A Short Summary of our Wizmeeting:
==================================


1) Stats:
---------

All players will have fixed, but still semi-flexible stats.

When players log in (the first time), they'll get some random stats, 
which they can keep regenerating until they're satisfied (never going 
over a certain max amount when you add all the stats together). Next,
they'll have 10 (or so) extra points that they can add to whichever 
stats they choose.

That means that we start with fixed values - no more senseless
newbie monster killing at the beginning needed! 

However: for players who want to change guilds or rearrange their
stats, it will still be possible.

But there should be an easy mode for newbies or guest who want to take
a short look into the game. The 'easy' mode sets up all needed stats for
a fast start. It will be a good point to start, but not the best.
The 'advanced' mode allows to change the character more to fit your
needs.

Every time a player gains a new level, they'll get a special
"stat point". They can use this point to change ('move') exactly one
stat of their choice one point. (For example: move int down one and
str up one). 
But there is only one change point after gaining a new level, and
these point are not cumulative. (That means if you don't transfer
your stats after gaining the next level, the possibility to move
your stat will be lost).

There are times when stats will change:

1st: The player died. This will reduce one (or more?) of the
     stats. The one which is reduced depends of the sort of
     dying. (that's just an idea actually).
     
     EG: Jumping from a huge tower will result in reducing int,   
         killed by a high level monster will result in reducing      
         str or dex?

2nd: The loss of the stat will be permanent. But there should be
     a way to regain the lost stat (more about that - see
     advancing), so it is not a 'real' loss of stats, but a
     little bit more complicated to gain it back. But one idea is
     to buy them in a special shop with quest points!

3rd: Bonus items should be allowed like in old nightfall. But
     these bonus items should be more restricted than in
     nightfall. Because we want to reach full auto loading,
     getting indestructible armour means that you will get this
     armour for the rest of your life! Be careful implementing      
     such things!

4th: Some Quests can result in adding one stat point to different
     stats. That means that you will have one stat point
     permanently more than other livings!
     This feature should be restricted to dangerous and long
     quests! (Never buy such stat points in any shop .....)

Decision about stats: Not more than 6 stats:
     --> add the stats here <--

Stat levels should also be independent of other stats. In
Nightfall they are connected to each other: i.e. you can only
raise your int so far above another stat x...


There should be one 'talent' for each player (or more?). A
talent is a special ability of the player in which he is very
good. (maybe give some special points so the talent differs
from another a little bit - from one player to another).
Talents can be (for example):
    aura detecting,
    race-magic,
    musicality,
    singing and so on.

Guilds may check this talent and add some special bonus if the
talent is good or not.

But please don't implement guilds which are talent-dependence.
Each player should have the possibility to reach good skills in
his guild, even if the talent is present or not. But the presence
of a special talent may result in advancing the skill to an extra
level for example.

For example: Bards could have a talent, for example music, or
             warriors have a talent for strength.

The talent will be placed randomly while generating the player in 
newbie-creation. 

(Question: random placement or let the player selection?)



2) Advancing
------------

Advancing to a new level depends XPs alone. But gaining XPs 
should no longer be solely dependent on only killing monsters.
There should be enough ways to gain XPs without killing monsters!

for example:  A guild of healing hands will not kill, 
              but heal livings for XP).

Gaining new levels will happen automatically with reaching the
XP-level. The guild has the possibility to automatically give the
new level rather than visiting the guild first to gain the new
level. (just like the level-advancing in nightfall).

Each level advanced is followed by the possibility to transfer
one stat point. If you don't use this -stat point- it will lost
with gaining the next level.

When a player advances a level, it should be the decision of the
guild if they want to: 
             
             a) give the player some guild title for that level or           
             b) let the player choose any title they want.

The real number of xp needed to advance should be lower than in
NF.

3) Quests & quest points:
------------------------

First: solving a quest doesn't have to result in getting questpoints.
       But there should be any reward for solving it (may be a 
       special item or/and questpoints).

Quest points are no longer needed to gain a new level but will
have other uses.

     1st: You can 'buy' your lost stats back (if you died) with
          some QP. 

