The Miscreant Engine

[Ben O'Neal]

Advent of the Dying Age huh? Cool. ADA. It works.

By invention, I was referring to the ability for someone, with a high enough skill, to invent say, a steam engine, or a new type of siege weapon. That way your world could really evolve. But it's your game, and it's gonna be mad anyways.

But it looks like you've got most things under control. And just so you know, I do follow this thread. I only reply when I think I can add something.

-Ben

[Tobias]

Also, these "asthetic" devices are further on down the line and they're under fairly tight control.  You only get to "color" your crafted objects insomuch as you get to choose the material they're made out of.  If you make a sword out of steel, it'l be flat gray, if you make it out of gold, it'll be gold.  I'm not opening up the game to bubblegum pink plate mail any more than I am to characters named LordGygaxx174.  The game doesn't support color "palettes" yet, just prerendered pictures that combine to form a complete image (elf+armor+sword=elven warrior).

If you're a fan of skills lists with skills that some will actually use, how about 'Painter'?

Before you laugh too much - I don't know what graphics system you'll be using, but why not have every item have a few pixels that can change color? (Houses a bit more, obviously).

Then anyone with the skill 'painter' could set the color of those pixels - for a price, of course, and only for things they'd be given (temporary) access to.

[Christopher Weeks]

Hey, color could be a whole subcomponent!  Pigments to color different kinds of materials can be concocted from raw ingredients using different treatments.  (e.g. Iron takes many forms and does pretty wildly different things to final glazed ceramic products in a kiln depending on the firing process employed.)  Tossing reality out the door for a second, you could make dingy pigments easy while requiring more specialized ingredients, equipment, and processes for more vivid hues.  Then, color would be a commodity in the game world because color is an automatic sign of wealth or skill.  "I am El-Bouran -- Chromatimancer of the Second Circle..."  (OK, maybe I'm getting carried away, but damn, it's a cool idea.)

Chris

[F. Scott Banks]

Wow...I like the "painter" idea.  I'd been trying to encourage players to contribute to the game's asthetic and that one's so obvious that I'm kickin' myself again for not thinking of it.

I suppose it could be done with the MUD, but I'm about done with the client on that one and adding a painter is something I probably won't do.  Mostly it's just because it'll be infinetly easier to do it with the 3D powerhouse of an engine I'm using.  As far as visual effects go, the engine almost does it itself (also, I don't trust myself as an artist to come up with anything but the simplest visuals).  The core system of the MUD is something I have to do because the engine I'm using is pretty much for a first-person shooter.  I have to adapt those mechanics to an RPG and for that, I need the usual things that go into an RPG already.  

The beautiful thing is, that I've got all the bells and whistles of the "Tribes" engine for graphics.  I just need to design a working RPG to power them.  That's also why I decided to make a MUD first.  Get the basics down, then get jiggy with it.  Since there's no plasma blasters going off every two seconds, the graphics can process at a pretty decent clip.  Two guys swinging swords runs a lot faster than the particle effects from a dozen rockets hitting some poor shmo all at once.  I've got more power than I need visually, and that's always a good thing.

For "Painting", I already had ways players could "color" things they'd created.  I didn't have ways they could obtain those pigments though.  I also didn't have colors having any sort of signifigance.  If you were a Vashar, your civic pride wouldn't rise at seeing gold and white against a field of scarlet.  Now  I'll start working these color schemes into the game.  This way, players could be painters, making art and selling it, but they can also be generals designing their own military banner or kings creating national flags.

Since Rangers are skilled at getting natural ingredients from animals (you can hunt slimes for the nucleus inside them as well as hunting for meat), It's simple enough to know how to obtain pigments from flowers.  As always, there's magic for the easy way to explain why anything is in a game so that one's a given.

I like your idea for seige engines.  orginally, I had seige engines as the product of only certain civilizations (those who'd developed fortifications and thus needed a way to breach the defenses of their enemies).  But, I don't suppose it would be too difficult to...adjust...a few....there!

