Kerkerkruip discussions

Playing Game Hints
41

It would probably be a good idea to not have the slaves rebel when there is no combat going on. We don’t want to force the player to consider such mundane questions as “what is fastest route from A to B”, and so on – outside of combat, exploration should be encouraged. Perhaps it would be nice to have the chance that a slave rebels on its turn be equal to the current tension? At 5 tension, the slave has a 5% chance of rebelling, and so on. That is pretty intuitive, easy to explain, and it also makes it clear to the player why it can only happen in combat. Plus, it makes tension even more tense than usual.

The player should certainly be able to attack his slaves. I agree with the idea that you get a bonus on your first attack, after which they immediately turn hostile. Any slave which has been betrayed in this way cannot be enslaved again.

Perhaps the slave, when it rebels normally because of tension, doesn’t turn hostile immediately – you see a message saying something like “'s soul is slipping from your grasp”, and it only really turns on you on its next turn. This would allow the player a last opportunity to backstab her slave, perhaps killing it and gaining its power in the process.

(By the way, I need to redesign the factions system to make all of this possible; or rather, I need to clean up the mess I made of it when I decided that factions and monster types were equivalent. For instance, undead are a faction, and when the player turns undead he actually becomes of a different faction, which is why Fafhrd and Mouser will attack you when this happens. Which was intended, but of course it wouldn’t work well with this new slave mechanic, and in fact it was a terrible design decision in the first place, because it rusn to conceptually different things together. I have no idea why I decided to do it that way.)

Perhaps it should get a number of hit points bak based on the player’s body score? 5 + body/2, something like that. (Your slaves will always be level 0, level 1 or level 2 creatures, so getting getting 7-15 health back would not be inconsiderable.)

Yes, it always works this way with any person that is killed in any way: the player absorbs the soul. (Well, if the abyss of the soul isn’t present.) Fafhrd and Mouser, and undead, cannot cheat you out of souls.

Nothing ever happens in rooms where the player is not, so this scenario could never happen.

Ok, that is not exactly true: there is one creature which can kill other creatures when you are not present. You can exploit this for a non-standard victory. Spoilers below. But it is not important for the current discussion.

The Nameless Horror, which you can sometimes release by digging into the Eternal Prison, will follow you through the dungeon, killing anyone it meets. Including Malygris, which will win you the game… though with a rather pyrrhic victory message.

42

I’d suggest that if you retreat from a room where you have slaves, the slaves are freed.

43

Regarding whether you have to defeat an enemy first to dominate them: surely the obvious solution is to have their remaining hit points effect the chance of success, so that a near death enemy is much easier to subdue than one that’s hale and hearty.

44

Yes, that is an obvious solution. I’ll try to hammer all of this into a coherent shape and implement it as soon as possible.

If anyone has good ideas about the power of the tentacle or Bodmall’s thorns power, let me know. (I know the direction I want to go with the power of Aite and the minotaur’s power – which is really his axe, rather than the power itself.)

45

It might be fun if I give you a list of things I currently want to implement in Kerkerkruip.

1. Finishing the powers

I like the way the new powers are shaping up. They need playtesting of course, but we’re definitely getting away from the “most powers are mweh” situation where we were before. In my thinking, the design aim should be that:

A. Level 1 and 2 powers are useful. You’ll want to have them, when you have them you’ll want to use them, and they’ll somewhat change the way that you play.
B. Level 3 and 4 powers are major game changers. Your experience will be very different if you have different level 3 or level 4 powers. (The power of the mindlsug, as we are developing it right now, is a good example.)

2. Body, mind and spirit

I want to see items that increase in power as you increase your faculties; items that give you bonuses or penalties to your faculties; and more events in the game that ask for body, mind and spirit checks. This is a vague goal that will be achieved gradually, but going through the entire Items extension and seeing which items could be changed to achieve it is a more concrete part of it.

3. Religion

Religion is currently quite boring. I think I’d like to go some way towards Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: when you pray in a temple, you decide to worship that god from now on. This god will start actively intervening in the world, which can be both positive and negative. If you decide to switch from one god to another, the god you have abandoned will start punsihing you. Punishment should be bad enough that switching from one god to another is not something you’ll normally do, but survivable enough that it can be worth it in some circumstances.

This obviously involves giving all the gods more and more interesting powers, and it might involve adding further gods.

4. Malygris

I like Malygris, but he is too predictable for the main villain. So what I’d like to do is give him some more powers and items, and then randomly decide which of these he gets at the beginning of the game.