     2nd: You will have the possibility to buy special items      
          (weapons, armour, magic items) in different shops for a      
          special amount of QP.
     
          Some of the items will be unique in this mud!
          (This will be very nice if we reached the state of      
          full auto loading, which means, if you have an item,        
          that is set to nodrop, you will have this item as long        
          as you stay in this mud.)

     3rd: --> add more ideas here <--

There can be four different quest types:

1st: Normal quest: give some amount of quest points AND XPs when
                   solved. There should be an official list somewhere 
                   (?!) You can solve the quest as often as you want, 
                   but only the first solution will result in gaining QPs 
                   (but maybe give the XP twice.....).

2nd: Miniquest:    like 'normal' quests, but shorter. A little
                   bit easier.  Quick (and Dirty?) *grins*
                   You can solve the quest as often as you want,
                   but only the first solution will result in
                   gaining QPs.

3rd: Live quests:  This type of quest is new in this mud. A
                   wizard will take over control over one or more
                   npcs and will setup a problem to solve. 
                   (Maybe: 'get the golden crown out of the
                   palace of Silvere and bring it to me').
                   This type of quest is handled like a normal    
                   quest, and it will give quest points and XPs too. 
                   But the 'live' quest will be only opened, if
                   the wizard who will controls the quest
                   solution is 'online' (that's where the name
                   comes from). Questpoint given by live quests will
                   be handled as normal questpoints and follow the
                   restrictions of normal questpoints.

4th: Guild quest:  This type of quest is one of type 1 or 2 and a player
                   of a special guild has to solve these quests to gain
                   the next level. Guildquests can be solved by players
                   of other guilds, but it should be possible that some
                   guildquests can only be solved by a special guild.
                   They may reward with questpoints and/or special items
                   too.
                   Guildquests are not needed in creating a guild. The
                   creator of the guild can decide if he wants them or not.

Quests can be 'cascaded': so if you want to solve quest x, you
                          first have to solve quest y. (should be
                          no real problem to implement this
                          idea).

The maximum amount of quest points can differ in this way,
because some players will solve only quests of the first or
second or fourth type. But this isn't a problem, because you don't
need the QP for advancing. The QP are a 'feature' for gaining special
skills, weapons or restoring your lost stats.

Regaining stats: If you died you lost one stat. You can buy it    
                 back with QP. As long as we will have the online
                 quests there should be no problem to gain back
                 your current stats. (The number of QP isn't
                 limited). If you die very often you have to solve more
                 online quests.
                 So it should be always possible to get all your lost stats
                 back.


4) Coordinates and region:
--------------------------

Each room will set world coordinates and a region. So it should
be possible to calculate the distance from one point to another
or find the direction from one point to another.

Other things like a compass may be implemented. 
(or some sort of a magical pathfinder, which will show the way).

The region will allow you to find out if it is a city, a street,
a hilly region, a forest or sea (and so on...).

Some skills may work only in special regions.

e.g. searching herbs
The regions could be implemented in that way, that in a meadow 
you can find herb X and Herb Y, which you cannot find in a forest.


5) skills:
----------

Many features will depend from the skills.

There will be two different skill types:

1st: general skills 
2nd: guild skills

All skills should be implemented at a global place
(/p/skills/....) to make life easier for wizards and players.
It will be better to store all skill-files on a central place
in the /p/skills/...

Guild skills may have an own directory in /p/skills/madmonks/...
to find the skills more easily. This is needed because skills are
more important than any other features.

A player has a common interface to use his skills. Because all
skills work in each place in the same way, and the wizards will
have to inherit the appropriate skill only to get the skill to
work with less code.

for example: general skills are : climbing 
             guild skills may be: bandaging, spellcasting and so on           

Each implemented skill should have a possible inherit for
rooms/living. As long as we have no difference between the
livings the skills will not make an npc a higher level than
another unless the npc is better in more skills than the other.
Maybe each guild creator can code an npc which has the same
skills as a player of this guild (see the warrior or the vampire 
in old nightfall - I can copy the stuff to here, if needed). And
setting the level of these npc will enable/disable some of his
skills (maybe initialize the skills by properties too).

