Angband Philosophy III: Theme, Races and Monsters

[Narry]

Here are my two cents:

- Being faithful to Tolkien's lore is a good thing, but following it too too strictly might decrease the fun in the game.

- Since Tolkien mentioned a few unions between a human and an elf, although rare, I think that gives enough reason to keep Half Elf as a race. Another consideration is: Does it enrich the game? Is there something interesting in the race that makes a player who has tried Human and/or Elven characters to try it?

- I agree on adding a Wood Elf. Possibly worth considering: Mist Elf.

- On classes: I would love to play a character who relies on bows but cannot cast spells, i.e. current Ranger minus casting.

- On monsters: I might be in minority in this, but I *hate* summoners who summon summoners. There seems to be no other option but to teleport them away.

- In my last two long games of 4.1.0, stun resistance was painfully difficult to find. Please add it to some items.

[Grotug]

In the last couple 4.1.2-dirty games I have found a lot of pStun. My current game I am rocking two immunities and pStun on a single RandArt ring. I usually find a crown of serenity in most of my games, though I never wear them. Sometimes, but pretty rare, I get them on a good ego item like a Lorien bow. There are lots of {ego} items that have the potential to have pStun on them.

I think a bookless Ranger is a good idea.

[Netbrian]

I lean heavily toward gameplay concerns, rather than worrying too much about how true to the source material it is. Since kobolds play well and fill an interesting niche, I'd keep them. People are used to the idea of elves as frail spellcasters, so I'd stick with that, even if Tolkein portrayed them as strong physical combatants.

[tangar]

Angband 4.x races changes: heretic or canonic?

As I'm working at new races design for 'Angband Online', thought about this matters too, so my 0.02 $

Firstly I wanna note that I'm really enjoying the way how Angband developing. It's feels like 'Golden Age' of this game; all past changes like ID, traps, curses.. new light systems & etc - it's definitely move toward the right direction.. But.. Such race changes.. It feels a bit like a developing new Angband variant, than enhancing V; sorry to say this, with all huge respect to beautiful dev team.

I was quite sad when heard that kobolds are go away soon; they feels very 'native' to Angband atmosphere even if they are not canonic to Tolkien. But Tolkien himself left a lot of space for other creatures in his World, who knows who lived to the far south east, in some dark caves? Kobolds sounds like a creatures who wouldn't like to be found and used by other races in their wars, small and stealthy, they mind their own business.

But ok.. If there is a goal is to transform Angband to pure Tolkien-canonic game or at least to move closer to it... As a huge fun of JRRT world I can't condemn it. But.. I suppose if there is a decision made to take something away from the game (and also game balance itself which were polished for long-long years), right approach is to give something in return:

Add a new races. We have half-orcs and half-trolls. Not really fair and kind types, kind dark guys. In my 'Angband Online' variant I've just added a new race - Black Numenorean:

A High Men from Numenor, a renegades and.. ally of Dark Lord? Not all of them was 'corrupted by many gifts and promises of great power' by the Enemy. Some just wanted to have a free will and refused to accepted handouts of the west.. But nonetheless they had to choose a side, just to survive under the sky..

Which side would choose you?

[Please note that current properties (stats&boni) for Black Numenorean race in Angband Online are yet 'raw' and would be polished/rebalanced a lot]

So what if Angband devs would give players some 'dark' stuff in return? Take away kobolds and gnomes; but add something like:

- Black Numenorean
- Goblin/snaga (adding 'orcs' race not really fun as we got half-orc; goblins is pretty different 'breed' of orcs (smaller onces) and could replace kobolds with some adjustments).
- Dark Elves - yes, Tolkien had them :P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriquendi
- Maia. Why not? Take a look on how TomeNET implemented this race, pretty interesting: https://www.tomenet.eu/guide.php?cha...ight=maia#r343 ..

