My latest dumb idea

[Antoine]

Angband has got lots of stuff in it. Sometimes all that stuff seems to get in the way of the core elements (which, for me, are grinding under the constant risk of instadeath).

Imagine a variant with Less Stuff.

- No more than 4 classes
- No more than 50 types of non-unique monster
- No more than 50 uniques
- No more than 30 types of wearable equipment
- No more than 10 ego types
- No more than 30 artifacts
- No more than 20 types of consumables
- No more than 10 kinds of traps
- No more than 10 kinds of vaults.

I'd envisage that the game would take about as long to complete as modern Vanilla, with the end bosses being Sauron and Morgoth, and would have (say) 30 character levels and 50 dungeon levels.

I see it as being hard, with key consumables (including means of detection, escape and healing) being limited, some resistance holes being very hard to plug given the limited equipment selection, some monsters being very hard to defeat in-depth, and the risk of instadeath always awaiting the incautious player.

I also envisage the game being balanced for small screensize (say 30x25 or thereabouts) so you can play it with big juicy 32x32 tiles. This would mean smaller levels with smaller rooms.

Finally I'd like to see the number of commands reduced to no more than 10.

Does anyone think this is a non-stupid idea?

Would anyone be interested in working on it?

A.

[thapper]

I see it as an excellent idea!

As for working on it, my coding skills are non-existent...

[Malak Darkhunter]

Honestly it almost sounds lik moria, witch I like sometimes less is more, I like the idea of a more simplified version, so I think you have an interesting idea, I was sort of wanting to play a quicker version if the game, I think you can keep the action going with the right balance. So sure, I'm not really a coder but I would help in some way if possible.

[dzhang]

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the idea. If anything, I always like more choices and variety, and combinatorial diversity. What you're proposing sounds to me like D&D 4e...

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm probably way off target (as usual), but this sounds like a bridge between Moria and Angband. A throwback -- a nod to the early days, but with cherry picked extras from Angband included. Like color! Moria with color, occasional vaults, better stocked stores, more than 2 uniques and a few artifacts, some vaults -- is an intriguing idea to me, at least.

Edit: lol, Malak beat me to the Moria reference.

[Djabanete]

It sounds terrific. I'm not entirely sold on the big tiles but in general I like your thinking. However, I think such a minimalist design would benefit from shorter game time than Vanilla and razor-sharp balance design.

IMO, instead of 4 classes, having 6 or so spell realms would be better, with each player choosing 2 realms at the start.

As far as working on it... well, I'd playtest it
And I enjoy theorycrafting, I'm not sure whether that counts as "working."

"10 egos" --- you mean total, or per equipment slot? 10 total means 1 or 2 per slot, which seems pretty bland. I'm guessing actually you meant for weapons, with smaller numbers for other slots.

I always thought a cool idea for a 4-class system would be the following: 6 or so spell realms, 4 classes. Warrior: weapon fighter. Warrior-mage: second-tier weapon fighter with one magic realm. Mage: Caster with 2 magic realms. High-Mage: expert caster in 1 realm.

Also I always thought it would be cool if instead of having lots of different kinds of each monster, it was dialed back to basic monster types. "Lich". "Hydra". "Troll". "Beholder". "Nazgul". etc etc.

50 monsters isn't much. Omissions of the top of my head are all forms of insects and jellies. Also drolems and golems. And snakes. And Mind Flayers.

Dragon
Behemoth
Titan
Lich
Vampire

Nazgul
Cyclops
Shambling Mound
Xorn
Gryphon

Nightmare
Mummy
Giant Rat
Kobold
Goblin

Salamander
Umber Hulk
Invisible Stalker
Barrow Wight
Hobgoblin

Orc
Unicorn
Ent
Winged Horror
Angel

Balrog
Gelugon
Bile Demon
Hezrou
Lemure

Giant
Troll
Beholder
Quylthulg
Djinn

Yeek
Zombie
Animated Skeleton
Mimic
Sorceror

Mystic
Death Knight
Enchantress
Ghoul
Wyvern

Hydra
Catoblepas
Hellhound
Wolf
Tiger

20 consumables?