5. Feeding

I have been playing with the idea of “blood magic” for a while, and this is the version that currently seems most interesting to me: items that you can feed with your own blood. Here’s how it works. Some items have the special property that if you feed them n of your health, they get a new or better power. It might be possible to do this multiple times, with steadily increasing costs to your health. (For flavour, think of items that receive their magic from trapped demons or souls. Or maybe they are demons, Ron Edwards’s Sorcerer style.)

Why would this be interesting? Because it sets up a new risk-reward cycle: you can improve your equipment (i.e., your long-term chances) by increasing the risk of death right now (decreasing your short-term chances). You have the reaper down to 2 health, and will probably kill him with your next blow, after which you’ll be fully healed. Can you take the risk of feeding the Demon Crown of Domination 10 of your health? It might mean that the Reaper gets really lucky and kills you. But it probably won’t. And the Demon Crown becomes much better if you do decide to do it…

This system would work because all the ways that Kerkerkruip has to heal are risky and limited. (Because there is only one way: fighting monsters. Though, come to think of it, we’d need to ensure that items like the vampiric dagger don’t work against monsters of which there is an unlimited supply, such as the smoke demon. Making it not work against demons and undead is probably good enough.)

And it would turn even a simple, one-sided fight into an exciting fight. You have just killed Bodmall, and now you want the power of the blood ape before you go on to fight Malygris. All you need to do is type “a” a couple of times. There’s no risk. But now you’ve got this feedable item, and you’re wondering whether it would be safe to fight the blood ape with only 10 health left. And what about with only 4 health left? He is really weak, you know…

As always, your thoughts are welcome!

46

I’m not sure I understand this. Are we assuming that using the power would work like this? :

  1. At some point in combat with an enemy, the player needs to type DOMINATE.
  2. When DOMINATE is typed, a spirit (or mind?) check of some sort is done to see whether domination is successful. If the enemy has low hit points, the player gets a bonus toward domination.
  3. If domination is successful, nothing happens immediately. If it is unsuccessful, nothing happens at all.
  4. When the enemy is reduced to 0 hit points, it either dies or is dominated, depending on the outcome of the earlier domination check?

If that’s what’s envisioned, I think I would prefer that the bonus toward dominating come from concentration rather than from hit points. That seems more appropriate thematically (increased mental acuity tracking with increased capacity for mental domination), and it also means that I won’t have to worry about accidentally killing the creature I am hoping to dominate. (If I’m Level 4 with a good weapon and am trying to dominate a Level 1 creature, that’s a very real possibility).

It might also be nice if the act of domination were paired with physical damage, so that if I do succeed in dominating, there is some immediate payoff–and maybe I even defeat the creature at the same time, so that domination involves striking him/her/it down and overcoming his/her/its mind, all in one fell swoop. A failed domination in this scenario would, of course, do no damage. What I’m trying to avoid is the situation described above, where I type DOMINATE, succeed, and then nothing happens (immediately, at least). Alternatively, I guess that a successful domination might not cause damage, but would act like the (current) stun power, breaking the enemy’s concentration and maybe preventing it from concentrating for a turn or two…

–Erik

47

Perfect.

Have you played POWDER? You have to play the game very differently depending on your relationships with the various deities: There are no punishments for switching deities, but your behavior is approved of or disapproved of by the gods whether or not you are or have in the past worshipped them, and the benefits and rewards of working with the gods provides character builds (magic-user vs fighter etc), but the feeling is also a bit like being a hero in classical mythology–I’m pleasing Zeus, but boy is Poseidon angry at me! The gods also contest with each other, with a defender sometimes able to keep a hostile god from cursing you.

I bring this up not because I think that POWDER’s system is the right model for religion in Kerkerkruip–I’m pretty sure it isn’t–but because I think it suggests that religion is at its most interesting when it strongly shapes how the game is played, whether through prescriptions or proscriptions on player behavior. In short, I think–in addition to what you’ve already stated–it’s worth considering a model in which worshipping a god requires the player to hew to some kind of code, and failure to hew to it can result in bad results for a player even if he/she is worshipping.

One example might be: A god who hates blood magic, but gives some balancing benefits in return for abstention. If the player does blood magic in disregard of the god’s proscription, things go badly…

Wholehearted agreement!

I like it!

48

Not quite: I was imagining that the domination would take effect instantly, so it would be possible (but very unlikely) to stroll up to the blood ape and say DOMINATE, and have it be enslaved straight away. However, reducing the ape to very low health first would increase your chances of success greatly.

49

Gotcha–an alternative to what Victor originally proposed, as opposed to a refinement of it. I think that proposal sounds good. Thanks for clarifying!

