Idea for an MMO-esque forum game, brainstorming welcome

[Arkbrik]

@knolli

But different actions have different risks or costs to the player. Moving to another region is risk free and costs nothing. Trapping animals is a safe way to get food, and should therefore be less attractive in other aspects. Fighting can get you killed, so it should have a chance of bigger rewards.

About food: Farming would be a completely safe and rewarding way of getting food, but also time-consuming and requiring preparation (you need a mill to grind the wheat into flour, then bake the flour into bread).

@Olothontor

Well, so far the GM job hasn't been that bad. The combat system is actually pretty easy to use, even if it doesn't look like that. But if someone can come up with a way to let the players do some of the work, that's great of course, but I don't know how to do that.

@mgb519

Yes. I think it's easiest to just slowly expand the beta into the full game.

[knolli]

@knolli

But different actions have different risks or costs to the player. Moving to another region is risk free and costs nothing. Trapping animals is a safe way to get food, and should therefore be less attractive in other aspects. Fighting can get you killed, so it should have a chance of bigger rewards.

About food: Farming would be a completely safe and rewarding way of getting food, but also time-consuming and requiring preparation (you need a mill to grind the wheat into flour, then bake the flour into bread).

That's what I meant with "HP are resources". Each action you do can be described by a set of parameters, like

- whether you roll or auto success,
- which kind of skill and/or item bonus is used,
- how much resources, HP, items or structures you can earn, heal, craft or build,
- how much resources you can/have to spend,
- how you affect the region's parameters,
- the rate of danger,
- chance to earn XP (although I want that to be equal for all kinds of actions),

Now you have to compare and weight these parameters to each other. Is the chance to get bitten by a deer equal to the chance to get the double amount of food?
Since we are working with dice, balancing would require some heavy statistics. I could try to come up with some good numbers.

[*CRAZYHORSE*]

This might be the most serious and longest on topic thread ever in the history of the Brikwars forum.

wasn't that the oriental federation vs everyone thread?

Hmm I think I missed that thread or it was so serious and boring that I didn't care about it.

[Rody]

This might be the most serious and longest on topic thread ever in the history of the Brikwars forum.

wasn't that the oriental federation vs everyone thread?

Hmm I think I missed that thread or it was so serious and boring that I didn't care about it.

never, mind.

I didn't read the "serious" part of your post, that thread was not serious in any way. (kinda like KotH without adding "my hill" to each post.)

Since we are working with dice, balancing would require some heavy statistics. I could try to come up with some good numbers.

Actually since we are working with dice, the statistical math can in principle be kept relatively simple.

[Olothontor]

Minor detail to clear up: I've seen nothing indicating that you can use skill points from leveling up to add a new skill, only that you can up your existing skills.

[Arkbrik]

You can up any skill that you've used during the game (even if you didn't start with it) or any of your existing skills (even if you haven't used them during the game).

[Olothontor]

And the maximum of any skill is still 4?

[Arkbrik]

Exactly.

And while on the subject of XP: If your character dies, your next character starts with half of the accumulated XP (rounded up), possibly letting you start with more than 10 skill points.

EDIT: I've also been thinking a little about animals: there are too many of them, it's too hard to hunt them to extinction. So far every slain animal have reduced the Animal parameter by 1, from now on it will be 1d6.

[thade]

Hrm. The only idea I have is that some actions could be based on the d100 system, which gives room for a lot more options and probability tweaks.

Also, would you be interested in an automated dice roll system? It wouldn't be that hard to do.

[Olothontor]

So, here's the deal. I'm about to walk into a 5-6 day dogsitting job that involves me staying at someone else's house for most of that time, so I have NOTHING to do other than work on my spriting commissions.

I figure, why not add to the pile? If anybody wants a character portrait done for the MMO (a la my avatar to the left, there), please let me know and I'll be happy to make him for you.

Also, Arky, if you want any of your BBE monsters sprited up for added epicness, PM me and I'll try my hand at it.

Cheers,
Olly

EDIT: Here's a quick sketch of Baynir (my character in the MMO, for those of you not following along). Might touch him up later, but he's about done.



EDIT 2: Fiddled with his posture a bit (moved his right arm to a more natural position and adjusted his hand on the halberd up a bit). Also gave him some wristguards and updated the shading on his pauldrons slightly.



EDIT 3: Messed with the shading on his pants to make them look more clothlike (added a color in the process, but it was worth it). Also jived around with his armor to make it more interesting, and then adjusted the shading there to make it less clothlike.



EDIT 4: Why am I doing a step-by-step update? You guys only care about the finished version. Also just realized that his belt makes it look like he's going around bare midriff. UNACCEPTABLE, dapper OR NOT.

EDIT 5: Fixed. Also tried to add a banner to his halberd, but no luck there. Going to need to do some studies on cloth flow before I can get there. I'll try again tomorrow after some research.

[solvess]

That's awesome! Could you make one for my character? Something along the lines of an archer/hunter.

[Olothontor]

That's awesome! Could you make one for my character? Something along the lines of an archer/hunter.

Coming right up. Check back this post, and I'll edit him in when he's finished. I don't want to clog this thread with art.

If I get enough requests, I'll probably move all of this business over to the Artwork forum. We'll see how many people bite.

Solvess

He's mostly done, although there need to be some touchups in his posture.

EDIT: Added hood, changed his vest and bracers to green, changed background for better visibility.

EDIT: Darkened outline for better visibility.

EDIT: Adjusted the pose to be less awkward.

[Olothontor]

What's the rule for having multiple characters at the moment?

Last I checked it was "not during Beta," but I wanted to make sure of that.

EDIT: Somebody really needs to compile all of these rules into a text document for easier viewing. As it is, anyone who wants to find anything has to dig through this thread to find that one post that he thinks it was mentioned in.

EDIT 2: John the Blacksmith

[Arkbrik]

Nice sprites!

You can have more than one character if you think it's necessary, for whatever reason.

[knolli]

So now I introduced coal into the game. It would make sense if you actually needed coal to fire your furnance because wood just doesn't produce the necessary heat. If you abstract the game in the way that you don't need coal, it should provide other benefits, i.e. it could reduce the amount of fuel you need drastically. Otherwise it would be a huge waste of time what I am doing there.

On another note: What is needed to produce leather? IRL you would need a bunch of chemicals, but somehow I don't feel like collecting my own piss.