New Room: Arena of the Fallen

[rvdpluijm]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of designing a new (rare) room, called the Arena of the Fallen. The basic idea is that, if this room is found, the player gets the opportunity to fight one more time against an already defeated opponent, thus giving him / her the opportunity to regain a power. However, this should of course be a risky endeavour.

Characteristics:

1. It should be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity only.
2. It isn't just a fight for free. Either the player has to have a relatively tough fight or the player has to sacrifice something in advance.
3. If won, the player will regain the power of the spirit as usual.

For 2, I'm considering the following options:

1. The player should sacrifice a certain item (say, a weapon).
2. The player must fight the opponent with a penalty on his stats (say: [level of the opponent]^2) / health, thus making the fight more risky in terms of survival.
3. The player must sacrifice [level of the opponent]^2 in permanent hit points.

Any ideas / thoughts?

List of features I'd like to have implemented:

• [x] Reviving stronger monsters in the Arena of the Fallen.
• [x] Do not allow teleportation.
• [x] Fix the smoke / backdrop bug.
• [x] Otherworldly spectators.
• [x] Fix the demonic spectators rule.
• [x] Only make shard available once power has been lost.

[ektemple]

I like the idea. I think it could be both a tougher fight than usual and require a sacrifice.

Maybe the souls of the monsters available for combat are imprisoned in crystal shards jutting out of an altar at the center of the room, and you have to smash one with a weapon to release the spirit. The weapon is consumed in the process. The player needs to re-equip for the first round of the combat, so an opportunity to concentrate is lost (I think--equipping a weapon does consume time, correct?). This would be a very minor factor in making the combat more difficult.

For the major thing making the fight more difficult, I think a health debuff would be OK. But maybe there is a way to do it that also makes the fight itself more interesting? I don't have any concrete ideas, really. Possibly there is a crowd of demonic spectators in the arena, who might interfere in some way with our performance. Distractions, minor, unanswerable attacks, that kind of thing...?

[rvdpluijm]

Erik,

Regarding the sacrifice: Cool! I like it! Perhaps, if the player tries to smash it unarmed, it instead takes 1d6 hitpoints?

Regarding the idea to make the fight more interesting: I could of course combine this idea with the already in v8 beta implemented "Tension rooms"; i.e. rooms which make combat different as time progresses. One could think of that crowd of demonic spectators (or something akin), which becomes tougher when tension either grows or, perhaps more interesting, is too low.

The idea would be that if tension is low (say: 10 or below), the spectators want to interfere with the fight. Since they are growing bored with the fight, they decide to give some 'encouraging pokes', which indeed do minor damage (perhaps tension / 5). I don't think this should trigger concentration loss as such (combat would then be uninteresting, as it is only a matter of attacking on and on).

An alternative would be to say that they only give encouraging pokes to the fighter with higher hitpoints, since they want an interesting fight.

[ektemple]

Another idea, orthogonal to those that Remko suggested: The player could be required, since this is an arena contest, to wear an article of clothing that penalizes one of his qualities. He could choose between two items, chosen to debuff his two strongest scores. His enemy would then be forced to take the other. This could potentially set up some interesting choices. For example: "I want to wear my own Bodice of Physique, but if I instead wear the proffered Vest of the Submental, my physically powerful enemy will have to choose the Armbands of the Shaven Judge, weakening his body score." Essentially, I've chosen to take two debuffs--one to mind (the vest I decided to wear for the combat) and one to body (removing the bodice of physique I was already wearing so that I can put on the vest), for the purpose of giving the enemy a debuff to his most important stat.

May be too involved, but as long as we're flinging notions around...

[curiousdannii]

No, involved is good. It would be a sort of mini-game!

I think this should be very tough. Lots of blood magic. The chosen enemy will be resurrected to one level stronger than you. Maybe without much reward when you defeat them, other than their power.

[rvdpluijm]

Great stuff all!

I first thought of a dome, which could either be caught off completely (i.e. no retreating possible) or would be very difficult to flee (i.e. impossible without any magical means such as teleportation). Since the imp will be one of the possible candidates, its teleporting ability will have to be removed. The idea is of course that this should be a fight to the death. Naturally, all of these conditions should be mentioned beforehand.

I love the idea of the clothing. I'm not certain whether it is possible to switch clothes during combat (I assume not), but I think equipping cursed armour and afterwards disintegrating the thing will be most adequate.

On the level being one higher: how does this work in Attack / Kerkerkruip? What does 'adding a level to a monster' mean? I presume it involves higher HP, probably better faculties? I think this is interesting, although I do not want the choice to be a no-brainer. Giving a level 1 power for the cost of 5, while also giving a level 3 power for the cost of 5 is perhaps a bit of a no-brainer, if powers indeed level up in strength.

[VictorGijsbers]

I'll be reading the proposals in more detail later, but just to reply to Remko's final question: there is not concept of "adding a level" in the Kerkerkruip code, because levels have never been dynamic before. (Plus, we probably shouldn't be raising the real level of the monster anyway, because that would interfere with absorbing its power!) But to make a monster the equivalent in terms of power of a monster of one level higher would involve something like:

+1 to melee +1 to defence +1 to body, mind, spirit +(1d6+3) health and permanent health

[curiousdannii]

Sorry, I meant that it should have faculties worth one level greater than you.

There should probably be some way to escape, but it would have to be unusual. Perhaps only teleportation and reaping.

[ektemple]

I agree that it should be hard or impossible to flee. Some practicalities that should be thought through:

1. It only makes sense for enemies with souls to be our gladiatorial candidates, correct? So, the imp would be out, as would all other level-less creatures?
2. The room won't function unless a certain state of affairs obtains: We have to have killed at least one enemy and then lost its power. For things to be fun, there should be at least two such enemies available--it may be that I really didn't even want the power that was lost... 2a. But it's possible that the player could run across the room without having killed anything, assuming that it is reached via natural means, e.g. standard tunnel connections or via digging. How do we ensure that there are fallen monsters for the player to fight? 2b. If the room is disconnected from all tunnels, we can handle this by not moving the room into the layout until there are enough lost powers available. 2c. Alternatively, we could place the room outside of the map entirely and make it accessible via a "ticket" that appears in the game only after there are lost powers available. Picking up or activating the ticket would teleport you to the arena.
3. Only fairly weak creatures, levels 1 to 3, will ever be in the arena, so we should definitely consider tweaking their stats up, as Dannii suggested. (Or is there a way for the player to lose a level 4 power w/o killing Malygris?)
4. If we go with the clothing idea, it should probably be super-cursed, so that even reading a scroll of remove curse won't get it off of us until the fight is complete.

[VictorGijsbers]

1, Yes, that would be best.

2. The simplest solution would be to have the player activate the fight in some way, and have this activation mechanism not work when there are no monsters to fight against. That way, you don't have to mess with room placement in any way.
3. You cannot lose a level 4 power in any way. (Logically, you lost it when you kill Malygris, but since this has no effect on the game it is not implemented -- that is, Malygris doesn't grant a power.)

[curiousdannii]

Perhaps there could be a tome in the room, which can be read, but only once all the conditions for the battle are met.

Perhaps we could ask for the name of a victorious player, and before a power is list, the arena could list that previous victor's name? Or if the player has never been successful, it could show Victor's name. Because, puns!

[ektemple]

Re: 2. Ah, yes, I hadn't considered that running across the empty arena, and the five (empty) crystals or the (empty) tome, would still be intriguing for a player, even if she couldn't yet do anything there. Break a shard or read the book, the passageways close, and the battle commences!

[rvdpluijm]

1. Yes. The reason I brought up the imp at all is to point out the potential issue with teleporting creatures.
2. I second Victor in his state of affairs to use a certain system. Perhaps Erik's suggestion using the 'shards of lost souls' should be the best option. That way, souls can collect there, generating more shards. Destroying any of the shards will trigger combat, which is naturally only possible when a body is destroyed and its soul is gone. Another idea is that the Arena Entrance is a room which is connectable. The Arena (a massive dome) itself can only be entered via the Arena Entrance (thus not placed using normal rules, more akin to the plane of smoke), where a bulky guy ( / unseen force / magical spell / you name it) stops everyone from entering. Only when conditions are met, one can enter the dome itself.
3. I'm definitely going to tweak them, but I am still doubting about how much. I'm thinking of 1.5 times the level (i.e. 2, 3 and 5 for level 1, 2 and 3 respectively) as a bonus on 'level' , i.e. stats and d6 health.
4. Indeed supercursed clothing. It also makes it less likely for the player to try to escape.
5. I like Dannii's idea of showing the last player successful! I'm not certain how to pull that off (it would require us to register somewhere in the Kerkerkruip history (perhaps as an achievement) who successfully defeated the Arena).

[VictorGijsbers]

I had some discussion with Remko about this room. One proposal that didn't seem to be worth the trouble of implementing to me is the "track the name of a victorious player" idea. I'd guess that 99% of all Kerkerkruip players will play it on a computer on which they alone ever play it, so you'll just always see your own name there. Not too interesting.

[curiousdannii]

I guess that would depend if we ask them to give their own name or to name their character.

[rvdpluijm]

I am adding just a small twist to the name showing. The idea is that there are high reliefs, showing past battles. The last battle shown will be either Victor destroying Malygris, or the Player who has defeated the creature of choice. Just a small mention of the last honourable fight.

[rvdpluijm]

First (alpha) version is implemented. None of the fancy stuff (e.g. choices between cursed items, demonic spectators) has been implemented. And for some reason some smoke entered my Arena, which I tried to move to the Entrance back (which obviously failed due to being a backdrop).

Furthermore, there is an ugly hack in there to allow for the only current group. I selected the package via a regular expression, but I'll have to run the dungeon placement rule again to select all the creatures.

[VictorGijsbers]

Perhaps the broken pipe spawned in the Arena?

