CF: RE: "Monster" races

[dragonm <dragonm@leech.org>]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Andrew Michael Noelle
To: crossfire@ifi.uio.no
Sent: 9/18/99 3:16 PM
Subject: CF: "Monster" races (was Re: promotion ramps)


This monstrous players thread is getting kinda strange.  Not that
there's anything wrong with strange, mind you.  I just think we need
to draw a line somewhere between expanding our options and being just
plain silly.  Green slime players?

If you thought mages were unbalanced, try playing a dog, or a mouse.
And putting them on the same list as titans?

If we were talking about a purely role-playing game, or even primarily
role-playing, any race would be fine, but we're talking about
Crossfire.  Right now it's almost 100% hackenslash, and although
several people have expressed a desire to move toward a mixture of
role-playing and mindless slaughter, I haven't seen any proposals to
go far enough for this.

Player races have to be equivalent.  Humans are usually the standard,
and whatever advantages any other race has over humans is balanced by
disacvantages.  Some types of monsters just don't make good players,
like mindless slime, ghosts that dissolve when they hit something,
mice that die if you step on them, and titans that are just way too
powerful to even try to balance against a level 1 human.

Some of the more powerful races could be options for humanoid players
to somehow become, like liches and angels.  Those transformations
would make good quests.  

<snip>
-----Begin Response-----
On the contrary, player races do not have to be equivalent.  Allowing
players to be animals and largly mindless goo is a method to retain interest
and replayability.  It isn't reasonable to attempt to make the experience of
playing an animal identical to the experience of playing one of the humanoid
monsters, nor should we try.  But that's no reason to throw out the idea.
The fact that it's not an identical experience is precisely the point.  I
think the idea deserves some exploration and experimentation before we
dismiss it.

DM 
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