Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

Agreed.

Having your sex affect your relationships is a natural and obvious way of making the gender matter, but *bands don't usually have non-hostile characters.

I've studied cultural history, and for that reason I often like games that enforce weird cultural gender restrictions on characters. Makes for some powerful role-playing possibilities. Tolkien's world is quite boring in this respect, though, real history is where the fun is.

Stat bonuses based on gender would be offensive to many. I mean, there clearly are differences, but it's a heated discussion. I'd personally avoid going there in a game.

[evilmike]

What if digging provoked an attack of opporunity if you did it next to an enemy? Same mechanic as when you fire a bow adjacent to enemies. Then it can stay a single turn action but severely penalize doing it in combat.

That way you could have a convenient interface of automatically digging without needing to do the whole wield/unwield dance, without upsetting game balance too much. There'd still be SOME effect on balance but I don't think it's big enough to worry about.

[Scatha]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

There's definitely something to this approach (similarly the height and weight fields). The main advantage of them is to let players who want to engage with imagining their character have a couple more tools. Writing your own background section and naming artefacts are in the same direction (but have higher benefit/cost).

One thing gender is currently used for in the game is to determine the pronoun used in the splash poetry:
... down to the depths (s)he went alone.

[Scatha]

There are some other minor issues such as now being able to dig when you were wielding a cursed weapon. This is not bad gameplay-wise, just a bit odd thematically.

Actually I always thought that the idea of a weapon you couldn't bear not to use was more Tolkienian than one that was literally stuck to your hand. Putting it down briefly to eat, change, shoot, or dig works fine with that interpretation.

[BlueFish]

Beginner and thematically more appropriate races make sense before challenge or "exotic" choices.

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Look at the order of races. Does it offend you that they're not alphabetical? Why not?

Beginner and thematically more appropriate races make sense before challenge or "exotic" choices.

[BlueFish]

The current implementation definitely makes me go another way when I find a blocked tunnel instead of digging it out, which is a bit silly.

Yeah, the thing is, in Sil, your inventory is effectively always full, when you want to dig (lower depths). That's a big change from vanilla Angband, so the UI issues around digging might be more important.

Actually just changing the diggers to one handed is fine. Reducing their damage dice is fine too.

[BlueFish]

Alphabetical order pleases me aesthetically, and that would trump tiny speed benefits for me. And if alphabetical order is used in some other lists, having male first here would bother me slightly. That would seem like a political decision.

There's no obvious order to a set of possibilities where you can only see one at a time. Where alphabetical orders make sense is where you know what you want and you have to search for it within a large list. Otherwise it just appeals to OCD types.

Look at the order of races. Does it offend you that they're not alphabetical? Why not?

(Personally, I always choose sex at random in *bands. And having to choose sex when it doesn't affect anything is not cool.)

Well it's a thing. It's reported on the character sheet. Maybe that's offensive too. They're just Dwarves, or Elves, after all. Further classifying them by gender is un-evolved.

Roguelikes have already abandoned gender inequalities, even if balanced such that differences do not equate to superiorities. That's an axis of design freedom sacrificed to fear of being labeled offensive. If roguelikes wanted to strike a blow for equality, maybe they should come up with a balanced stat allocation for males and females s.t. either was a good choice depending on playing style.

But if males and females in roguelikes are identical, then we're left with role-playing elements to make the choice. If most players are male, well, I suspect they would be drawn to playing males. Maybe not though. I understand why not, for some.

[half]

What if the whole wield/unwield process could be handled automatically?

I wouldn't do this as it has very large changes on the way the game works. So far (I think!) the only multiturn actions are running and resting, which are very predictable in how they work. They also abort when interrupted. Having a more complex multiturn action would considerably complicate the player's understanding of the game.

On reading this, I also came up with the proposal of just having to have a digger in your inventory/equipment in order to tunnel. I might be OK with this approach. I'm not sure. The main issue is the speed and convenience of digging. This is fine for rubble, but more problematic for quartz and granite. The turns swapping in and out currently make this more difficult to do in the middle of combat. In Angband, you have a tiny chance of succeeding in digging each turn (to model it taking many turns). I changed this to a two stage process of stone -> rubble -> floor, which is less realistic, but more abstracted and more roguelike in my opinion (c.f. changing armour in the time it takes to move 10 ft). This does mean that convenience digging could be a bit too good. (Note that you can currently do this, but only with a trumpet of blasting and at a cost of 20 voice). I suppose my main concern is people tunneling around Morgoth too easily in the escape, but you still need to take 4 hits from him, compared to 5 before, or 2 hits from using Exchange Places.

There are some other minor issues such as now being able to dig when you were wielding a cursed weapon. This is not bad gameplay-wise, just a bit odd thematically. However, you can still remove you gloves (unlike Nethack...) and can use a trumpet etc, so it this is not so different.

We would also want to at least allow you to still wield mattocks given Tolkien's references to dwarves using them. So they will still have to remain weapons with stats, which makes it a bit odd to get this ability when not wielding them.

Overall, I'm still unsure, but am considering it. The current implementation definitely makes me go another way when I find a blocked tunnel instead of digging it out, which is a bit silly.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

And having to choose sex when it doesn't affect anything is not cool.

Off-topic: I've been interested in how ancient societies always seem to have weird gender rules for magicians. In Viking culture, for instance, male witches were a tabu -- male magic-users were considered dangerous rogues that break the sacred order of the universe. In some other societies it was probably vice versa. I could easily have some different spellbooks for males and females in Halls of Mist.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

And if one choice would be far more common than the other (given equal UI opportunity), would it be good design reasoning?

Alphabetical order pleases me aesthetically, and that would trump tiny speed benefits for me. And if alphabetical order is used in some other lists, having male first here would bother me slightly. That would seem like a political decision.

(Personally, I always choose sex at random in *bands. And having to choose sex when it doesn't affect anything is not cool.)

[BlueFish]

You don't like things ordered alphabetically? I'd guess that's the design reasoning.

And if one choice would be far more common than the other (given equal UI opportunity), would it be good design reasoning? That's the point.

I know, I won't get a real conversation over this. But it's a real point.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It's not so much the extra keystrokes as it is the intentional design decision that bothers me.

You don't like things ordered alphabetically? I'd guess that's the design reasoning.

[BlueFish]

I don't like that new characters default to female. I'm sure I'm insecure in my masculinity but I prefer playing male heros in these sorts of games. I suspect most roguelike players (who are factually male) feel the same. Why not default to the most common choice, as would happen with any other design decision throughout the game?

I know, I'm whining. Just like a girl. But the frequent deaths and frequent rebuilds lend themselves to lots of character creations and you have to remember to stop at the right point in character creation to flip the default female to male. It's not so much the extra keystrokes as it is the intentional design decision that bothers me. I've totally rethunk gender roles in society. Thanks for the politics.

[wobbly]

In regards to shields I'd be a fan of keeping it equipped but disabled when using a 2-hander, mainly because it's a pet hate of mine that you can use a bow & shield together. Does 1 of the variants change the name of the shield slot to on-back when wielding a 2-hnder? I have a vague recollection of seeing it somewhere.