And considering removing monsters like Medusa. How you could get rid of it? She is marvelous! Damm.. I fear that Angband could lose part of it's oldschool vanilla taste without kobolds, Medusa & stuff D:

But at the end I wanna note that Angband is SUPER customizable game and actually it become real 'game engine' which could be configured and changed at will without advancing programmings skills. So if someone still wants to bring back Medusa or Kobolds - it would be very easy to do it manually in config files.. The only problem - you wouldn't have cononic Angband anymore; when you change something in the game - de facto you produce your own variants..

And it's could lead Angband cummunity to the same situation as in church - there are loads of churces of almost the same religion; they could be different in tiny details but this tiny details really divide community.. So the problem of such 'revolutionary' (removing kobolds&gnomes - races which loved by thousands of players) could crack community So my advice - not to remove, but to replace this races.. Rename and adjust them to Tolkien lore. Then it would be not so painful change.

p.s.
As for 'Angaband Online' - kobolds and gnomes would stay there anyway; we are not going to remove them. I like DnD staff if it make sense and fits to the fantasy universe. I as myself a Russian fantasy writer and got my own World which is heavely inspired by Tolkien.. but it's got loads of other influence. I like this influence. It's fun to have freedom and inspiration from other worlds. But it's important to have feeling of sense and do not accept Cyberdemons & other @#$%... So in 'Angband Online' we are planning to merge all new and upcomming V-Angband core features, but not this particular anti-koboldish changes if they would be in a way of just 'removing' stuff without a proper replacement.

p.p.s
Also I have a bleeding gush from Angband 3.5 release where CHArisma was removed. My Half-Troll isn't real anymore without farting in the shops..

So maybe if there are a lot of work on proper Tolkienization is going on, it's a good time to bring CHArisma stat back and enhance with some new meaning? I mean - Tolkien definitely valued CHArisma (leadership) in his books. You feel it when reading the books almost everywhere - every race is very different in this virtue.. Elves -> Dunedains -> Humans -> Hobbits -> Dwarfs ->... It was easy to reassign this races by CHArisma without looking into any sources. CHArishma could influence not only the prices, but also on resisting certain malious magic, chance of performing certain magic spells, give boni to mana pool for certain classes (paladin?) and even maybe influence somewhat on 'stealth' (having high CHArisma makes you less annoying person to disturb monsters) etc

((n)*p.)s.
Removing EXP penalties for races... It's also quite revolutionary... or some would even can say - heretical, variantish thing. I suppose this should be a topic of separate detailed discussion, maybe with a voting? I like that in contrast to another roguelike and RPG games in general, Angband historically had this unique feature which provided high differentce between races and helped to sustain good in-game balance.

It's righteous to enhance Angband with canonic Tolkien stuff, but at the same time - the most important thing is to preserve canonic Angband stuff itself.

[MattB]

I'm totally with you on Kobolds, Dark Elves, EXP penalties...
But I really don't miss charisma!

[Nick]

It's righteous to enhance Angband with canonic Tolkien stuff, but at the same time - the most important thing is to preserve canonic Angband stuff itself.

I have a lot of sympathy with this, and want to try and make my position a bit clearer (in what will be a fairly unfocused ramble).

First, I should say that there is a lot of canonic Angband but non-Tolkien stuff that is remaining - yeeks, quylthulgs, icky things, etc. There's also a whole bunch of monsters which are derived from elsewhere but sufficiently generic that they don't feel too clashy - griffons, nagas, minotaurs, hydras (although the Lernean Hydra is a bit problematic), etc.

The things that have been removed so far tend to fall into two categories:

1. Clearly identifiable in a different mythology - Kronos, Atlas, Polyphemus, eldraks, algroths...
2. Tolkienian but don't feel like they should be fightable in Angband - Arien, Radagast - or seem like they're stretching the boundaries too much - blue wizards, Istari

It's worth noting that the category 1 removals have been going on for a while, with things like Gabriel, Azriel, Tiamat, having been progressively removed.

Then there are largish number of D&D derived monsters - kobolds, gnomes, dark elves, many of the major demons, umber hulks, etc etc. Many of these I am completely fine with. I start to run into trouble, though, when they come into direct conflict with Tolkienian creatures; the two really striking examples here are dark elves and gnomes. Dark elves are particularly problematic - Tolkien's Moriquendi were regular elves who never made it to Valinor to see the trees, whereas the current Angband Dark elves are essentially D&D drows, dark-skinned, white-haired, evil underground creatures.