Invention:

This talent allows players to create objects that perform certain tasks.  The complexity of the task and the skill of the inventor will determine the size of the object.  Objects created can perform any magical or technical task that the inventor knows how to do (or has the spell scroll or tech plans for).  A device that hurls stones at brick walls will have a size relevant to the efficiency with which it performs this task and to the skill of the inventor.  A skilled inventor could make a catapult small enough to be carted by a single horse, whereas an inventor with less efficiency (or a catapult with more power) would be larger and harder to transport.

Now, invented objects are subject to the same laws as anything else.  A catapult will not create it's own projecttiles (unless it's magical and has been built with the proper spell to do so) and any materials used for the invented machine to work must be restored to the objects "inventory".  A surgey machine that automatically heals certain wounds must be replenished with potions.  Magical inventions must be replienished with whatever magical material powers their spells.  Simpler devices might not need fuel.

Things can also be invented that simply replinish the fuel source of other things.  The way a water wheel will gather force from a flowing stream and apply it to the "crank" of a millstone.  Anything is possible if the inventor merely has enough imagination.

Whew....is that what you were lookin' for Ravien?

Now, this can really only see full beauty in 3D MMORPG form.  A MUD description and static picture is nice, but it's so much cooler to make the thing and see it work.

Next time, I'll be discussing the "Surgery" mechanic.  In case you wanted to have your characters suffer actual wounds instead of just losing hit points, you're gonna want your pen and notebook out for this one.

[contracycle]

The core system of the MUD is something I have to do because the engine I'm using is pretty much for a first-person shooter.  I have to adapt those mechanics to an RPG and for that, I need the usual things that go into an RPG already.  

The beautiful thing is, that I've got all the bells and whistles of the "Tribes" engine for graphics.

You have the Tribes engine?  Is that just like the rendering, or the while physics model and whatnot?

If you were a Vashar, your civic pride wouldn't rise at seeing gold and white against a field of scarlet.  Now  I'll start working these color schemes into the game.  This way, players could be painters, making art and selling it, but they can also be generals designing their own military banner or kings creating national flags.

Umm, yes.  But also theres precedent for online players spending inordinate amounts of time and "money" on their clothing - as aspect way way under-represented in tabletop RPG.  This also opens the opportunity to impose sumptuary laws and conventions on what people can and should wear under given circumstances.  With such a visual medium, you have full opportunity to deliver something like this.

Since Rangers are skilled at getting natural ingredients from animals (you can hunt slimes for the nucleus inside them as well as hunting for meat), It's simple enough to know how to obtain pigments from flowers.

True, but you could also consider special colours.  Trade in the murex shell used to produce purple dye in the ancient med was a major component in the Phoenicians rise as a trade power. Also, becuase of its cost, it became a status symbol, and was eventually controlled by law in Rome.  So, theres plenty of grist to the mill by exploiting this aspect, at multiple levels of your settting.

[Chris Lekas]

Once you have added things like color and invention, that leaves a whole nother option open just asking to be implemented. Heraldry. Heraldry is actually not as complex as you might think. Look on-line or go down to your local library and you can find a catalog of meanings and pieces of heraldric blazons. And only people of a certain rank could have one, and everyone's was unique. Have a clerk in the major cities who can (For a price) grant characters with the right credentials (probably gained from the King) a their own heraldry. There are a number of programs you could take a look at that allow you to design your own. Then the player would have a reusable "item" representing their blazon. They could "lend: it to a painter or weaver for a single job to make them banners or armor bareing their blazon. Also using your mechanic for children, children could inherit a blazon containing a mix of both of their parents' (if they had them). I don't know if it would interest you but I think it could be an extremely cool mechanic that players would jump all over.

[F. Scott Banks]

Well, as far as my engine goes,  it's right here, if you wanna read up on it.  Since it's just the graphics, don't expect a lot of documentation on what it can do for an MMORPG because honestly, it can't.  You're gonna have to make your own MMORPG with that one, but with my astounding lack of anything resembling artistic talent, it really takes care of my personal weaknesses for me.  From what I read, it's everything that was in Tribes, from the physics engine to the sound.  It's also got a few bells and whistles that weren't in the original game like volumetric fog and a multiplayer limit that exceeds 128 simultaneous players.