50

If we want facilities to matter more, here is my suggestion for the new dominate power. Make a standard Kerkerkruip roll plus the player’s mind, and compare it to the target’s current hit points + mind/2. Concentration improves this roll (and is consumed) as though it were an attack (bonus of 2/4/8), but the target’s concentration protects him as well (by maybe 1/2/4). If the player wins, the target is enslaved. Otherwise, perform a straight mind roll vs. mind roll contest with the same concentration bonuses; if the player wins, the target loses concentration (as well as the player). An enslaved monster follows you around and generally acts like your friend. If you lose the power of dominate for any reason (say, by absorbing a level 4 power), your mindslaves instantly snap out of it; similarly if you attack a mindslave, but you get a HUGE bonus on your betrayal. You monster. You absorb the soul as normal if and when your mindslave finally dies. Domination has a cooldown of 12 - spirit/3 turns (same as pierce).

I designed this so that you have a pretty good chance of success if the target is pretty beat up, but because it uses a standard roll you have the chance for a critical hit even if your opponent is still tough. I added the extra chance to wreck the opponent’s concentration so that you at least usually get something for burning your own concentration.

My other idea was to make it basically an actual attack/damage roll with an insanely overpowered “weapon” (in the d12 range, not dodgeable or parryable), using the player’s mind to derive attack and damage bonuses. (Maybe the defender’s mind gives the same random defense bonus his body normally would?) This attack wouldn’t do any real damage, but it interacts with both combatants’ concentration normally, and if the attack would have killed the target outright he gets enslaved instead.

The power of the tentacle should summon a tentacle to help the player out! The tentacle would randomly confuse (as now), grapple (causing constriction damage and preventing dodge and parry until the grapple is broken by damaging the tentacle), or slam (a medium-damage direct attack). But it’s immobile, so it can’t follow the player around without being summoned again (which is on a long-ish cooldown, especially if you get the tentacle killed). I don’t know how hard this would be to code though.

51

Suggestions for the power of the tentacle:

What if we adjust Tooloo’s mythology slightly, so that this tentacle is the last remnant of that tentacled horror, instead of just one of a number of its still-living appendages? And so instead of absorbing the anima of the severed tentacle, we absorb the soul of Tooloo itself? I’m thinking that this would give the player Tooloo’s phantom tentacles, which while not able to do damage directly, can pick up weapons from the floor or the player’s inventory (or perhaps from the hands of enemies) and use them to attack the player’s foes, effectively giving the player multiple attacks per turn.

Stated like this, the power sounds way too powerful, but there are lots of potential ways to balance:

  • Since the tentacles aren’t physical, they are not as effective at wielding weapons as they might otherwise be. Thus, there are multiple attacks per round, but each attack has both to-hit and damage penalties. Possibly the tentacle has a chance to drop weapons, e.g. when it is successfully parried.
  • And/or: maybe the player cannot control the tentacles–they spring into action when they like, perhaps even disarming the player as they seek weapons to use. Maybe they slice up allies. Or they merrily toss our grenades around.
  • And/or, since the PC can’t see the tentacles and because his brain is not wired to control so many appendages, he has a chance to confuse himself (ala the present power) when using them.
  • And/or, turning a bit toward horror, Tooloo takes over the PC’s body over time, remaking us corporeally into a new tentacled avatar for His Horrificness on this plane. Perhaps this saps the PC’s spirit, lowers to-hit bonuses from the body stat, or makes other changes.

Or maybe, since Tooloo is evidently a cousin (or mispronunciation?) of Cthulhu, we simply gain the power to inspire extradimensional dread in our foes? :wink:

–Erik

52

Side note: “Tulu” has been used as a name for that Great Old One, so “Tooloo” might not even need be a “cousin.” Technically all spellings of Cthulhu in any human language are recorded mispronunciations. The closest you could probably get with human vocal cords is to cough while pronouncing the syllables “Khlul-loo.” It would probably help if you had tentacles.

… carry on, gents, fine discussion.

53

… on said vocal chords!

Tentacle

Zahariel and Erik, I like the tentacle ideas, especially (a) tentacles wielding weapons, and (b) tentacles going on a rampage. Now what I want to avoid is having a merely passive power, or a power that you should always invoke on the first round of combat. It’s more fun if the player has more choice – about when to use a power, for instance, or how often. So what about this: the player can summon more than one tentacle (perhaps one for every weapon in her inventory, with a maximum of three or four or five), but the greater the number of tentacles, the greater the probability that they all go on a rampage. When they go on a rampage, you’ll have to either kill the tentacles or wait until the rampage subsides – running away is not possible, since the tentacles are parts of yourself.