Potions:

Healing (small heal)
Extra Healing (big heal)
Curing (small heal + status issues)
Life (full heal + status issues)
Rejuvenation (big heal + big mana heal)

Energy (full mana heal)
Berserk Strength (small heal + berserk)
Resistance (temporary resistance)
Restoration (restore all stats)
Detonations (hand grenade)


Scrolls:

Phase Door (short teleport)
Teleportation (long teleport)
Enchant Weapon (both hit and dam)
Enchant Armor
Genocide

Identify
Detect Treasure (money + items)
Magic Mapping
Remove Curse
Ammunition (creates ammo for whatever launcher you're equipping)

10 traps

Traps:

Pit
Poison arrow trap
Teleport trap
Trap door
Explosive rune

Giant Pendulum Blade trap
Giant Circular Saw trap
Summon monster trap
Alarm (haste monsters in LOS + aggravate)
Tiger cage trap (Tiger cage drops from ceiling, breaks on your head, tiger lands next to you)

[Malak Darkhunter]

I've always liked the idea of removing "hordes" of monsters and monster pits and replacing that with smaller but stronger escorts.
My vote for classes would be a simpler version:
Fighter, Mage, priest, assassin, swordmage, champion

The swordmage being the multiclass fighter Mage, and the champion being the fighter/priest

[ghengiz]

about the original idea: great one!

+1 to Djabanete's suggestions on shorter game time and basic monster names, although perhaps at most two or three subclasses sounds fine (e.g. cold/fire/lightning breathing dragons)

proposed classes: warrior, mage, rogue, priest (more or less like the first diablo)

my programming skills are not that much, but I'd love to playtest it

[Antoine]

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the idea. If anything, I always like more choices and variety, and combinatorial diversity. What you're proposing sounds to me like D&D 4e...

Fair enough - you seem more like a Chengband guy - by the way I always read your ladder dumps with interest.

A.

[Therem Harth]

Dislike. But I'm a ToME 2 fan so it follows logically. :P

Specifically though, I like:
- ASCII graphics
- Lots of monsters
- Lots of classes
- Lots Of Stuff in general
- Games that are never a repeat of the last one

OTOH, in your idea I like:
- Shallower dungeon. 100 levels of one mostly unthemed dungeon is a tad excessive IMO.
- Pruning of "generalist" classes, e.g. Paladin. But this is because I'd prefer lots of unique classes with their own twists.

As for difficulty, it's a mixed bag. I don't like boredom, but I honestly don't like Angband's instadeath either, as restarting again and again gets boring quickly. (But having Lots Of Stuff makes restarting less of a bore as well.) IMO though one of the key things is to give the player occasional, random rewards, but not make them too frequent - this is part of the reason gambling is addictive, and it applies to Angband too.

[nppangband]

That does sound like a game the size and scope of Moria, which I think is a great idea.

[getter77]

It could work----Concentratedband to merry foil to Quickband or some such.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I like! I've had a similar dream myself.

My dream is turning Unangband into Unmoria.

Unangband has an excess of everything, much too much for my tastes. I love the design, but I'd need a concentrated version of the game to be able to really enjoy it.

It would be fun to cherry pick the best of the best and turning it into a totally different game. Original Moria races and classes, 50 levels, Balrog at the bottom, smaller than usual levels, strong Tolkien-theme... but all this with full Unangband terrain features and exciting monsters.

I'd have to insert my stair system from Fay because I really can't live with infinite dungeons.

(EDIT: Of course the next Fay is already pretty quite close to what I just wrote. I've already concentrated it to 50 levels and added a lot of terrain features.)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

On another note: now would be the perfect time to re-make Moria out of the modern Vanilla. Forget Un. Vanilla is just perfect for this.

I just concentrated FayAngband from 100 levels to 50. It was super easy, and I only had to discard about 5% of content from the game. That's because in a lot of ways Angband is still balanced just like Moria.

The dev team is about to finally fix this. After the monsters are divided more evenly across the 100 levels, remaking Moria is going to become much, much harder!

So we should act now.

[Malak Darkhunter]

On another note: now would be the perfect time to re-make Moria out of the modern Vanilla. Forget Un. Vanilla is just perfect for this.

I just concentrated FayAngband from 100 levels to 50. It was super easy, and I only had to discard about 5% of content from the game. That's because in a lot of ways Angband is still balanced just like Moria.

The dev team is about to finally fix this. After the monsters are divided more evenly across the 100 levels, remaking Moria is going to become much, much harder!

So we should act now.

Ive been waiting forever for a remake of moria.