Honestly, you can do just about anything with it.

I'm not sure if you consider players spending lots of time on their clothing to be a good thing or a bad thing, but yeah, it's there.  Crafting as a whole is time-comsuming.  Whether you're building a house, or a sword.  I want to make sure that the skills you put towards making other things are well realized.  "Weaving" is a way to make interesting clothing and blacsmiths can heat metals and glaze them in such a way to effect color changes.

There are special colors.  By default, magical colors are flat and unresponsive to lighting effects.  In short, my computer art guy assures me they'll end up uglier than hell when compared to natural 3 dimensional colors.  I dunno, but I hear that natural colors will just look better.  I'm not an artist (I feel obligated to say that when talking art) so don't hold me to this one.  He's doing something to "magical" colors that make 'em a little less purty than real ones.

Also, I'm not familiar with the history of pigments, flying on notes with this one too, but certain natural sources for pigments are very hard to get.  Dyes especially are obtained from the innards of extremely dangerous or hard to obtain creatures.  I assume a dye trade will start up between interested parties on it's own.  Certain things I don't much have to push too hard.  I know golden and silver dye comes from two of the toughest characters in the game (they're also holy, making obtaining dye from their organs an act of extreme evil).  The difficulty in obtaining those dyes and the rarity of their source would automatically establish a dye trade.  I can't control it myself but the game is designed so that any player who's interested could.

Just for fun, color enhances magic.  This isn't new actually, just undicussed.  Mages have long had a skill called "focusing" where they could "charge" spells by passing them through certain materials.  A staff made of bone would enhance any necromany spells focused through it.  Simply holding a crystal to a wounded man's flesh while casting the spell increases the power of the healing magic.  

Items that absorb certain forms of magic or specific spells will store some of that spell power.  This is how certain magical items are created "naturally".  The armor of dead mages is usually packed with old spells that have passed through the mage wearing it.  This is an example of the "magic cycle" I mentioned waaaaaaaay back in another post.  I just decided to bring it up because colors were already a part of that cycle...they just happened on their own.  Objects would change colors as they became infused with magic.

[F. Scott Banks]

Actually, the heraldry feature is an aspect of certain cultures, but not all.  Certain cultures approach it differently.  Naja humans value family over clan, whereas Farrowen dwarves value clan over individual families.  Naja symbols are simply the family "name" but in war parties, they will fly under a single "clan" banner.  Farrowen won't share their name, but will proudly announce their clan affilliation to anyone within earshot and wear clan symbols on just about everything they own.  Willowen dwarves pledge allegiance to their guild above family or clan and don't give either clan or family name under casual circumstances (Willowen employ kidnapping as a means of gaining leverage in political or business deals.  Guilds are "outside" of this facet of Willowen society.)

You idea is good and I like it, but the game has a very light touch regarding "How it should be done".  Basically, your idea exists, but it's optional for those who decide to implement it in-game.  An enterprising artist can set up the "Heraldry Records Office" you suggested and make himself a lot of loot in-game.  I see artists guilds popping up (and I might toss in a few of my own just to get it started) everywhere.  My goal is to make a framework that players can play in just about any way they want.

[F. Scott Banks]

Ahhh surgery.

I'm getting this thing down to tabletop playability.  Mind you, it's not really intended for tabletop play, but this does allow for a faster engine when the graphics come into the picture.  Before anyone points out the obvious contradiction of doing this when I've said making tabletops into MMORPG's won't work, remember that I said they don't work because the tabletop game wasn't intended for more than eight or so people.  ADA, which is what the Miscreant engine has encapsulated to (can't seperate the game from it's engine), is intended for hundreds of players.  Even the monsters are playable characters which can be leveled and can acquire new skills.  In short, the game can be played on a tabletop, but isn't really meant to be.

However, breaking the game down into die rolls just makes sense.  The engine zips along when it doesn't have to perform complex algorithims and any holes can be plugged easily by forge members who are more accustomed to seeing 1d10 rather than KC=(M*V2)/2.