Mindslug

I’ve started preliminary implementation, and will get back to you once I’ve worked out the details of a first implementation.

Religion

Erik, I hate the idea of codes of conduct. Well, I don’t hate it when it’s done like in Nethack: they are completely voluntary, have no effect in the game, and merely serve as additional “achievements” at the end of the game. (“You have used no wishes.”) Kerkerkruip already has some of these in the form of achievements, and “not using blood magic” would be a great addition. The main reason I don’t hate these is that they give you no benefit, so you’ll always only do them because you want an additional challenge.

But I do hate it when it takes the form of “if you wish to get the benefits of following Bork the god of Slaughter, you are forbidden from ever casting any spells”. Such a conduct reduces a lot of interesting decisions (which spell shall I learn? which spell shall I cast right now? will I cast a spell right now, or do I attack or retreat?) to one single decision early in the game (do I follow Bork?). Such a reduction of the number of interesting choices simply makes the game less interesting.

And what is worse, I may be “forced” into this conduct in the sense that for my character, it is the best strategy to follow Bork. One of the design principles I hold very dear is that the optimal strategy should also be the most fun strategy. Having less interesting choices to make is not fun; and therefore it should never be the optimal game strategy to get myself in a situation where I have less interesting choices. Gods with codes of conduct do exactly that.

If you disagree, let me know.

Now what I do like is the idea that the gods might give you certain advantages and disadvantages that might influence your playing style. A god that disallows blood magic: bleh. A god that makes all blood magic cost 25% more blood: great! A god that makes all blood magic cost 300% more blood: bleh, because that is functionally equivalent to disallowing it.

54

Ha, I wondered whether someone would follow up on my misapplication of “mispronunciation”!

I think this sounds pretty good. I feel like it maybe needs one more mechanism to be as interesting as the new mindslug power…? Maybe not, but it doesn’t feel quite as rich with possibilities yet. Any ideas, all?

Bodmall
I haven’t thought about this in detail, but how about the PC gains more than one of Bodmall’s powers, with the chance to combine them for different effects? E.g., I raise thorns, and then I zap them with lightning to set them aflame, which makes them more deadly, but they disappear after 1-2 turns, while the room fills with smoke. I’m not sure how much scope there is for this kind of interaction given the powers she possesses. And giving the player lightning in particular would need to be handled carefully–it would be only the second ranged weapon in the game, I think. Maybe it could be a form of blood magic, so the player has to spend precious hit points to use it? (Along the same lines, I suppose that the glass cannon could also be a blood magic artifact.)

Anyway, just some ideas.

Oops, I shouldn’t have relied on familiarity with POWDER for my explanation. POWDER’s system of deity approval/disapproval is nothing at all like Nethack’s codes of conduct, nor does it resemble “if you wish to get the benefits of following Bork the god of Slaughter, you are forbidden from ever casting any spells”. I would say that the main goal of the system is precisely to encourage players to use multiple playing styles in a single game.

I’m not sure it’s useful to continue talking about POWDER, but basically nothing is forbidden in the sense that it can’t be done or that there is an immediate retribution against it. Instead, your actions are observed by all of the gods all of the time (not just when you’re worshipping them). When you do something one of them likes, your piety score with that god is increased, and vice versa with something verboten. Once a god’s piety scores get to a certain level (positive or negative), boons or curses can be doled out (random chance per turn, influenced by the piety score); boons and curses cost the god points to use, so the player doesn’t get destroyed in a few turns once he’s earned a god’s enmity. Gods who love you can also spend boons to protect you from another god’s anger.

POWDER is a long game, and like most roguelikes it also involves a lot of grinding and exploration. The deity system’s cumulative approach to behavior works well at that scale, and it makes the grinding much more interesting. Kerkerkruip is much shorter, and it has zero grinding & fairly minimal exploration (there aren’t any boring hallways to walk down!). Because of that, I’m not sure whether the basic system of cumulative piety points would be an appropriate one; it might be, but there might also not be a long enough arc for things to become interesting (I’d estimate that POWDER’s system starts getting interesting in terms of interaction with the gods at about the 3rd level of the dungeon; they affect your decisions from the start, though). The other downside to such a system is that it’s complicated. Kerkerkruip would probably benefit from something simpler.

Other systems might work better while drawing on the same spirit, e.g. your proposal that gods influence other game mechanics…

…might work in such a system. Of course, unless there are only one or two of these per god, this would also become pretty complicated to communicate to the player.

I don’t have much in the way of specific recommendations, my interest was really in suggesting that the religion system have the potential to affect the long arc of the game as well as individual tactical decisions; i.e., that it be a force for influencing the player to try different styles of play.

