Tweet
I used to play Angband a long time ago and was somewhat active in the community. I lost interest for a long time, but recently the idea came to me for a patch to Angband. It's pretty simple, but it changes the game a lot. So it's kind of like a variant, but I don't feel like calling it a variant.
Angband is all about killing Morgoth, and in Tolkien's writing, Morgoth was the origin of evil. So Angband can be about destroying the origin of evil. One of the tragic effects of evil is to twist people (and hobbits and yeeks and so on) into deranged versions of themselves which must be killed. Evil is evil because of what it does to people.
In my patch, the player character is not motivated by adventure, but rather out of a love of all that is good and a hatred for all that evil has done. Therefore, the player feels sorrow for the monsters that are destroyed along the way. The value of a monster's life is connected to why it even makes sense to want to kill Morgoth.
This sensitivity comes at a cost. If the player allows too much sorrow to accrue, the player character can burn out, ending the game. The player character has to spend time away from monsters in order to deal with his/her sorrow, which is costly to the player.
The patch so far is not balanced. In a way, this fits the "tragic view" of it (the "-tr" in the name coming from "tragic view"), and is a feature. But maybe the patch could use /a little/ balancing...
One balancing feature is that monsters have a chance to be deeply terrified any time they are terrified ("X flees in terror!"). Deeply terrified monsters never become unterrified and don't launch projectiles/cast spells against the player. It takes some finesse to terrify monsters without killing them.
Still, shrieker mushroom patches... I think I need to figure out something to do with them...
Angband-tr is based on Vanilla 4.1.0 (the version that was out when I started on it). I tried to make as few changes as possible to make it work (for instance, no modifications to lib/gamedata other than news.txt) I documented my process of making it, and hope to make a guide for hand-applying it to other variants or versions, in case that helps anyone. (Does this sound like it's worth doing?) I have a few ideas that I think go beyond the scope of the patch, and I'm thinking of making a proper variant based on it (well, at least one release of one variant, to add to the many...).
The patch is in alpha and could use lots of testing. If you want to help, see 10v24.net/ang
Angband is all about killing Morgoth, and in Tolkien's writing, Morgoth was the origin of evil. So Angband can be about destroying the origin of evil. One of the tragic effects of evil is to twist people (and hobbits and yeeks and so on) into deranged versions of themselves which must be killed. Evil is evil because of what it does to people.
In my patch, the player character is not motivated by adventure, but rather out of a love of all that is good and a hatred for all that evil has done. Therefore, the player feels sorrow for the monsters that are destroyed along the way. The value of a monster's life is connected to why it even makes sense to want to kill Morgoth.
This sensitivity comes at a cost. If the player allows too much sorrow to accrue, the player character can burn out, ending the game. The player character has to spend time away from monsters in order to deal with his/her sorrow, which is costly to the player.
The patch so far is not balanced. In a way, this fits the "tragic view" of it (the "-tr" in the name coming from "tragic view"), and is a feature. But maybe the patch could use /a little/ balancing...
One balancing feature is that monsters have a chance to be deeply terrified any time they are terrified ("X flees in terror!"). Deeply terrified monsters never become unterrified and don't launch projectiles/cast spells against the player. It takes some finesse to terrify monsters without killing them.
Still, shrieker mushroom patches... I think I need to figure out something to do with them...
Angband-tr is based on Vanilla 4.1.0 (the version that was out when I started on it). I tried to make as few changes as possible to make it work (for instance, no modifications to lib/gamedata other than news.txt) I documented my process of making it, and hope to make a guide for hand-applying it to other variants or versions, in case that helps anyone. (Does this sound like it's worth doing?) I have a few ideas that I think go beyond the scope of the patch, and I'm thinking of making a proper variant based on it (well, at least one release of one variant, to add to the many...).
The patch is in alpha and could use lots of testing. If you want to help, see 10v24.net/ang
Comment