So anyhoo, surgery was something I decided to do to get around the oldest powergaming trick.  This is something of an institution in CRPG's and has even crept into traditional RPG's.  It's loading up on healing.  Healing potions have stripped combat of all it's risk.  No matter what injury I suffer, I can reverse it's effects by drinking healing potions.  This is because injury is simply a subtraction of points from the total HP.  Healing potions add points to the total HP.  Therefore any wound, no matter how fantastically greusome, can be completely healed by drinking a potion.

Yeah, that one had to go.  Not only does it encourage powergaming...

"Of course we can take on that Ancient Red Dragon.  I got potions don't I?"

...but it actually weakens one of the most underappreciated characters in any RPG.  I'm talking about the poor cleric.  With miracle elixirs that heal all wounds, no matter how varied or severe, clerics really don't have much to do.  Any city that has a mom and pop potions shop doesn't need any medical professionals at all realistically.

I didn't eliminate potions entirely though.  They're still there, but let me explain how injuries work.

First of all, let me describe how the body is laid out.

One hundred percent of the total hit points are stored in the "body"  Lowering hit points to zero, through repeated strikes to the body will cause incapacitation.  Lowering hit points to negative ten percent will cause death.

Twenty-five percent of the total hit points are stored in the "limbs".  Lowering hit points by twenty five percent in any limb will cause that limb to die.

Fifty five (*2) percent of the total hit points are stored in the "head".  This means that HP loss through the head causes twice as much damage overall as a blow anywhere else.  Lowering hit points to zero will cause the character to die.

So basically, you can hack off limbs, you can go for head shots, or you can just go the old-fashioned way and put metal through their hearts.  These are the most severe injuries and are actually a special case so I won't go into them just yet.  But we can discuss the more common ones.

Let's say you get stabbed with a flaming spear.  The spear has inflicted a piercing wound and burned you.  Just for fun, let's say you're bleeding heavily too.  That's three things wrong with you.  A surgeon then has to diagnose the severity of your wounds.  This is done one of two ways.

Diagnosis:  This roll is when the surgeon rolls 1d6 for every aspect of your wound.  You only get to roll against an aspect of a wound if the surgeon is familiarized with that particular wound, either under his Diagnosis talent or his Surgery talent.

Triage:  The surgeon rolls 1d20 and makes a snap judgement regarding your condition.  The surgeon is allowed a modifier of +1 for every immediately recognizable condition you have (bleeding, certain poisons, burns, missing limbs).  Unlike Diagnosis, rolling higher than the severity of the wounds adds the overage to the actual surgery.

The attacker who wounded you has a spear skill of 5, a thrust skill of 4, and utilised an attack stance that adds 3 to his total skill in the technique that wounded you.  Your surgeon has a Puncture Wound roll of 4, an Internal Injury roll of 5 and a Bleeding Wound roll of 5.  If any individual aspect of the wound were over 5, the extent that they were over would be subtracted from the actual surgery, forcing the surgeon to operate at a penalty for the little "surprises" he'll encounter in your body while fixing it.

So, the surgeon has a "Diagnosis" of 14.  The wound has a severity of 12.  The surgeon has successfully diagnosed the patient and can operate without a penalty.  

Let's also say that another surgeon made a disasterous "Triage" roll of 8. in an attempt to get a bonus towards the surgery. He's familiar with the puncture, and he's familiar with the bleeding but he misses the internal injury (bleeding conceals certain injuries completely if a thorough diagnosis isn't done) so he only gets to add +2 to his total triage, bringing the total up to 10.  The wound has a severity of 12, so the resulting surgery is penalized by -2.

Let's say the spear is of a design that inflicts a +3 wound, the technique used drove the spear in to a +4 depth and the enchanted flame at the tip burned you by +3.  This makes the wound's total 12 +10.  The surgeon who diagnosed his patient has to now roll for Surgery.  The surgeon can roll 1d6 again for each aspect of the injury and further modify his rolls for +1 if any of the wounds fall under an applicable skill within his Surgery Talent.  