55

Here are some of my old thoughts on Kerkerkruip’s religions:

I think the two most significant elements already in Kerkerkruip are soul absorbing and portals. The idea of gods fits into this, though as it is now the gods are very underused. So Malygris is manipulating portals and messing around with souls.

  1. What are his goals here?
  2. Do the gods approve of his use of portals and souls? Is there a struggle between the gods and Malygris, or are they united? Are the gods themselves united or divided?
  3. Who are the gods? Are they actually gods? What interest do they have in portals and souls?
  4. There could be more portals in the dungeon. The portals provide mobility, but they also bring in new life to it as well. What if the slug was drawing a constant stream of innocent people through portals. You might find them wandering across the map before you realise they are drawing you into the slug’s lair where you face 20 of them at once.
  5. Is there a portal that will lead you out of the dungeon entirely? If so, what do you find? Can you dig to the surface if you can’t find a portal?
  6. Some of the hostiles work for the gods, but is Malygris trying to sway them to his side? Does he have allies, or slaves instead?
56

I have just pushed into a hints branch the beginnings of a contextual hint system. Hints will be shown the first time the player should retreat, and if they attack three times without concentrating. Once a hint has been given it will not be given again (stored in a data file.) We should add many other hints of course! They don’t have to be very basic hints like these either, they could be hints for the end game, or for rare objects or situations.

57

I have started a Pinterest board for the creature artwork. The art for the Chain Golem is there now alongside the Reaper:

pinterest.com/eriktemple/kerkerkruip/

There is also a board for posting ideas and models for other creature portraits:

pinterest.com/eriktemple/kerkerkruip-ideas/

Please feel free to comment on Pinterest (or here, if you prefer–though preferably in a new thread). If you’d like to collaborate by sharing visual ideas, let me know your Pinterest user name and I’ll give you the ability to pin to the board.

–Erik

58

If we’re not averse to powers having multiple commands, here’s another idea: Grapple mode. Once at least one tentacle has been summoned, we can instruct it/them to grapple our opponent. It/they will drop the weapon(s) it is holding; these fall to the floor. Once tentacles have gone into grapple mode for a combat, they must spend one turn grabbing a dropped weapon in order to return to regular combat (or they simply never return to using weapons and remain in grapple mode for the rest of the fight). In grapple mode, the tentacles work together, and there is a to-hit bonus depending on the number of tentacles engaged. When they hit, they do no damage, but they immobilize the opponent and break his concentration. Each turn thereafter, the opponent must attempt to escape before he can attack. While grappling, the player can attack the enemy, but he cannot concentrate. The enemy, on the other hand, can concentrate after the initial locking on of the tentacles.

Essentially, grapple mode gives the player the chance to make a quick, fast attack to try to break the enemy’s concentration, but does no damage. Provided that the tentacles can effectively grapple after that, the player has a chance to inflict damage, but w/o a concentration bonus. Tactically, the attack would be best employed when a dangerous attack is imminent. (This would be a particular good attack to use against a highly energized flesh bomb.)

–Erik

59

Heh, I’ve never imagined the chain golem as having a face!

I liked your grim reaper on black, do you think they would all work on black? I’m imagining a new front page, all on black, with a menu on the left and a random portrait on the right. I don’t think it needs to be animated, though that would be a bonus. How much would it add to the filesize?

60

My original thought was also that everything would be on black. The chain golem is on white only because I draw them in black on white–mostly because Illustrator defaults to black for new type objects–and I was too lazy last night to shift the colors :wink:

However, I now want to see whether it might be better to allow each image to have its own background: possibly the background could have a very light texture (imitative of paper, perhaps?). Possibly that won’t feel right and we’ll be able to go with a simple black background for all, but I want to leave the option open, probably until a majority of the portraits are done.

I am currently imagining that each portrait will be assembled before our eyes on the title page. Not assembled glyph for glyph or anything (yowzers!), but the idea is that the background, the drawing, and the title would all slide in separately. This is actually fairly conservative in terms of file size–each image can be smaller, there is less wasted space in each image, and there is the possibility of reuse for the backgrounds. Of course, having a whole bunch of images will increase the file size, but I aver that it will still be smaller than the average downloaded non-text game!

EDITED TO ADD:

Yeah, in my imagination as a player, the chain golem was not really strongly humanoid. He was more like this fella:

But I despaired of being able to make an unfamiliar form like that readable with type as the medium. So I opted for a humanoid form that could be rendered using both fairly “realistic” and quite impressionistic representations of chains. If someone else wants to have a go at it, that’s cool with me!