septembervirgin's page

What role will knowledge skills have in the game and what will be the functionality of knowledge skills, Contact Other Plane, Speak with Dead, and Divination?

Knowledge can be useful in an easily coded manner. Each knowledge skill should provide bonuses to a community but only with one character per knowledge skill (the character assigned by the community leader).

Arcana might assist in a cost reduction for creating magical items at its very basic use. Should the item be very powerful and require rare components, the Arcana knowledge skill would be needed to know these components at all.

Dungeoneering might help in avoiding diseases, could help combat a movement rate reduction (with higher skill necessary for higher level dungeons), and even to identify hard to notice creatures (like oozes, rot grubs, and dangerous molds) that are "hiding in plain sight". Without dungeoneering, a character might stumble across green slime thinking it's just unsafe water or assume that rot grubs are just large maggots.

Geography can present a bonus to mapped area size of wilderness regions including caverns but not dungeons.

History might permit a potential chance at learning a very high level character's most recent adventures and rewards and also an increase to mapped area size of civic regions and ruins and dungeons (but not caverns).

Local might provide a history of a player or NPC community, its longest term and most powerful (in terms of level) residents, and also give a brief description of any powerful or high ranking resident if the skill is used on their home. However, it might be that a character would have to acquire the Local skill for specific areas in which communities are built or might be built. This local knowledge skill could span several communities if they're built in the same "hex".

Nature can help in agarian efforts, providing basic bonuses to collection in a community (for both herds and plants), and also help indicate where some sorts of monsters might be coming from.

Nobility might be very useful in interacting with nobility, such as to gain land grant and title from nobles. This would further the power of local governments in extension of existing protected lands. Knowledge Nobility might work in tandem with a title grant and (maybe) Leadership to allow access to chivalric men-at-arms to protect ones land. Leadership might not be necessary to access these special granted henchmen.

Planes would of course help in identifying the names of individual demons, devils, and other outsiders, which might help in using the spell Gate to gather more powerful beings. Also it might help in identifying the source and dwelling of an Outsider presence.

Religion might help in identifying undead presence and origin and also provide a bonus for community blessings from the divinities.

The spells that seek knowledge aren't always difficult to include. Also, each should be helpful in learning more about communities and individuals, even information these entities are trying to hide. It should not reveal private information about players nor their accounts, OF COURSE, even unto "last login".

Contact Other Plane might access a large amount of census, community, or individual information to assist a spellcaster in making decisions for themselves or for a community.

Divination might be difficult except as a summarized potential. "How many resources will <group> likely have in one week?" could work. Also, "What monster attacks will be likely on my community in one week?" These sorts of questions, which could be selected from a menu, might be offered and answered and if they give inaccurate summation, it's only because there was unpredictable behavior or action upon the information which precluded the predicted result.

Speak with Dead might help identify *where* a character is in relation to their corpse, might also help in finding out what or who killed that corpse. If cast in a cemetery, it might assist in finding out where the necromancer is that summoned undead to disturb a community.

It's my opinion that gold should have weight.

If gold has weight, theft is limited to how much the thieves can carry (never millions). The more people are required to carry piles of gold, the easier that cheating is to detect. Also, gold with weight presents an importance to mutual assistance (or hiring NPC and pack mules). In battle, gold with weight demands realistic "supply train" protection, and in turn this makes light cavalry and light infantry more important. If light cavalry and light infantry are important, suddenly multiple character builds become options. Not all fighters wear heavy armor, you know.

If gold does not have weight, theft can be far more extensive and so loss is greater. Cheating is harder to monitor. Growth of communities is uncontrolled (bad idea in games and in reality). Limited builds exist because everyone wants high strength, heavy armored fighters. Because limited builds exist, limited strategies exist, and the game becomes predictable.

Gold should have weight? Think of it as a regulation of character growth, community growth, and an indicator of fair play.

I think Goblinworks states in their blog that they wish to limit the spread of economic reputation to mutual contacts. If this is an intention, the spread of reputation should be through contacts who:

1. Are of same alignment
2. Have known each other for a time (even if they don't adventure together)
3. Show no signs of being pet accounts (run by the same identity or credit card)

OR

1. Are of similar alignments
2. Have adventured or traded together extensively
3. Have known each other for a time
4. Show no signs of being pet accounts

OR

1. Are of markedly different alignments
2. Live in the same community
3. Have adventured or traded together extensively
4. Have known each other for a time
5. Show no signs of being pet accounts

You may wish to permit free mutual access to reputation reports in a guild or community, but this might make things easy for gold farmers and account sellers.

I hope that you do not permit a person to purchase multiple accounts for her or himself. If several people acquainted with each other purchase several accounts under false identities, they can use this leverage to overcome a sizable portion of the MMO. Gold farmers, account sellers, and power-trippers do that; these people are often rude and don't play a game in a way that is conducive to an entertaining MMO.

If you wish to establish fair dealings, please ask for State or National ID numbers. I know that might sound totalitarian, but it could be important for the sanity and fairness of your MMO. And other corporate entities ask for such sanity and fairness too, using the same method.

Checking IP doesn't work because multiple computers can be had. Checking credit cards don't work because illicit dealers can have access to employee credit information; families sometimes will provide credit card usage to each other. If you want a teen to be able to play the game, require that they use the parent's account. At least this cuts down on multiple user accounts.

This multiple account use has been a problem before on other MMO and it reduces immersion and trustworthy social interactions.