The surgeon who made the Triage blunder can roll 1d6 for each aspect of the injury that he's familiar with through his Surgery Talent.  No bonuses are allowed and he can't roll for anything he's not skilled in (this would be the same penalty if a disaterous diagnosis were rolled). Let's say he's skilled in burns and piercing wounds, but the bonus given to the spear for it's unique design isn't something he'd have been able to catch. He rolls 2d6 for his surgery skill in treating burns and puncture wounds and rolls 10 which becomes 8 after the -2 penalty.  The wound goes untreated and increses in severity by 4.  If not healed on the second attempt, the wound becomes critical and will reduce HP until the patient dies.

This is something for the computer to keep track of.  Unless you know a GM who is willing to track every wound, the manner in which it was inflicted, what it was inflicted with, the skill of the person doing the damage and the quality of the weapon used, I doubt anyone would want to play a monster like this with dice.  But it is possible if anyone's interested.  Lemme know if I should release a playtest.

P.S.

It's the formula for determining an objects kinetic force.

[Tobias]

I'm not going to pick nits in your formula for 'kinetic force', but here's something you might or might not know, to help you fine-tune those body-hitpoint percentages (and which might be useful to anyone designing damage/healing systems).

There's a quick and dirty rule about body mass called the rule of 9s. This basically means the human body is, by mass, made up of chunks of 9% of the weight.

Each arm - 1 chunk
Each leg - 2 chunks
the head - 1 chunk
upper torso - 2 chunks
lower torso - 2 chunks

Giving us 11*9=99%. I think the remaining 1% goes into the head, but I can't remember.

That doesn't take anything into account for vulnerability/composition, but it might help.

[F. Scott Banks]

Hmmm, considering the "chunk" system for another game where dismemberment is more commonplace but I'm hesitant to make it too easy to lose an arm or a leg because it's hell to put it back on.  If a player can lose 9% of their HP and lose an arm in the process, players might shy away from combat entirely.  I'll agree that this system makes more realistic sense, but realistic fantasy doesn't go over well.

Thanks for the role of 9 though.  I'd never heard it before, and it's something that'll definately work in the next one.

Oh yeah...what's wrong with that formula (although I purty much slept through math in high school so it could be anything).

[F. Scott Banks]

I was considering starting a new thread for this, but since it involves the actual Micreant Engine instead of the RPG I'm designing for it, I decided to put it here.

Basically, early tests of the engine is revealing it to be more versatile than I planned.  I found this out when I discovered one of my local playtesters using it to play GURPS with his college buddies in Florida.

Turns out this half-finished MMORPG is a fairly decent Play-by-web program.

Right now, it requires some programming skills to turn it into anything useable (before anyone starts clamoring for it) but with some scripting, it can be taught to recognize simple #d# formulas.  Which means that the engine already knows what 1d20 is and will recognize any rules that incorporate that die roll.

Basically, here's what the Engine is shaping up to be.

A PDF reader.  

I really just did this so that I wouldn't have to make seperate files for instructions.  However, web players can reference a PDF for rules.  I'm trying to turn the editor into a PDF writer.  That way, RPG designers might use this to playtest their games.

GM "Authority"

This is the skeleton of the computer AI, but when manually used, it allows GM's to adjust character sheets, ensuring that rolls are managed fairly.  Also, we're writing script that allows die rolls to automatically make the appropriate changes to characer sheets so that the "rulebook" determines what happens to characters on their rolls.  In the basic version, everyone adjusts their own character sheets and the honor system is used.

Interactive Rules:

We're working on imbedded script in the PDF's (hence the need for our own PDF maker) so that when you play the game on this engine, certain rules are automatically enforced.  Gm's get the final call though.

Miniatures galore!

Hey, we're making a MMORPG.  We've got orcs, knights, swords, altars of skulls and just about everything else.  Also, since the game allows characters to create their own items, you can create your own objects.  However, if we start selling this to designers, we might just start making content packs of random aliens, demons, knights, and dragons.  Another reason for our custom PDF writer is so that when a designer sells a game or expansion pack that's made with this, it comes with miniatures, maps, and objects for the GM to use to build his own worlds that can be played over the web.  

