Sil: compilation of annoying deaths

[Psi]

I died to the falling damage into Throne room...............

But you don't get false floors at 950'...?

[captnamazing]

yeah it's pretty ridiculous how sharply my luck changed. i still have nightmares about this one.

I think your story influenced me.

It's floor 950. My heavy armor Fingolfin Elf is cutting down Smaug. I survive the second blast of fire and pop a orc pot, then a horde of troll guard comes out from the northern door.

Smaug's lair is a small room. I identified a false floor trap on the way in. It was no problem to dance around.

But now, Smaug is fleeing. He's on the door. Directly behind him is the false floor trap. There is a troll behind me and two on my left.

With a final blow, I destroy Smaug and gain my revenge!!!!!

In the same round, the troll behind me landed a blow and battered me onto the false floor trap.

I died to the falling damage into Throne room...............

[seraph]

I absolutely love this one

yeah it's pretty ridiculous how sharply my luck changed. i still have nightmares about this one.

[captnamazing]

playing a feanor smith. found galadriel even before the 100' forge. quickly took parry, finesse, eyeing at subtlety. slaughtering everything in sight. found the second forge guarded by a grave wight. i take a few points of will and go at it with a double-fine glaive. it drained three points of str in as many turns. i dump gear so that i can move an finally kill it. walking to the forge i step on a false floor. i quickly get surrounded by othrod and two orc captains and their hordes, who disarm me. i managed to get galadriel back a few times and gave 'em hell though.

I absolutely love this one

[seraph]

playing a feanor smith. found galadriel even before the 100' forge. quickly took parry, finesse, eyeing at subtlety. slaughtering everything in sight. found the second forge guarded by a grave wight. i take a few points of will and go at it with a double-fine glaive. it drained three points of str in as many turns. i dump gear so that i can move an finally kill it. walking to the forge i step on a false floor. i quickly get surrounded by othrod and two orc captains and their hordes, who disarm me. i managed to get galadriel back a few times and gave 'em hell though.

[wobbly]

Was picking off Gorgol's entourage with a bow, taking advantage of the fact that none would step in to the corridor. Eventually Gorgul does step forwards. Turns out the room behind me had been slowly filling up with clear worms & 1 had wandered up behind me.

[taptap]

Cruel randomness (+ not having song of freedom) story:

Found Galadriel with an intelligent* Finarfin lass at 200', sailed smoothly downwards. Picked up a strength drain on the way, still sailed smoothly downwards, subtlety and parry and Shortsword of Galadriel - yes, keep them coming, who needs high strength anyway. Bump into web (perception was 10). Be trapped, try to escape for agonizing turns from the shadow spider, drink potions, hope, try again, try staff, but just agonizingly die in the web even seeing the shadow spider in the eye while she is doing the deed. All because you are just not strong enough to free yourself.

* Focus + concentration at start.

[debo]

That wasn't the problem. I was at full weight, picking it up made me burdened.

Haha wow "the straw that broke the camel's back"

[wobbly]

Pretty sure autopickup is supposed to consume 0 energy? Have I misunderstood how it works this whole time??

That wasn't the problem. I was at full weight, picking it up made me burdened.

[debo]

Pretty sure autopickup is supposed to consume 0 energy? Have I misunderstood how it works this whole time??

[wobbly]

Died from auto-picking up an arrow today. Was fleeing down a corridor, had grabbed another stack of arrows somewhere else in the dungeon & all of a sudden slowed at just the wrong time. Is there even a way to step on your own arrows & not pick them up?

[taptap]

I am not a fan of deliberate cruelty, as in nethack/angband instadeath to unknowable, unseeable something, offscreen breath, whatever, that is just bad game design imo. Uncompromising randomness w/ traps means you indeed trigger them and suffer their effects (and these aren't miss dice roll and die for the low perception builds we are talking about), if you do not notice and/or remove them. This is the price for emergent behaviour (move greedily to artefact, run into alarm trap, be trapped in vault with suddenly awoke cats), which makes gameplay memorable at best. Uncompromising randomness is the principle in Sil combat as well, leading to the different choices & possibilities in it, which I do not feel the same way in Angband variants I tried (not very successfully), somehow everything feels the same with the right modifiers. And yes, this uncompromising randomness in combat includes among the more memorable and rare events:

... stares into your eyes. (Evasion modifier -36 applied )
... claws you!!
You died.

And yes, I do resent proposals to take this illusion of depth / emergent behaviour away from me by streamlining gameplay to requirements of players, who happily ignore perception while playing and for that reason alone want to make it even more redundant for everyone else. Thanks for listening.

[Derakon]

It doesn't even matter that there is no player skill involved, here you have a branching point / story depth, whether you notice the trap or not. If you notice all traps, it is just a sad joke, the challenge is stopping long enough between moves to notice, seriously?

It's not quite so trivial as you make it sound. Traps become terrain that you can't factor into your decision-making until you're already right next to them. Suddenly the tile you had planned to move through isn't as harmless as it seemed. In a combat situation this creates some interesting decisions. Outside of combat it's pretty pointless, I will grant.

[BlueFish]

Absolutely. Add some deliberate cruelty and you're golden.

There's plenty of wiggle room between the player coddling necessary for mass appeal roguelike derivatives that sell millions of copies, and unrelenting and uncompromising (and yes, at some level, possibly intentionally cruel) game systems of some true roguelikes, played by a small crowd of people worldwide.

Personally I thank the historical angband coders for the foresight to put so much of the game into edit files. I have zero compunction against changing stuff I find to be unnecessarily arbitrary. The justifications for such things are in almost every case general and theoretical (adding tensions, creating good stories, etc) and could be applied to pretty much any arbitrary difficulty added to the game. Which is not to say all potentially frustrating things are bad "game design", but they're definitely not necessarily all good "game design", to whatever extent that term means something. It is very difficult to make a general argument one way or another.

But the proof is definitely in the pudding if one finds the game more fun after changing it.

[Nick]

Cruel randomness makes stories, streamlined bullshit destroys it.

Absolutely. Add some deliberate cruelty and you're golden.