Something that has bothered me in the past with Angband is the number of special cases. I like the idea of a simple core set of rules and then the emergent gameplay that comes from that.
For example unique monsters can't be slept or slowed. Why not? Uniques are just monsters that are different enough to have their own name. Why create a whole new rule set for them?
Similarly artifacts are just items that are interesting enough to be named. So they really don't need millions of special cases from enchanting to rules on whether monsters can pick them up or not.
For some reason it is considered a disaster for an artifact to be generated and the player is unable to get at it (monster picks it up who you can't handle, it gets destroyed by an earthquake etc.), but it is fine for that artifact never to be generated at all.
In another thread someone mentions that monsters shouldn't be able to pick up artifacts because it is abusable (by getting luring a weaker monster such as a dread out of a vault.), but to me this is the sort of emergent gameplay that makes Angband interesting and fun. Removing all possible interesting gameplay choices that the rules create by adding hundreds of special cases is the wrong way to go in my opinion.
You can't teleport into vaults which bothers me. So phase door which is one of the most important mechanics of the game suddenly doesn't work for no good reason. If the player wants to risk phasing into a vault then that's up to him.
Anyway this is a bit of a ramble, but the basic point is that if the rules are designed well enough then you don't need hundreds of special cases. Sure sometimes a special case is needed, but I think this should be a last resort rather than the default option.
For example unique monsters can't be slept or slowed. Why not? Uniques are just monsters that are different enough to have their own name. Why create a whole new rule set for them?
Similarly artifacts are just items that are interesting enough to be named. So they really don't need millions of special cases from enchanting to rules on whether monsters can pick them up or not.
For some reason it is considered a disaster for an artifact to be generated and the player is unable to get at it (monster picks it up who you can't handle, it gets destroyed by an earthquake etc.), but it is fine for that artifact never to be generated at all.
In another thread someone mentions that monsters shouldn't be able to pick up artifacts because it is abusable (by getting luring a weaker monster such as a dread out of a vault.), but to me this is the sort of emergent gameplay that makes Angband interesting and fun. Removing all possible interesting gameplay choices that the rules create by adding hundreds of special cases is the wrong way to go in my opinion.
You can't teleport into vaults which bothers me. So phase door which is one of the most important mechanics of the game suddenly doesn't work for no good reason. If the player wants to risk phasing into a vault then that's up to him.
Anyway this is a bit of a ramble, but the basic point is that if the rules are designed well enough then you don't need hundreds of special cases. Sure sometimes a special case is needed, but I think this should be a last resort rather than the default option.
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