geez this was a long time ago, and to the best of my ability I can only speculate at two axes, the first one was karma - the value of how good/bad you were, the second was fame, as from the UO system.

For the third variable none of us( Maitrek and I ) have a clue as to what it was, when one of us gets one then we''re sure to post it...

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

Maybe hint to the player about what is to come in the distant future, and see if they can plan for it... This means that they are planning ahead and are trying to keep their decisions along the same line...

Something ironic though: About your notes being distributed to the waste dump. You are being shown a definite cause and effect! The cause was the redistribution to the bin, and the effect was that you cannot share your pearls with us. An effect further down the line would be that we cannot help you out with something else... Owell... (I am only joking, but it serves as a prescripted generic quest example )

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Well you could call that natural progression, we did this in school, thus in our school books (at the back) and then once the year finished we sorta threw our schoolbooks away, just like any self respecting student when they are not going to need them... and presto, currently I think they''re being processed into some sort of gas... go figure.

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

LOL! I got rid of all of my School (pre-university) books, because I would have been stupider for reading them, and even stupider for trusting what they said! .

Anywho... Karma is ALWAYS alright in my book. Just see the doc, it is mentioned ALL over the place . Karma and Fame. That isn''t a bad combination, maybe you also want another addition (that not necessarily impacts on anything in the Formerly 3D, now 2D system ) that basically dictates how likely it is that someone wants to hunt you down... I always liked the idea of bounty hunters in my game

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

The prophet then said to the designer :
"but who are you to dare judge what the players do ?"
The designer then responded :
"Hey, I''m the god of my universe after all"
To what the prophet replied :
"So you are then responsible for the foul deeds of the inhabitants of your world! You are also responsible for the elevation of their karma. It is your duty to send them ordeals to lead them toward improvement."
...
Listen to the messiah of the game designers...

Did somebody say messiah?

I totally agree that if the world is not designed in a balanced enough way then people are going to do evil things. But do we want to place restrictions on the player? NO. Restriction (specifically in RPGs) is VERY BAD! The player needs to feel like they have a choice and an opinion that counts. If the player has such an opinion, they come into the game, and become closer to experiencing it. But we don''t want PKers do we? Well, it depends on your system. I don''t think that Diablo II with its "I wanna hack people" button was as good as it gets, I think that there is a chance to do something more realistic, more with the game world... You need to have a system in place that counters evil and rewards good.

For a Bounty Hunter though, they would have to ONLY go after the people that it would get paid for killing, so you can have a law in place that would punish the player for killing innocents (for no cash) and reducing public oppinion of their occupation. If a player becomes a mass murderer, then they are obviously not a good person, and thus cannot redeem themselves to a high enough level (or maybe they could, I am just thinking Xena here ) to be respected by a preist.

I am thinking now that you need to have a system that distinguishes character/ROLE. You basically have a value that determines how much you are deviating from your chosen character. If you deviate too much, you are given a more suitable role. You then can include UNFORGIVABLE roles (mass murderer) that offer worse concequences than benefits (come on, you are going to get a benefit of weapon-skill and maybe some cash for hacking someone). Maybe you could be a warlord, and be respected by a bloodthirsty pack of feinds... But expected to be hunted down by the nearest garrison

I think that Karma reall fits the bill, because you can punish those with bad Karma and reward those with good Karma. Fame also has an impact on what goes on. If you are famous (renouned) in a certain place, you are looked upon the same if you only killed someone in self defence, but if the person you killed was famous/known somewhere else, the inhabitants there would probably side against you. I think that ROLE is the last variable in the 3D system... You have a value that dictates how much you deviate from your role (this may be a 2D value itself, or even 3D depending on how diverse your roles are). It would be very hard to balance this, but if you could do it then it would probably be worth it

ROLE: It is more than just a deviation thing though, you need to have a degree of deviation from current role, and a value for how it affects you (maybe how it affects your Karma and your Fame) for doing so. This may give a player some idea on what they are doing and how it affects their status. It is a very fuzzy topic and I am not sure if I can explain it better than that, maybe after some more thought

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Okay let me be the "abstraction monster" once again

1. Role vs. Society.
You''ve suggested in the previous few messages that karma for your role is not the same as karma for society. Well, that''s a truckload of fanciful delusion! <br>If you are a thief, thief''s society has a set of different values to "common" society, and thats where acceptance comes from. A bunch of murderers might band together because of their similar values. So, what you need to model is those values, and how people accept them in you!<br>No need to separate role and player, because as soon as you drop out of your role, you''ll find that the reaction of people connected to your role makes it very hard to continue doing your job ( it''s very hard to be a terribly shy public speaker for instance ).<br><br>2. The "moving scale ends" ( Maximum good/bad vs current good. )<br>This can be implicit! ( brainwave ahead )<br>Your characters lifetime consists of a discrete set of events ( actions you''ve undertaken ). Your percentage good/evil is the percentage of total actions you''ve taken thats good/evil. That way, just a single evil action will make sure that you''re never considered 100% good. Weight this a bit with the gravity/severity/heroicness of those actions, and the system becomes pretty realistic.<br><br> <br><br><i> Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.</i><br><b>~ (V)<u>^</u>|) |<é!t|-| ~</b><br>ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

So does that mean that a person that does jack squat but does one good thing in his life is suddenly more pure than say someone who lived like a nun after having come back from the brink of insanity as a rapist?

I presume that this is for single player mode and/or measuring NPC reactions. How about having it so you can pay to modify your alignment via hiring a bard or something? They make songs about you in exchange for a share in the booty

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

quote: Original post by Maitrek
So does that mean that a person that does jack squat but does one good thing in his life is suddenly more pure than say someone who lived like a nun after having come back from the brink of insanity as a rapist?

Actually that person would be pretty neutral ( because most of his actions would be like, eating, sleeping, various other unmentionable things ).
You cannot live without doing ANYTHING - so then the redeemed killer would probably have a higher "good" rating than the couch potatoe.




Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.