So, that's what we're doing over at...Hmmm, looks like I'll need to come up with a name for us.  Anyway, I didn't want it to look like we just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Oh yeah....what do you guys think?  Good idea or should I just get back to making that MMORPG?

[Tobias]

I get the feeling the question's way over my head. So many things to consider... time, compatibility, complexity, consumer demographics, technical issues.

I'll defer to someone more knowledgeable in the deployment/marketing field of these things. The computer buff in me likes it, though - although I'll never (well, not soon anyway, life's too long to say 'never') MMORG.

[F. Scott Banks]

Yeah, it's a little over my head as well.  I dunno if I've got something great on my hands or if I'm just wasting time playing with this thing when I should be finishing it.

[shoka]

Hi all,

first of all let me say that I'm impressed with the quality of discussion on this board - funny how you can find jewels with any random query to google.. :)

Reading through this thread gave me the shivers over and over again; I'm perceiving a familiar pattern behind the features (or design goals) listed.. I've been toying with the idea of creating a MMORPG engine/framework that would be based on same general priciples that the Miscreant Engine seems to work with; everything that happens is a natural consequence of some event in the virtual world and, this causality can be achieved with a set of relatively simple rules. Thus, by just programming in a certain events and rules for them, we should be able to create a game (actually, I also like 'toy' better) which would produce it's 'content' itself.

Let me clear out the point with couple examples.

a)

WyldKarde is speaking of players running to orcs because there is a bigger encampment nearby sending out raiding parties (maybe this is one of them). This is a simple example of the causality I'm talking about - the players didn't run into the orcs because some GM plotted it, but rather as a natural consequence of some GM placing that encampment there.

b)

I'm also tingling all over with that idea of items being the basic material, which has been refined by charging it with player skills - that actually serves as an excellent example, because a plate mail is simple a piece of metal charged with capability to protect it's wearer. While the long sword could be similar piece of metal, charged with capability to inflict damage.

This makes crafting just a natural consequence of players having available materials and the capability to enchant items and, can actually take us places with the game; think about a pool of various abilities that an inventive character can draw from to create new and magnificient items. These abilities could be divided into several categories, each providing a different aspect to item. For instance, there would be one category for the shape of item (you cannot wear a long sword and hitting people with full plate mail would look ridiculous) while capabilities to inflict damage and protect from it would make up two more. Then we of course have the spells which can be embedded into items.

We would of course need to constrain the combinations in some way to maintain game balance, as players tend to get a bit too creative sometimes. "Yarr. Buy thee this fineth dagger, it offers ye protection better than a plate mail and cuts through ye foes like a warhammer."

Mental note: something based on mass of the material flavored with material quality and type should do nicely.


I seem to be rambling a bit here, so let me get back to the original reason for this post. :)

WyldKarde, have you ever thought about open-sourcing your project? From the posts I've made two conclusions; that you have implemented at least some of the features and that you are at least not completely committed to making a big buck out of this - and while what kenjib said earlier is propably correct, it might as well prosper as an open source project, given certain requirements are met.

This would perhaps work best as an open-source project, but I think open source games haven't usually been very successful in the past because it's impossible to find certain key people (like graphic designers) and also when it comes to games everyone wants to talk and nobody wants to implement. Most likely, it would end up a huge meandering project that is never finished.

By these requirements I mean that instead of building a game we should (and I have so far) concentrate on two tasks; firstly, to designing a game which will have all those cool features and is easily extended to meet those we come up later. Secondly, to create a framework which will provide the infrastructure for those features and on top of which we can easily build that game.

The game doesn't have to be open-source and it is actually better if it is not, but let me get back to that later on. Initially it just serves as a proof-of-concept where the techniques developed for the framework are tested, but later it will evolve into first full-blown application build on top of the framework (and gain some kind of reference implementation status).

Framework is what needs to be open-sourced, because arguably it is the most difficult thing to create; no one person can have sufficient knowledge of various skills required.


Look at me, I'm all about 'we should' and 'this must be done' while this is my first post to the thread and forum in general. Should stop now and see what the natural consequences of this post are in terms of general tone of responses. ;)