Time/Night/Day

[Valentine]

The vampires could carry umbrellas, like in Nightmare Before Christmas...or incorporate dhampirs (daywalkers). Anything that's active at night can be fully active underground, so vampires, etc. could be available at all times in that setting.

I'm trying to think of other night-only creatures...banshees are always fun;  goblins/gremlocks, liches, aboleths, brownies (I stole ze baby!), even mist of any kind is typically nocturnal. Orcs, shadows, minotaurs, wraiths...

This is just off the top of my head...I just wanted to point out all the possibilities day/night could offer. Not that the basic rules of such things have to be followed...but it'd be fun.

Well, I'd play anyway.

[The Crazy Animal]

We shouldn't forget that some character types of the non-supernatural world also tend to come out at night. Dark alleyways of towns could easly be populated by theives, muggers, and other unsavory types at night.

I don't know why I'm always the one that feels the need to push things but with the new AI functions that DC was talking about. I wonder if it might be interesting to have some of the supernatural creatures attack the normal citizens of the realm. Maybe some sort of delierium type flag could be put on the supernatural creatures that could cause the town people to run around warning people of their presence.

A fat townsman enters from the east.
The townsman runs past you screaming a vampire, a vampire is in the area!
A fat townsman leaves to the west.

Or something to that effect.

This would be a great way to make tracking more useful in normal gameplay. Since players with tracking could then try to track down the vampire or other creature with it.

TCA

[DeathCow]

See...even in majormud terms I had already used this kinda stuff....I had used mud to int extent to make coolo new things.  I even had AI for me mosnters...sure it used what i had aviable in majormuid..but i had AI.....I want more complex...I also want the lower level monster to take a long time to killl...Omg...anyway..


I plan to finsih and send the base realm tommorow...no mas tonight..must sleep...

[The Crazy Animal]

How about maybe making NPCs have some AI devices that are contagious; take for example vampirism. For this you have a vampric flag each creature that has the vampric flag gets x abilities and has a few AI prerogatives: 1 stay out of the sunlight, 2 hunt - for every x number of npcs killed create 1 new vampire, 3 wonder to next closest town, 4 for every 10 NPCs killed give flag vamphunter to next NPC.

Vamphunter flag has X abilities and a few AI prerogatives but mainly wants to kill vampires while wondering from town to town.

What this would do is allow some game aspects to spread at their own rates. As the vampires spread across the realm, a secondary AI device is brought into existence to combat it. I?m sure there would be lots ways to also have players interact with these contagious flags too.

Another example of a contagious AI device could be a Plague-Crafter type NPC that might spread plagues across towns. When a NPC gets the plague flag they wonder around dieing but when they come across a guard they set the guards into quarantine mode that stop players from entering or exiting an area until a player with a cure disease of the appropriate power comes along to cure them they all die off or someone kills them all.

I?d give some more examples but I don?t know if this is the type of complexity that you are looking for.

TCA

[Bong]

I would imagine less people would cry if this was implemented in the way it was in other muds I've played in. Things such as vampires, gnolls, and werewolves...they were still allowed to come out during the day, and interact with the rest of the world and players. But during "daytime" they received penalties to stats and skills (skill based mud, so it was a negative effect for sure), however at "night" they received the same degree of bonuses the other way. So, if you wanted to kill X mob, you could still do it during the day, but you would be taking more of a risk if you did it at night.

[Valentine]

...or vampires could carry umbrellas...
...or people could go underground...
...or I just like to see grown gamers cry...

If the nocturnal guys can come out during the day, they should be nearly impossible to recognize. Vampires and werewolves are notorious for being able to blend in with society.

[The Crazy Animal]

I don?t know, maybe I just like making people cry but I would rather make them restricted indoors/underground and weakened during the day and only allowed to run loose at night. I think this would really shake thinks up a little while also giving breaks to people between periods of intensity.

The were-creatures should be nearly impossible to tell apart when they are not in their were-beast forms. I would suggest following the white-wolf convention on this where you have 2 common forms for them to revert to during the day one the full beast form for a werewolf this would be say a dire wolf and the second that is harder to find an average citizen however, when either forms are attacked they should change form.

