Sil on Roguelike Radio

[half]

Actually the variance can function a little like multiple lives systems

Interesting!

And by being memoryless, it doesn't induce the temptation to restart if you lose a life early.

This is the main reason there is no form of permanent wounds in Sil. I'd just be too tempted to restart. It is very similar to the feeling players get when their best items are disenchanted. If this could be avoided, then I'd think both of these are good mechanics, but having this permanent disadvantage on a relatively early character would not be fun for me.

[half]

Playing Sil is like being a viking.

Best Sil quote ever!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This is the main reason there is no form of permanent wounds in Sil. I'd just be too tempted to restart. It is very similar to the feeling players get when their best items are disenchanted. If this could be avoided, then I'd think both of these are good mechanics, but having this permanent disadvantage on a relatively early character would not be fun for me.

A future version of Mist will have players make Endure skill checks to avoid dying when wounded. That's memory-less! Wounds also cause temporary stat damage. I was planning for them to sometimes damage your stats permanently, but that is starting to feel like a bad idea.

[taptap]

Personally, I didn't understand some of the comments in roguelike radio. Having found Sil after an advertisement on the Wesnoth forum I probably don't have to state my preference regarding randomness (other than a little dwarf fortress I am not into roguelikes otherwise). But how is it even possible to make a deterministic stealth other than invisibility on/off? As it works currently you can't even give the player full disclosure of the odds, because they are perception checks for monsters you might not even see yourself (nor know their perception skill). For me it would be a complete immersion breaker when I could play a stealthy character without detection risk - risk requires randomness. Even as is most of the time it is already traps, inability to open doors or monsters bumping into you which alert the enemies not the simple failed stealth roll.

Dice in combat: It makes a lot of difference whether you do 1d15 or 2d7 damage (despite the same average damage, because of the different distribution, very important against armor and of course criticals) - adding a lot of flat modifiers would take many tactical choices out of the combat system - it makes much less difference if you only choose between 2d6+6 and 1d6+9 because the modifiers make everything too similar. You also would have to scrap the whole system of critical hits when you start with flat modifiers. Actually, the combat system which you can summarize as strength adds sides, criticals add dice is a piece of simplicity and beauty.

However, I am annoyed by advice "you could use the second floor forge to make xy". If you don't want to play a melee build and don't have high-dex/con noldor and don't find armor until the second floor it is in no way guaranteed that you can actually use the forge - a group of orc soldiers and white wolves, or some nasty molds or even better some alerted annoying multiplying green worm masses can already be too much for your poor Edain or Sindar... I more than once had to give up the forge even when I badly wanted to use it - if you play a smith with large initial investment in smithing at start this makes it very hard to go on.

[Psi]

However, I am annoyed by advice "you could use the second floor forge to make xy". If you don't want to play a melee build and don't have high-dex/con noldor and don't find armor until the second floor it is in no way guaranteed that you can actually use the forge - a group of orc soldiers and white wolves, or some nasty molds or even better some alerted annoying multiplying green worm masses can already be too much for your poor Edain or Sindar... I more than once had to give up the forge even when I badly wanted to use it - if you play a smith with large initial investment in smithing at start this makes it very hard to go on.

If you are finding that a problem, then I would suggest you take the upstairs at 50', so that the guaranteed forge is then generated at 50' and therefore much safer.

[LostTemplar]

But how is it even possible to make a deterministic stealth other than invisibility on/off?

Stealth can reduce monster perception range, also it may be some amount of time, your character have to be inside this range, before monster become aware, and this time chan be increased by stealth.

Basically anything (in mechanics) can be done without random, game will still have the random feeling, if monster AI is random and dungeon levels are random.

[taptap]

Stealth can reduce monster perception range, also it may be some amount of time, your character have to be inside this range, before monster become aware, and this time chan be increased by stealth.

Basically anything (in mechanics) can be done without random, game will still have the random feeling, if monster AI is random and dungeon levels are random.

Does it feel right to know exactly that I can go around that unwary dragon for 4 turns when hugging the walls but on the 5th turn he will detect me? While this would translate the mechanics to sth. deterministic the result would still be an always reliable detected/non-detected status which you can (and therefore should) know before your move - there is no risk here, just good or bad calculation. This feels just wrong to me. Don't you have enough of excel spreadsheets at work to make games requiring them? I am a player of the "deterministic" game of Go, but there the formulas you have to keep in mind are simple and the difficulty lies in how far I can read ahead / interpreting the results not in some weird arithmetics that is too difficult to do in my head.

