Thursday, December 24, 2009

Curses/talismans protosal

I have something of an idea for a game mechanic, that adds a little more magic to the game outside Wishes. It takes the form of something like this.

Add a new rule with the following text:

As a daily action, any Adventurer may reduce their Power by 2 in order to place a Curse on any other adventurer. (Define curse effects here; I’m not sure what should happen. My original idea was to set an Adventurer’s effective power to 0, but I also had some other thoughts.)
An Adventurer may have a Talisman. A Talisman may be charged or discharged. The state of both attributes is tracked in a GNDT column called ‘Talisman’, whose value may be ‘Yes’, ‘Yes, discharged’, or ‘No’. If an Adventurer has a charged Talisman, then they may, as a daily action, first set their Talisman to discharged and then take any of the following actions:
(Give a list here. I’m thinking one item could be ‘place a Curse without a penalty to power’, but others are possible.)
An Adventurer with a charged Talisman cannot be the target of a Curse. Every Sunday at midnight, every Talisman that is discharged becomes charged. At any time, any Adventurer or the Djinn may edit the GNDT to reflect this. Such an edit is considered in effect retroactively as of the last Sunday at midnight. An Adventurer who does so with regard to one Talisman should do so as well with regard to every other.
As a daily action, any Adventurer who does not have a Talisman may reduce their Power by 10 in order to give themselves a charged Talisman. As a daily action, any Adventurer who has a discharged Talisman may reduce their Power by 2 in order to charge their Talisman.

Any suggestions are welcome. The constants (power costs) may need some tweaking. Specifically, I am uncertain whether all Curses should have the same effect, or if there should be a list of possible effects, possibly with different power costs. I also need ideas for effects of curses and actions of a charged talisman. Also, I am uncertain as regards the provisions for talismans recharging themselves; does what I have now work?

posted by alethiophile at 24 Dec 2009 00:03:47 UTC Comments (10)

Comments

There:

24-12-2009 01:05:02 UTC

I’m not necessarily opposed to this idea, but I feel that we should either try to tie in location to it, or do something with locations first.

There:

24-12-2009 01:05:12 UTC

I’m not necessarily opposed to this idea, but I feel that we should either try to tie in location to it, or do something with locations first.

Nausved:

24-12-2009 03:45:10 UTC

imperial

tecslicer:

24-12-2009 03:50:40 UTC

If the curses can not be enacted on those with charged talismans, and everybody gets talismans, and they all charge on Sundays, then the first Sunday that happens after everybody has a tally, will make it so that the talismans are useless. (No targets, no way to become a target.) And I agree with There, there. Maybe have the tallies allow you to move, like in runescape?

Zephyr:

24-12-2009 04:00:41 UTC

imperial

I agree that we have to try to make this tie in with locations. I have a proposal, but I can’t post it….

Does anyone know why when I click on any link in expressionengine I have to relogin?

tecslicer:

24-12-2009 06:29:13 UTC

does your browser not accept cookies?

Zephyr:

24-12-2009 12:19:42 UTC

It does. I’m using Firefox 3.5.6. Can’t seem to get it to work.

Ornithopter:

24-12-2009 18:13:14 UTC

If we’re using magic to move around, moving via Wikipedia links makes a lot more sense, so yeah, I like talismans for movement. I think “charged”, “discharged”, and “none” for the talisman statuses would be clearer.

Has it gone out of style to use wording along the lines of “If no Adventurer has yet done so in the current week, any Adventurer may change all discharged Talismans to charged”? It was standard last time I played, but I’ve been gone a long time, and I seem to be the only one using it now.

tec: Not everyone gets talismans, necessarily. The protosal doesn’t give them out (or give a method to get them), and it says we “may” have them. But yeah, that’ll be a problem if everyone gets one.

alethiophile:

24-12-2009 20:03:56 UTC

@tec: I’m thinking that there would be other things you can do with a talisman, maybe involving location. That way, even if all players have charged talismans, there are avenues to discharging them that allow the mechanic to continue.

@Orn: Re wording: I’ve never seen that wording before. It does seem more elegant than my method; maybe I’ll use it if/when I propose this.

I’m thinking of perhaps allowing there to be Spells that you can learn, that require a charged Talisman to cast. (This separate from Curses, which are effects applied to other Adventurers.) However, this would require you to keep track of which Spells you know, which could be annoying. In any event, Talismans will have more to do than just setting Curses.

Ornithopter:

25-12-2009 00:48:38 UTC

The old wording has an elegance to it, I agree, but the cost is that talismans don’t charge at midnight, but when someone decides to charge them.