I agree that vampires should be hard to tell apart from normal people when you?re just looking around. I think it would be a good idea if the vamps appeared to be normal, and only letting down their guard in some circumstances like when they are hunting I could see some nice quests coming out of that. Same thing with vampires if you follow roughly the white-wolf convention there should be at least one easy to tell vampire type the rest just look like abnormally pail people. You should be able to look at them and get some clues to see if they are vampires. ?Maybe show them some garlic or something?

Like I was saying with the contagious AI devices in the post above these creatures should be more fun and they should be also be prized kills. Not only should they be smarter then the average creature but I think it would be great if these creatures were hard to find when just scripting, so you have some types of creatures that you have to hunt for by hand.

Imagine this you are standing there in the inn drinking your bottle of rum with 5 other NPCs, a few players and a vampire-hunter runs in and jumps on one of the NPCs standing in the room with you that you didn?t even suspect to be a vampire. Alternatively, you might just run into a hungry vampire while you?re walking down one of the dark alleys to avoid the guards and it jumps out at you when you least expect it. You are walking to the next town through the forest to get some new items, you stop to rest next to a statue, and the sun goes down, next thing you know the statue turns into a troll and starts attacking you. These things make being at keys more fun and something I think the game needs.

TCA

[Valentine]

Pail people...heehee

I think even if there is a suspicion of a char being a vampire in disguise (like they never order garlic bagels, or they look like Chris Sarandon), in order to preserve your alignment, or even be allowed to attack, you have to prove it first...have a holy person or someone validate it...maybe this is getting more into the questy side of things...

I might be in too silly of a mood to post at the moment.

[The Crazy Animal]

Grin pardon my spelling mistakes even when I use spell checker I still make them.

Normally not much stops you in the game from attacking someone other than loss of alignment. I think that it could be a good idea to include some kind of alignment device before you can outright attack them but it shouldn't be hard or frustrating to do or people just won't bother with it unless the reward was unusually high. We have to remember that this is a hack n slash type of game.

Maybe we could have it where you could splash them with a bottle of holy water and they attack if they are a vampire. Or you need to get a special holy relic from a priest or vampire-hunter before you can identify the vampires.

TCA

[Valentine]

Maybe we could have it where you could splash them with a bottle of holy water and they attack if they are a vampire. Or you need to get a special holy relic from a priest or vampire-hunter before you can identify the vampires.

Good thinking...and regular people should get cranky if they have water thrown on them...'cause even non-vampires don't like being doused with water.

Unless it's spring break....and you're 19.

[The Crazy Animal]

It?s not like I suggested that you dump a bucket of water on them just a small amount so that it might yeild some result like their bodies start to smoke or something. I guess regular people should just respond with yelling and maybe a sucker punch that hits you for like 1% of current hps and doesn't initialize combat. You have to remember were talking about a time were people still poured their chamber pots out the window they should be use to getting splashed occasionally with much ickier stuff.

TCA

[proteus]

There is such a thing as too much "realism", in quotes because we're talking about vampires. Get too far along this path, and I'll start suggesting things like tides. Tides would be sweet.

Still... if Metro can make it so the Mayor of Arlysia "transforms" due to an attack, I don't see how it would that different to make the trigger a time-of-day event instead. Splashing holy water on things is a bit much, however.

[The Crazy Animal]

Ya, I know I can tend to throw a bit of realism in to things sometimes.

Given the ability, I could think of some things to do with tides and water levels you should post it ?I?ll add some ideas to the tread if you do.?

You?ll have to forgive the holy water bit but I was trying to think of a way to make vampires a little more hidden in the game something that you had to force out into the open. It had more to do with the use of a line of sight alignment device than the holy water but for all purposes if you attack a normal looking citizen and it is a vampire the act of transformation into that creature should inform the people around you that you?ve done nothing wrong.

TCA

[proteus]

Yeah, I get that, and I do agree it'd be pretty cool to trigger stuff in the game like that. I just meant that when suggestions get to that level of detail, it might get complicated.

Tides, though.. the ideas are already popping. Time for a thread.

[The Crazy Animal]

I think a little complexity is good for the game but we should definitely watch out on going too far with it since it still needs to be more enjoyable than frustrating for players. I still think the holy water bit would be a fun role-playing device to put in the game although, it probably shouldn?t be a mandatory act and I guess that type of thing could be added in later.

Maybe we could have a little Jekyll and Hyde type spoof going on in some places with a potion that turns people into monsters at night; it might be a good plot for a mad wizard type quest.

TCA