I am confronted with a design problem with my first person medieval spy game (Cloak and Dagger). My problem is that the game relies on a money system whereby u complete missions to earn money, now this money is spent on superiour arms, armour and horses. Now the game also relies on sneakiness so if in a mission the player comes up behind a knight clad in full expensive armour and with anamazing sword, the player could just stab him in the back and make a fortune on his assets, defeating the point of the game.Personally I really like the idea of being able to strip ur victims of their possesions and then stuffing them in a cupbourd .If the game was made so the player can never pick anything up, then the game would lose a sense of freedom. Also some missions involving stealing cloaths would be made more difficult, please help.

A few quick patches:

1) A full armor weighs around 50 kgs. An already equiped man can carry some extra 10 kgs if he has to.

2) A full armor cannot be shoved in the backpack, cause its two bulky. Have for each object a bulkiness attribute and a max bulkiness of the backpack.

3) Know the owner of all important objects. If you try to sell stuff that belonged to some nobleman, you''ll get hanged. This can only work for objects that everyone knows belong to said nobleman. You could probably steal his money, but not his golden plate mail.

4) Adom had a nice way of protecting the NPCs in the Dwarven village. If you killed them, a ghost would come with you and when you entered the village, everybody understood you killed x and went for your life.

Well... as you want your realism so badly you can´t get around letting players loot the corpses... and you´d be surprised what a man can carry if suddenly confronted with enormous wealth...

in those times almost everything was valuable, don´t just think armor, but imagine what a good pair of boots was worth in those times!

I think the weight system is not really a solution, there´s a lot of stuff on your freshly dead sir knight that are very valuable. Money for one thing, boots, a good shirt, and you don´t have to take the whole armor, just the helmet and gloves will fetch a nice sum....

one thing you could do to hinder the armour-stealing a bit is to have the player have to rework a valuable stolen item before he can use it in public... (get another hilt for the sword, hammer out the crest in the armour plate...)

as for sir nobles golden mail, no one will ask many questions i suppose. Those were hard times, people were starving all over the place. So if you´d walk up to your average blacksmith, hand him the armor and say: Melt it down, sell it off, and if you can do it fast and quietly i´ll cut you in for 40% he´ll probably not say no. Still, there might be a problem if someone notices that the blacksmith is selling off large amounts of gold.

Add a tag to each item that says how hard it will be to sell... coins 0 - no problem, good everywhere, just as long as you dont let people see that you´ve got too many... sir ivans golden breastplate - 10 if you show it in public the best you can hope for is a hanging (assuming that ivan was a liked character), if you manage to find a buyer he´ll take at least 60% of what it´s really worth...

and i guess the thing with the ghosts is out of the question for you....

Cloak and dagger, eh?

"CLANK!!! CLANK!!! CLANK!!! Halt! Who goes there?!?! "

You''re noisier...
Move speed is reduced...
Agility is reduced...
Other thieves may set upon you before you get back into town to fence it...

plus all the other things mentioned above...

In short, the risks for hauling certain loot should be alot greater. I wouldn''t stop players directly, though. The player that runs the gauntlet and makes it through all of this deserves a hefty reward (just make sure it''s *really* difficult)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

If you really want realism so badly, no guard would have anything close to a chain armor and a large/long sword. Mostly, they''d be equiped with some leather "armor" (or no armor) and a club .

Armsmen had the same equipment as knights, but without the title or the right attached to the knighthood. Fantassins usually had some kind of armor, but of cheaper quality, a spear or another cheap weapon.

Knights, of course, typically had a full blow armor, a shield, a double edged sword, a full helm, a horse, etc. They''d only wear it when going fighting in a war or tournament (sp?).

All of that was very expensive, and very few nobles could actually afford to equip more than a few knights (yes, they had to give all that stuff to all of their knights) and armsmen. Therefore, they usually went for the cheapest to equip the guards and the such (of course, their personnal guards would likely be the best ones).

Also, only a few merchants would actually be rich enough to buy one chain armor (a full armor was about as expensive as a domain) and, given the fact that only nobles would own one, he''d probably find it very suspicious. Also, note that a knight shield was unique, because his armories were drawn on it (sometimes it was only a piece of tissue over the shield though) and very easy to identify.

So to make it back to the topic, your player would typically find only leather "armors" (very rigid, impossible to pack in a bag), wooden clubs (no value) etc.

Finally, it would be almost impossible to actually hurt someone in a chainmail with a dagger, so your player would actually be wiser to just avoid the knights/armsmen.

Note that I''m not saying that your game should be realistic, I just think it should be fun. I just gave these informations so that you can eventually get some ideas out of it.

And btw I''m not historian so forgive me if there is any mistake.

Some type of encumbrance rule must be put in to balance it out, rather than just a weight system. For instance, you may be able to easily carry weight-wise a large amount of equipment, but it would be largely impossible to balance it all out and walk easily. I wouldn''t go for a complete realism, because that may turn a lot of players off, but if you put in a semi-realistic system, it adds a little strategy to the game of balancing out what you need and what you want, without reducing your abilities.

What I would like to know is if the smartarse goblin who just smited your best friend could manage to don his golden armour of light and use it when you go to teach him a lesson.

He would also be attacking you with the ''mighty axe of void*'' when you come a running to carry your friends possessions back to town

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

After reading ur extreamly helpfull posts (thnx guyz) heres what i''m gonna do:

*Knights will be very very rare (ie two per 6 mission campaign) and will be very skilled in combat (although physicly suffering all the same weaknesses as edwin the jester).
*Regular guards will rarely carry anything worth taking and will use shitty inferior swords and no reall armour.
*This is the age of chivalry so if anyone founds you have stolen from a lady, nobleman, priest or knight, the penalty is hanging!(with an awsome cut scene . This means that even the english who gave you the mission will have you arrested for unchivalrous behaviour.
*Yes even items in the players back pack will go CLANK CLANK so stealing some fine gauntlets may prove to be very difficult. If you are found out and the alarm is raised in an enemy castle then chances of escape are very slim due to the closeing of heavy oak doors ect.
*A knight would also usually have a page in his room so the chances of beeing seen are huge and if the knight wakes up then ur trully screwed (unless ur really good)

so say what u think. thnx

Aw... to hell with chivalry... it´s all about power and money

I always carry a towel to wrap nasty clanky objects..

Hase, what exactly do u do??