2nd level forge: Yes, I started to use the upstairs with smith-dependent characters w/o high melee or just limit my initial smithing investment to a few points and truly build the skill starting from the second forge I find. But the inability to use forges - when I don't have the required fighting strength to defend the area troubled more than one of my smithing attempts.

[LostTemplar]

there is no risk here, just good or bad calculation.

It depends on whatever you do exactly know, how much time you spent and at what range. e.g. if your sight range is 4 and monster perception is 10, and awake time is also 10 and monster moves in unaware state it may be very unpredictable. Deterministic mechanics is only predictable, if you know all variables, which never happens. But it still give some correlations and allows some reasonable choices, ulike the full random sitution, where your only hope is to survive the worst possible luck.

[taptap]

It depends on whatever you do exactly know, how much time you spent and at what range. e.g. if your sight range is 4 and monster perception is 10, and awake time is also 10 and monster moves in unaware state it may be very unpredictable. Deterministic mechanics is only predictable, if you know all variables, which never happens. But it still give some correlations and allows some reasonable choices, ulike the full random sitution, where your only hope is to survive the worst possible luck.

Doesn't Sil check 1d10+perception+modifiers vs. 1d10+stealth+modifiers - so you have usually four types of situation no risk w/o circumstances, low risk, high risk, sure detection (and simple waiting gives you +7 stealth already pushing odds from 50% to the single digits). You avoid the high risk and make a backup plan for the other cases. I don't believe people who like deterministic mechanics would love to have deterministic but unpredictable mechanics (afaik RNG used in games are strictly speaking deterministic after all!). The aim is really predictability as I understood Darren - ultimately in a fight you know that you win against fire drake w/o additional input even if you are bloodied but always lose against some serpent so you need to buff, switch weapons and sequentialize to be able to kill everything accordingly (if this is your aim the most interesting part is probably having a big inventory and use it accordingly, which you don't have at all in the early game and even later there isn't much space in the inventory) -, what seems missing is that you can plan ahead just as well with randomness but you always need a backup plan - so most early choices are not do I need this potion or that item, but positioning or run/fight decisions or close this door (which can cost you a vital turn when running away) or leave it open kind of stuff. And on the descent at least (never played an ascent ) I rarely meet the completely risk-free monsters, while in a deterministic mechanic monsters would either be beatable or unbeatable while you try to optimize and adapt yourself and turn unbeatables to beatables - but you won't have the typical "Let us try to assassinate this monster valuable XP, maybe a nice drop and if it doesn't work the stairs are near. Oh my god a group comes down the stairs can I circle around them? Oh no, the door is stuck." situation so common in Sil (at least to me). Simply because even the initial attack is either clear-cut right (fast kill) or wrong (you lose) in a deterministic setting.

An easy way for early game variance could be (random) change in the initial weapon lying around - let it be a spear once, or even a bow + some arrows, or an axe instead or maybe sometimes no weapon but a shadow cloak. Somehow the christmas presents made many interesting possibilities and different specialisations viable that I rarely try otherwise.

[jdh]

... you won't have the typical "Let us try to assassinate this monster valuable XP, maybe a nice drop and if it doesn't work the stairs are near..."

Assassination is a hard way to beat the game! It perhaps shouldn't be so close to the beginning of the stealth tree, because it isn't very effective until you have quite high stealth, and even with 25+ stealth it's not completely effective (some monsters just don't die in the first attack, particularly with high HP).

An easy way for early game variance could be (random) change in the initial weapon lying around - let it be a spear once, or even a bow + some arrows, or an axe instead or maybe sometimes no weapon but a shadow cloak. Somehow the christmas presents made many interesting possibilities and different specialisations viable that I rarely try otherwise.

I like this idea.

[LostTemplar]

I will not argue agains randomness here, I just have given an example that deterministic stealth can be done it priciple.

[half]

Personally, I didn't understand some of the comments in roguelike radio. Having found Sil after an advertisement on the Wesnoth forum I probably don't have to state my preference regarding randomness (other than a little dwarf fortress I am not into roguelikes otherwise).