So my current plan is to replace monsters that I feel are problematic with more thematic ones. I'm going to keep talking about what I'm doing, so people get a chance to object; also, I won't be maintainer forever, and someone else may revert some of my changes or make their own.

Player races, I think, need to be treated more carefully. People get attached to particular races, and want to keep on playing them. So my plan there is

• Keep all the current races pretty much unchanged (as they all service a particuar gameplay niche), but possibly renamed
• Add new races for new gameplay niches

So that's a lot of fairly unordered blather, but it goes some way to expressing my state of mind on these issues. Very happy to get opinions.

[gglibertine]

I lean heavily toward gameplay concerns, rather than worrying too much about how true to the source material it is. Since kobolds play well and fill an interesting niche, I'd keep them.

I agree -- I like kobolds for their poison resistance, which balances their other weaknesses quite well, and while D&D kobolds aren't the same as folklore kobolds, kobolds are definitely a thing outside of D&D. And since they're underground dwellers, perhaps they could get a small bonus to tunneling (though not equivalent to dwarves, obvs) to give them a little more bite.

[tangar]

Nick, thank you very much for revealing your concept details; now I see your points, it's more clear.. and sounds right

[kobolds] could get a small bonus to tunneling (though not equivalent to dwarves, obvs) to give them a little more bite.

Good point! Also hobbits and gnomes? (even lesser bonus, than kobolds, but make sense).

[tangar]

Tolkienian but don't feel like they should be fightable in Angband - Arien, Radagast - or seem like they're stretching the boundaries too much - blue wizards, Istari

It was fun to have some moral dilemma and make something more complex in terms 'good' and 'evil'. As we wrote @ 'Angband Online' FAQ:

I saw monsters which are intrinsically 'good' creatures: such as Maggot, Bullroarer and of course the Maia. Why they attack player?
1) Don't try to get away with Maggot's mushrooms.
2) 'For the Greater Good' we often make bad thing happen in the end.. Also who says that the *player character* is always good? Actually if you would manage to defeat Morgoth you may consider to take his Crown and become the new Lord of Darkness. It makes
'good' creatures to consider you as a very big danger, maybe even worse than Morgoth himself..?
3) Considering Maia, or spirits. Sauron himself is a Maia, so there's nothing that will tell you which one is good or bad. In the dungeon, assume that they are all bad Maia. The ones that are not (Arien for example) simply see you as a nuisance that breaks the universe's balance and must be stopped.

So maybe leaving Angband too 'simple' in terms of moral choices could reduce intellectual depth of the game.. It's quite angbandish feature - to make player do something strange and ask himself "why?"

[MattB]

Tangar, I'm with you in the sense that it is rather odd to assume that @ should not fight good creatures because @ is somehow 'good'??!
He's not, he's thoroughly evil. He disembowels lepers simply because they are in his way. He kills dogs just for the experience. He tests wands of annihilation on passing village idiots, etc. etc. etc..

[Youssarian]

What if you changed gnomes into Petty Dwarves? They are sorcerous little beings.

[wobbly]

It'd be nice if there was something between "monster cannot cope with walls at all" and "monster moves through walls as if they were nothing", where it takes multiple turns to move through walls. It'd make the pathfinding logic more complicated, though, since you'd want the monster to bore through walls unless there was a faster route through open space. That kind of thing is easily handled by A* pathfinding, but not by the heat maps that Angband uses.

I had a thought today that a 75% speed digger might behave right even with the dumb AI. That's fairly close to 1 / sqrt 2 e.g. diagonal speed through wall = down + left in open space. It'd still need something for digs literally adjacent to corridor but most other cases might be semi-sensible.

Edit: I might try this out with an insect & rand_25. That's 3/4 speed, 3/4 of the time, will randomly break stupid patterns & wont look so odd if it does something non-sensible.