Note: USE THE INHERITS to install the skills. It is illogical that
      a player can use skill A in room X and cannot use the same skill in
      room Y (because the implementation is different, but the player
      cannot see any difference!)

Implementing skills in rooms/items/npcs should be much easier for 
wizards! (lots of work to do!)

The overall number of skills should be slightly limited
(maybe limit the skill-cmd to list different types of skills). A
player wants to have a short list of the skills he uses and not a
list of 200 lines :)

Adding skills should be done by inheriting the appropriate skill
of /p/skills/.... and maybe setting some extra properties and/or
functions. But the main skill handling should be done in the
/p/skill/... - file, to make life easier for wizards.

Good trained skills are needed more than higher stats while
calculating for example damage of a hit. We are thinking about
giving some 'training hours'  to new players, so that they can
train their skills in their guild or near skill-masters. But you
should not train all your skills. Having all skills at a low
level is stupid. At low levels not all skills are working.
Learning skills by using them will only work if the skills are
successfully used! So if you have all skills at low level you
will need much more time to train them to higher level than
someone who trained first some skills to a higher level and used
them.

After advancing a level you will get some additional training
hours to train other skills in your guild. But the training
should be limited to 80..90 % of skill usage (maybe much less).
You can learn a lot from a skill (guild) master, but you can't
learn all of him. Each master will have a skill in which he is
better than you. So you have to use the skills to get them to the
highest level.

A point of discussing is - training players skills by other
players (and of course - how to implement this). But think
about - a player with a high skills meeting another player with
lower skills - why not train the player with the lower skill?
(The last is actually only an idea!)

A word about general skills: 

A player should have some generals skills from creating his character.
There can be general skills too the player has to learn (maybe by
from a master, maybe by doing it without success). Climbing maybe such
a skill. The player is born without climbing skill, but he can
try to climb a tree (for example) and will fail, but from this
time on, he will have the skill climbing?! 

(just an idea, but should be easy to implement).

Note: a longer and better skill-guidline is prepared by 
      Softbyte/Eilan

6) guilds:
----------

The guild will implement the guild specific skills and some more
features. The creator of the guild can decide if a player who
joined and left the guild can rejoin the guild for a second or
third time.

All guild specific skills should have an inherit for adding in
other livings like npcs to make different types of npc (and
levels).

(You remember? We will have fixed stats, so each npc is equal to
another one, they differ only in their skills, race and how good
they practice their skills!)

Guild-skills can be implemented in three main ways:

   a) The player will get all guild skills with guild-join and
      can advance all skills to maximum.
   
   b) The player will get all guild skills with guild-join but
      can't advance them all to maximum. The maximum depends of
      his actual level.    
   
   c) The player will get new skills with a new level. Then he
      can advance the skills to maximum.

The way b) and c) will make the life nicer for a player, because
he will get something new with a new level. In way a) a lvl 1
player can have all of his guild skills at 100% (sound very
mysterious?).

I would prefer way c) because it is the one which will prevent
you from having all skills at maximum with lvl 10. You will have
something to do when gaining a new level. Getting a new skill
from your guildmaster will become a nice thing (it's better than
not being able to advance the skill  and don't know why), but
this is only my personal opinion.

The way in which guild skills are implemented depends on the
creator of the guild. The creator can choose the system for skill
implementing.

The creator can also choose if the guild should have level titles 
or not.

Note: Eilan is working on a little concept for implementing guilds.

7) Playerkilling
----------------

Playerkilling will be not allowed in the mud. But the player-
killing-areas will work like in old Nightfall.

In all other areas an attack to a player will be
automatically blocked by the gamedriver/mudlib to prevent
playerkilling.

There are some additional thoughts about playerkilling - like
some playerkilling-status - normal, aggressive, killer.
You can switch to the next status if you want. but this switch
isn't reversible. Switching back is only allowed in the state of
death.

