store a
>>player's monster memory, why can't it also store his/her haggle record?
>>Then when you roll a new character you can also have an option to restore
>>the haggle record of the player or start from scratch as would a novice
>>character.
>
>	OK, and while we're at it, why don't we include an option for a 
>new character's experience to start from scratch, or to have it start from
>the experience of previous players?  Similar records could be keep for
>items and so on.
>	Clearly, your argument has some validity if one agrees that it is a
>good idea for monster memory to carry over from player to player.  However,
>I don't share this view, and hence I always delete dead character files and
>start with a fresh monster memory.

And unless you've found some way of selectively erasing parts of your own
memory this won't make any difference.

The first time you meet an Iridescent Beetle and you're out of mana
and it paralyses and you sit there pressing the space bar while it 
turns your _character_ into dog-food is likely to be the last. 

Whether or not you delete the monster memory, you _the_player_ remember
this. Well you should, unless you've smoked so much dope your short-term
memory is non-existent or you've taken a scalpel to your forehead.

So the first time your new character meets an Iridescent Beetle,
you orb (or sim.) the sucker: you don't think: `my character has never met
one of these before, I'll just mosey over and give it a few whacks
and see what it does. Oh dear my character can't move. Now what's
that big D thing coming over, I would read the manual but they don't
have laserprinters in Middle Earth so my character won't have read it...'

>	Having to haggle all over again is the price one pays for dying.

Indeed, like I said, such a price that I haven't bothered playing again.
I got vicarious satisfaction through this bb instead. Until the haggling
patch was posted, anyway - thanks a bunch!!!

Right now I'm off down the shops. Think I'll offer the shopkeeper one
tenth the asking price and let him gratuitously abuse me. Happens all
the time in the real world, doesn't it? Then I think I'll see off a few
dragons before a substantial lunch of fine mush. Oh yes. Quotidian
occurrences really, that's why they're in moria.

Mind you, we've got so many pitiful beggars in London right now I don't
suppose the police will mind if I knifed a few. Trouble is they're worth
no experience unless you get them on the Underground...

>* Matt Bernhardt        *                                                     *
>* Mad Scientist         *  Speak softly, and carry a Staff of *Destruction*.  *

Yup, that .sig seems to indicate the ol' scalpel slipped at some point...

Jeremy

Add smiley's if it's really essential. Like Staves of Destruction, I don't
tend to use them much 'cos they're a bit obvious...
Newsgroups: rec.games.moria