The Ability to Drop Gold in Player-Home

[mushroom patch]

This thread just stole 5 minutes of my life.

e: if Angband was more of a puzzle game, it might be interesting to have somewhat overpowered monsters that the player could negate by bribing. Smeagol? Give him food, and he disappears from that level. Bandit- throw him some wine or an item above a certain value and he might turn non-hostile.

What if you could drop a special kind of food called "monster bait" and monsters just hung around and ran into it while you run away? Interesting to try to game these kinds of things out in ur mind imo.

[AnonymousHero]

Here's a crazy idea: Remove everything but Sauron and Morgoth. In fact, who needs Sauron, remove him too.

That's not very charitable, IMO.[1]

Plus: Do you seriously believe that monsters other than Sauron and Morgoth contribute nothing interesting to the game play? (No, I know you don't, but that's the line of reasoning that your reductio-ad-absurdum requires -- which means you must attribute that opinion to "mushroom patch". I'm pretty sure "mushroom patch" does believe that a non-trivial number of monsters in Angband do add interest to the game.)

[1] I know it was most likely tongue-in-cheek, but forums don't tend to convey such things very well unless you explicitly use pseudo-tags like "/s", smileys and such. Please keep that in mind.

[Nick]

But Nick, if you change the source so that it suits your tastes, you're no longer playing a game with the pedigree and imprimatur of the original.

This is a game that's had 60+ official version releases and 100+ variants, many of them with many releases. And that's not counting the nightlies. I guess you could regard it as a glorious march toward some pinnacle of perfection, but I tend to see it as some randoms on the internet doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. And I for one have had a lot of fun with that.

Hence if you're not finding the game fun as it is, change it. You wouldn't be the first or the last.

[mushroom patch]

At the level of cool, dispassionate analysis and given the current state of affairs, I can't disagree with your assessment descriptively re: randos. On the other hand, to contend authentically with the history and provenance of angband requires a more visceral approach, imo.

[kandrc]

Better try to kill it then so you can get your time back. If only you could bank your time. Have you read Momo?

Sorry to necro an old thread, but I read this post back when it was new. From there, I read a synopsys of Momo, and wanted to get the book, but it was out of print in English. I'm too much of a germaphobe to buy used, so I waited, finally got a new copy a few months ago, and read it last week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Very cute and clever.

[Grotug]

I loved Momo, one of my favorite books. I never read The Never Ending Story but Momo is written by the same author.

Another good one, similar in spirit to Momo ,is A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Also sort of geared to younger folk.

[Sky]

jesus man. i mean, props to you for having found Momo, but go out NAU and go buy the neverending story.

[Grotug]

NAU
Acronym Definition
NAU Namibian Agricultural Union
NAU NATO Accounting Unit
NAU Narcotics Assistance Unit (law enforcement)
NAU Number of Active Users

EDIT: Oh, you just meant now. Well, I have an @ to YASD presently.

[Sky]

nau = now, but with added urgency.

[kandrc]

I've read A Wrinkle in Time and the Neverending Story. Both excellent.

When I had so much trouble finding Momo, I considered buying it in German. I could get through it, but it would be a long, difficult, and certainly far less pleasant read.

[passer_by]

Honestly the gold theft is far less annoying than the fact that the monster teleports away afterwards.

I have always assumed that the reason the monster teleports away afterwards is to provide a logical justification for the fact (which was true in Frog-knows days) that you can't get your item or gold back by killing the monster — the monster had supposedly taken time out to stash/sell/destroy the item before returning to the battle.

Now that monsters carry (or explicitly destroy) items and gold, the narrative justification is no longer required. So perhaps thieving monsters should stop teleporting away after every attempt?