From: wool8657@mach1.wlu.ca (john woolsey 9209 U)
Subject: Re: New PeBM game through internet
Organization: Wilfrid Laurier University
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 03:59:44 GMT

In article <rwallace.718820138@unix1.tcd.ie> rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes:
>I'm not sure if this is what you mean, or whether it will work on your
>Unix system, but how about:
>
>	kermit -s mbox
This would work nicely however I want them deleted without my interference
from my mailbox. This is a great solution however to get the game started
since I do not have the mail program yet, and the basic game is almost
started.
>On unix1.tcd.ie where I am posting this from, this will send all mail
>messages to one's PC in plain ASCII format (the mail program only uses a
>formfeed character to separate the messages). So if you get people to
>send orders with a special identification line at the top, then the
>program will have no difficulty extracting the orders from the mbox file
>once the latter is downloaded.
>
>>Now comes your input. How would you like to control your fighters through
>>the fight. What would you like to have control of during character
>>generation other then just the name of the character. I have also though of
>>having alignments for the characters and the like as player controllable. So
>>please give me some feedback if you get the chance or have an idea.
>
>Plain one-on-one arena fighting is unlikely to provide a basis for an
>interesting game. How about the following: Each player (any amount of
>players can play simultaneously) has a party of maybe 6 characters
>dumped into a large arena, littered with obstacles, traps etc. and also
>with weapons, supplies and whatever scattered around. When players meet
>up they can either fight or join forces, but ultimately there can be
>only one surviving party. Thus you could use your ideas about arena
>combat, but also have strategy and diplomacy in it.
I might at a later date add multi-player competitions, as well as completely
open arena combat systems where 50 players or more could start on the points
of a circle and bash it out. I am also intending to add obstacles early in
the game design. Traps might also be a good idea, but their sheer randomness
could detract from overall game design.
>
>As for the characters, I would favour for each character having
>attributes like strength, toughness and so on, and having a certain
>number of points for each character to spend between the attributes.
>Since you're having it as low-tech weapons only, you might as well put
>in magic or psychic powers also (you could work this into your storylnie
>by saying that the local star puts out more high-energy radiation than
>the Sun does, or something like that, and that this caused mutations
>conferring psychic powers).
It might be possible to have points to spend, and actually I might have a
good way of incorporating that although the early plan would tend to have
characters maxed out in certain areas, which might destroy completely any
form of game balance, which I am working hard to make work. I am also
intending to add magic or psionics, but for now weapons are complicated
enough.
>
>For the combat system, I would say do something like, pit the
>characters' weapon skills against each other, then if one character hts,
>determine whether his weapon gets through the target's armor, and if so,
>determine hit location (thus a blow to the head would be lethal, a blow
>to the arm would impair the target's ability to fight, and a blow to the
>leg would mostly immobilize him). I can post more detailed suggestions
>on these isssues if you like.
Actually I am using a friend's combat system, which was designed for RPG
games. This system attempts to be extremely accurate, and in my opinion it
succeeds wonderfully. It also happens to work very nicely into a comentator
style of describing the fight. It doesn't really have hit locations built in
very well, but I intend to add that to the system, and it won't be too hard.
The problem with this system is that it was too difficult to keep track of
easily on paper, but for this purpose it fits in beautifully.
							- JAW>
Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm