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I think we should be more willing to question "information leaks" as a rationale. Whether a monster that is tracking you is visible on the screen or not, you still know where it is. If it has started wandering, that is usually evident after a few turns. After that the difference between ho...

Yeah, there's something wrong with the way of thinking about numbers you see in crawl. What should happen when you define systems like this is you come up with some statistics and parameters - averages, variances, mins and maxes - you understand well and devise a way to turn those things you underst...

Blinks tank your per aut damage output. Without them, you would rarely see a monster that can last enough hits to teleport. You have a straight damage brand strictly superior to electrocution that scores instant KOs. There's a better argument to remove the teleportation effect, since its main differ...

Exploring the boundaries of online content every day here on the tavern.

Pop-tarts are sandwiches.

I am just saying that Sil isn't viewed as somehow incomplete for its lack of a wizard type character along the lines of what exists in crawl and other roguelikes. Sil and DCSS are both very good when viewed in the context of their origins, but they are both far from perfect, so there is an interesti...

It's unclear to me how this is worse, fundamentally, from melee where you rest to regain HP. It would be best, of course, never to have to rest or pause in the progression of the game. If you look at really clean game designs, like you see with many commercial titles, you don't have this thing wher...

There are two things that make crawl crawl: 1) Combat with high per-turn variability, low average consequence per turn (e.g. low damage, low chance of being hit with magical effects, low availability of items and abilities that have a major effect in a single turn). This is what makes the amount of ...

If you don't have a coherent critical perspective on crawl, you're not going to come up with something better starting from crawl. The popularity of these complaints about removing things that you see at the character creation screen gives you a clue of where this stuff comes from. "Food should...

Currently hellcrawl has a version of ranged reform that is quite good. In it, there are no blowguns (which is excellent) and three kinds of darts (which are thrown): Poison, curare, and frenzy. The OP is correct to say that sleeping and paralysis are remarkably similar, but the OP overrates the diff...

Yeah, that's a totally irresponsible perspective.

It is interesting that the most egregious and obviously bad reference that comes to mind in connection with this thread, which was in the game for about 20 years as far as I can tell and where the error was compounded by adding the berserking mechanic in post-Linley versions, falls in the "acci...

@ion_frigate: My memory of the Sword of Jihad debacle is fragmentary, but we seem to agree that while the underlying criticism was obviously correct and way overdue to be addressed, the person behind it was trolling, which is to say presenting the argument in a way that would maximize contention abo...

Shops in dungeon feel rare, bordering on non-existent. If the idea is to phase out shops, that's great. If not, gold seems pretty useless without shops. Having to go to orc to cash in on your gold is a little too rough on no-branch conducts, I think.

This topic has always managed to engender a fair amount of sturm und drang when it gets brought up on the Tavern, but I always find the pushback confusing. What are good reasons not to try to avoid Eurocentrism in our fantasy game, or to stop taking culturally important names and using them for pop...

If you have 11 Spellcasting, and 11 Ice Magic, having 12.3 Necromancy is the same as having only 11.5 necromancy for the purposes of Simulacrum success. Wow. I have been playing Crawl for yonks and I didn't know this was the case; I just knew spell success seemed "kinda jumpy." There's a ...

"Western fantasy" is pretty broad. If I were better versed in sci-fi and fantasy subgenres, I would probably have said post-Tolkien high fantasy or something along those lines. I think if you look at the more commercially successful titles, from Tolkien's oeuvre to The Sword of Shannara to...

Brilliance is a really bad effect, as described in the comment duvessa links. I find that I use it occasionally in that awkward transition between sensible use of midlevel conjurations and level 9s, to cast low level spells with zero investment on noncasting characters, and, by far the worst, cheezi...

This is a game that has elves and orcs in it. The fact that it is approximately as guilty of Orientalism as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doesn't compare to the uncritical importation of 19th century race science via Tolkien/Dungeons and Dragons. Western fantasy is romantic reaction against industria...

The way hydra head mechanics work cannot be justified in terms of the logic of the game itself. There is no reason for notions like "slicing," "chopping," "piercing," or "crushing" damage to exist in crawl. This is simply a holdover from advanced dungeons and ...

Not to pile on here, but this is a dead end. More elaborate "bezotting" mechanics won't change that. The way forward re: stairs is already in current hellcrawl. Simply disallowing the player to go back upstairs makes the descent way more tactical. A more "incremental" version mig...

Simple: There would be no ogres or GC/GSC.

Alternatively, remove ogre and also remove GSC/GC as player-wieldable weapons.

It is certainly true that many species are too humanlike, frequently human-but-better. Hill orc, merfolk, and gargoyle come immediately to mind but there are plenty of other offenders here. Draconians are actually less human-but-better than other human-adjacent species. In any case, there's somethin...

@dpeg: That sounds reasonable, but I would point out two things. 1. You would avoid mechanical interactions, like the Jiyva issue raised in the other thread, if the mechanism of this change were hiding the items in the user interface rather than removing them. Less work, less space for controversy a...

I think anyone who looks at the console interface of crawl and thinks seriously about how items can be more faithfully represented by terminal characters will realize that there is a lot that can be done. What is needed is to be able to distinguish different items that appear close to each other on ...

So when multiple things are visible on the screen at once (In the slime, or elf vaults, for example) you think it's better to walk to each item (or navigate to them with x) than it is to see them all at once with control-X (or Control-F,. if you want to see the whole level instead of just LOS) I am...

You do not need to navigate a menu if there's only one item on each square, you just need to walk over it or use x. You have this whole thing backwards. The fact that other shortcomings of (the worst, least popular version of) the interface swamp out some of the benefit of splashing and squelching i...

I don't think menu interactions are any better or worse than non-menu interactions, they are all just different ways to input information into the game, you choose the interface that's most convenient for the player. You're suggesting a less-convenient interface because it doesn't 'disrupt the flow...

It is a lot of the time. Say i stop at a choke point and kill a large pack of orcs, presently i step on that square and bring up a list of the things on the square, if there are things i want to pick up, i do so. If items explode all over the place, i can see them all in one menu, but i have to tra...

If you thought about it, I think you would see that is not actually the choice that is presented in looking at the status quo vs. item splashing.

You would want a toggle so that in the unlikely event the player wants to brand a +0 dagger, they can find it. Feels like the kind of situation where they would deserve a trip to the autopickup menu.

If you want to further paper over the structural problems of persistent levels and items, the way forward is an intelligent item squelching feature. The fact is that it is completely possible to determine when the marginal item dropped is absolutely worthless to the player and the game should make a...

There is a lot of value in reducing the number of types of items, especially types that are ordinarily subject to autopickup and are frequently useless. Anything that consistently induces a trip to the autotravel menu each game should be eliminated. This would be an excellent change for hellcrawl if...

This has been in hellcrawl for some time now.

edit: Also, it is Extremely Good for wands to stack this way.

I believe the signature and most substantive change of .20 will be the addition of the council god. Only the wand reform strikes me as similar in magnitude, but it is much more lateral and probably will be less liked by players. In a real sense, the new god will justify the progression from one vers...

My take: Crawl development is opening up in that there is more interest and support for alternatives to dcss. People like you who have the energy and interest to do new and creative things should think seriously about going outside the dcss process. It's true that the devteam has a sort of groundedn...

Search found 437 matches

Re: Spellcasters and resting

Re: Improve Player Accuracy Calculations

Re: FR: Can distortion not blink monsters under Lugonu?

Re: Are hot dogs sandwiches?

Re: Are hot dogs sandwiches?

Re: Spellcasters and resting

Re: Spellcasters and resting

Re: Crawl's Manifiesto

Re: Coders Wanted for Crawl Fork -- Inquire Within

Re: Proposal: simplify needles

Re: Real-world references

Re: Real-world references

Re: Real-world references

Re: [proclick] new fork, hellcrawl

Re: Real-world references

Re: Spell success breakpoints

Re: Real-world references

Re: Mix up might, agility and brilliance in a single potion

Re: Real-world references

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Re: Dynamic Monsters branch / bezotting update

Re: Remove Ogres and buff Trolls' M&F apt

Re: Remove Ogres and buff Trolls' M&F apt

Re: Give Draconians elemental vulnerabilities

Re: "squelch" monster gear (was: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: "squelch" monster gear (was: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

Re: Trim pointless monster gear

"squelch" monster gear (was: Trim pointless monster gear)

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

Re: make wands of same kind automatically merge on pick

Re: (brutally) merge WJC into Uskayaw

Re: My final thoughts on WJC, and moving on.