If two players meet, both are 'normal' they will not be able to 
kill each other. If one is a normal player, one aggressive, hmmmm
?!?! --> no real good idea now <--

Players who set the killer flag will become -playerkillers- or
for short - Killers - . Killers can kill other killers and can be killed
by them without warnings and without punishments!

There is a decision needed if playerkilling should be allowed in
the first way or in the second way.

(Player-killing-areas are areas where all players can kill each
other -  not only the killers...)


8) armour/weapons/items
------------------------

Weapons and armour (and of course special items) should be more
specific to the monster they are made for.

For example: A dragonblade will work much against dragons,        
             but not against other monsters


The same is of course for true for monsters too.
It is more than a little bit stupid when you hit a dragon with
fire and make damage but the same dragon is invulnerable to
water....

So fire-attack spells should not work against dragons (or with
less effect) but water spells will work fine :) ... and so on

The same for weapons and armour. Maybe a good armour can lower
your agility, because it is a very heavy armour (never saw a
knight running...).

Degradation of weapons and armour is another point to discuss. We
will reach the state of fully auto loading. You will never loose
an item unless it is broken and bent will it be trashed.

But you will never loose it (even if a reset/reboot occurs).

So make your weapons and armour so that a player doesn't get the 
super-weapon or the super-armour and he will invulnerable forever
with it (exception may be special bonus items given for QPs).

Note: Think about the full-autoloading future of our mud.
      Full-autoloading == if a player has one item - he will never
      get rid of it, if the item is nodrop,nogive.
      There must be a way to get rid of any item a player doesn't want!
      Be carefull implementing nodrop,nosell,nogive items!
      (This isn't a special armour/weapon feature - it touches
      any item of the mud.)

9) HLPs
-------

Actually we don't need any sort of high level players. Maybe we
will implement something like Seers (a special status for
players, if they want to stay players but they will have some
wizards abilities). Actually this isn't needed and can be done in
future.


10) New wizards
---------------

I was asked by several people to gain wizardhood in this new mud.
They are tired of other muds and look for a new mud to code.
(Jameson, Godan and Argus from Nightfall, maybe Elfgar too).

I think we should make a fast decision about new wizards, because
we really  need them!!! (actually we have 14 wizards, but we need
much more to code new areas and skills and guilds).

I hope we can promote new wizards in the next 1...2 weeks.

There is a new room in the room directory: /room/voting_room.
A voting box is installed there, where we can decide about the 
wizard-hood of new wizards. 50..66% should be needed I think.
Just insert a new topic about becoming wizard-hood, setup expiration date
and after the date, look at the votes.


11) races
---------

We will implement some races but which ones? The races will be
different than in Nightfall. Each race should have some special
race-skills  (like waterbreathing for homarids for example, or
biting for snakes.....). The races will differ in stats bonus 
and some different skill maximum, eg: light levels and so
on.

Put your ideas for new races here:
--> races..... <--

Note: If I remember correctly - Gwenderon will help to find ideas
      about new (or old) races to make them more interesting and 
      different.


12) NPCs
--------

Some (short) words on the NPC.

Not all NPCs should have the same stats (maybe written
somewhere?). For example: an ant shouldn't have the same stats
like a giant.

Main problem actually is:
  - how to make a common interface for initializing the NPCs? -

SetLevel(int level): set all stats to the 'level'
                     You can modify the stats afterwards.

But all npc with the same stats are equal, so modify the skills
too. Maybe add a common interface to add skills (general&guild)
and set the level of the skills.


---------------------------
13) Missing:
------------

I added this part where all missing parts are noted (thanx Eilan).

There is no concept for magic available.

For example: We need to know how many spells a guild may have.
Do we need special versions of magic: e.g. the 5-elements-magic,
or something like the "Saidin,Saidar"-"source" from the Wheel
of time ? Or everything ? Imho the Druids magic e.g. is a bit
different to the magic of a Sorcerer, Conjurer etc.


Sorry - If I forgot something - "steinigt mich :) Jehova"
Magictcs

PS: thanx to Tune, Mateese and Joan for correcting grammar and
    orthography and adding the ideas I forgot.