[rvdpluijm]

It didn't say so. Would Kerkerkruip mention such an event? Furthermore, it happened three times in a row. Op 16 feb. 2013 18:13 schreef "VictorGijsbers" notifications@github.com het volgende:

Perhaps the broken pipe spawned in the Arena?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/issues/31#issuecomment-13659524.

[VictorGijsbers]

The broken pipe would be mentioned in the room description. I'll check it out!

[rvdpluijm]

I saw Dannii's change with regards to the fanatics of Aite Package, but I'll still need to change the Arena's behaviour accordingly. Thinking about this, however, brought up a related question: how should the Arena handle enslaved, neutral parties, such as Fahrfad and the Mouser? They could become powerful familiars when adjusted a few levels and the slug is defeated. Is this what we have in mind? How should I place those characters back in the dungeon after a fight?

[curiousdannii]

Maybe some enemies just won't be revivable? I don't see how the overmind could be fairly fought, because if the arena is locked away while the battle is underway it won't be able to call anyone new to itself.

As for the mindslug, perhaps Fafhrd and Mouser could be revived too. If they are currently your allies, then maybe two nameless zombies could be revived.

Similarly, weapons will need to be cloned because the player could have taken them.

I wonder if we need a set of rules for placing an enemy which would take care of weapons and clothing etc. The rules could be used initially too... better to have the one set of rules used everywhere rather than two systems.

[rvdpluijm]

Okay, but then there'll need to be a property which I can check (i.e. 'revivability') and I'll have to think what will be the consequence of trying to revive an unrevivable character. Will it take another, random character? Should I take a standard replacement (perhaps even from off-stage, not already fought, in order to replace the power with another), arguing that "Evil magic is not something to be toyed with"?

[rvdpluijm]

After discussing this with @VictorGijsbers, we decided that Fafhrd and the Mouser shouldn't be revived at the battle in the Arena, since they are only enslaved and normally neutral towards the player.

By @curiousdannii's current issue50 branch implementation of groups, it simply means I'll have to make the same checks that are made to determine whether the group has been defeated. Every opponent which attributes towards this goal has to be revived in the Arena.

[rvdpluijm]

Another issue: Will allies join the fight in the Arena? I'm kinda opposed to this idea, since this will ease the challenge and isn't in a certain sense portraying the idea of an Arena.

[rvdpluijm]

So... Still having trouble with the smoke item and I'm not certain whether I should simply search through all items which aren't backdrops or that I should search for a more elegant solution.

[VictorGijsbers]

I've been rewriting the Arena of the Fallen. Quite a bit still needs to be done, but I've got a question: shouldn't it be the case that only shards are available for powers which have already been LOST?

[rvdpluijm]

I've done some rewriting too... I'm guessing you've seen those already? Regarding the shards: I simply sought a method to create objects based on persons available, without making by hand a shard per person. The only method I could find in the different manuals was via relations.

I create shards for each of the monsters and then move the shard after it has been granted, i.e. after the person is dead and the power isn't granted anymore, if I'm not mistaken.

2013/4/22 VictorGijsbers notifications@github.com

I've been rewriting the Arena of the Fallen. Quite a bit still needs to be done, but I've got a question: shouldn't it be the case that only shards are available for powers which have already been LOST?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/issues/31#issuecomment-16823410 .

---

Met vriendelijke groet,

Remko van der Pluijm

Postgraduate Student Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Ghent LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/**rvanderpluijmhttp://nl.linkedin.com/in/rvanderpluijm

[VictorGijsbers]

Ah, no, right now it also has a shard available if you still possess the power. I'll put it on the todo-list.

[rvdpluijm]

That's quite strange... If I look at my code: Repeat with P running through powers that are not granted: Repeat with Per running through all dead persons: if Per grants P: Repeat with soulfrag running through soulfragments soulcatched by Per: if soulfrag is off-stage: move soulfrag to the soulchest.

I am assuming that powers that are not granted from dead persons could only be powers which I do not possess...

[rvdpluijm]

Regarding the demonic spectators rule: It is based on your pile count increment rule. The idea is that there is a relatively small chance that doing no damage (i.e. higher tension) will provoke an attack / distraction. The incrementation of the demonic distraction is reflecting that they get fed up with lack of combat even more after this hasn't worked. I think I can simplify this. I'll rewrite it and test it a bit more.

[rvdpluijm]

For the backdrop problem... would a simple "Unless item is a backdrop" suffice?

[VictorGijsbers]

Teleportation is now impossible outside the dungeon, so also in the Arena. Does this mean we can close the issue? (Enhancements slated for future releases should perhaps be put in a new issue.)

[rvdpluijm]

Agreed!

Met vriendelijke groet,

Remko van der Pluijm Op 6 mei 2013 16:34 schreef "VictorGijsbers" notifications@github.com het volgende:

Teleportation is now impossible outside the dungeon, so also in the Arena. Does this mean we can close the issue? (Enhancements slated for future releases should perhaps be put in a new issue.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/issues/31#issuecomment-17484506 .