I also love Wesnoth. I've finished about 10 different campaigns (typically playing 'hardcore' or minimising the number of reloads over the campaign) though I haven't played much multiplayer. Both Sil and Wesnoth have some serious things that can happen about 1% of the time (e.g. all attacks hit in Wesnoth or an unsually good critical in Sil) and are long enough that you see things like this happen and so can't complain that '1% should mean impossible'.

Wesnoth has several elegant systems going on simultaneously. I really like day/night and melee/ranged, as well as the basic combat system (multiple strikes with chances to miss but fixed damage per hit). The terrain defence is also good (though what I'd expect rather than revolutionary). I'm a bit less sure about the piercing/slashing/bashing as even after all this time I don't have good intuitions for who resists what and thus either have to do lots of checking or blunder into suboptimal things. With a short, well designed campaign (or before you have too many max level units) it is great fun.

Dice in combat: It makes a lot of difference whether you do 1d15 or 2d7 damage (despite the same average damage, because of the different distribution, very important against armor and of course criticals) - adding a lot of flat modifiers would take many tactical choices out of the combat system - it makes much less difference if you only choose between 2d6+6 and 1d6+9 because the modifiers make everything too similar. You also would have to scrap the whole system of critical hits when you start with flat modifiers.

Spot on. I'm glad the system is inspiring you to think these things through carefully. Scatha and I spent a *lot* of time tweaking things to guarantee these kind of emergent behaviours.

Actually, the combat system which you can summarize as strength adds sides, criticals add dice is a piece of simplicity and beauty.

Thanks!

However, I am annoyed by advice "you could use the second floor forge to make xy". If you don't want to play a melee build and don't have high-dex/con noldor and don't find armor until the second floor it is in no way guaranteed that you can actually use the forge - a group of orc soldiers and white wolves, or some nasty molds or even better some alerted annoying multiplying green worm masses can already be too much for your poor Edain or Sindar... I more than once had to give up the forge even when I badly wanted to use it - if you play a smith with large initial investment in smithing at start this makes it very hard to go on.

Are there any things you think it would be good to guarantee for the player? Even before we added smithing, I think things mostly worked out. Bows and arrows are probably the thing that can go most frustratingly in my view. I think diggers are essential in the late game, but you will have several forges before needing one and probably several diggers too.

[half]

An easy way for early game variance could be (random) change in the initial weapon lying around - let it be a spear once, or even a bow + some arrows, or an axe instead or maybe sometimes no weapon but a shadow cloak. Somehow the christmas presents made many interesting possibilities and different specialisations viable that I rarely try otherwise.

That is interesting. The main problem with Christmas presents is encouraging start-scumming, which several players were tempted into. It is a fun change of pace though and only lasts a week or so.

We try not to guarantee objects in Sil, but since we are already guaranteeing something here, merely randomising between a few options might be OK. Especially if none are worth start-scumming for.

The main theory behind the curved sword is that you have somehow got into Angband (perhaps disguise, or being captured) and are unarmed (you would lose the fun of upgrades if you had a good starting setup) and you see a discarded orcish weapon nearby, which lets you turn your situation around and start trading up to good equipment. We tried having a broken sword instead for a while and found this a little too hard (though fun) so you will only find a broken sword in Nightmare mode when that is added.

[taptap]

Are there any things you think it would be good to guarantee for the player? Even before we added smithing, I think things mostly worked out. Bows and arrows are probably the thing that can go most frustratingly in my view. I think diggers are essential in the late game, but you will have several forges before needing one and probably several diggers too.

I am usually dead at about 600ft. but then I usually had enough diggers available I just wanted to mention that your sindar-archer that hopes to make his first bow and arrows in the guaranteed forge (which I usually try to do, because I want to forge arrows later) is far from guaranteed to be able to use it. Of course archery goes well with stealth so you can spend the first levels just searching for a bow without big problems and start killing things only later. Sometimes I even had to leave it with a Naugrim despite only smithing + melee investment (especially when I have no body armor) it is a bigger problem in such cases, but I wonder whether this happens only to me.

Having a glaive, bastard sword or battle axe in the starting room would be too good, but variation between a spear, a curved sword and a throwing axe doesn't break the game but probably it doesn't matter enough to be a really useful change.

[Psi]

Sometimes I even had to leave it with a Naugrim despite only smithing + melee investment (especially when I have no body armor) it is a bigger problem in such cases, but I wonder whether this happens only to me.

I guess we differ in that I would never give up the first forge. If I die trying to clear the area, then I have only lost the few minutes it takes me to get that far.