Post Thursday, 28th August 2014, 15:27

Variant: Contender Crawl

So, I've always wanted to play Crawl against other players, but in a turn-based game with such granularity, this would be functionally impossible without creating artificial slowdown and allocated "rounds" of actions, where the breadth of a round decreases on decreasing proximity between players.

My idea would be to have 2-4 AI competitors sourced from different areas of the game, all competing to get the Orb of Zot back to their home location.

The Player would bring it back to D:0
The Jelly competitor would bring the orb back to Slime: 6
The Mummy competitor would bring the orb back to Tomb: 3
That's all I can think of since Slime and Tomb are deep enough to essentially be varied entrances.

As the Jelly competitor progresses out of slime, it populates Slime, and eventually populates Lair and possibly branches with Slimes instead of the current residents as it increases in power. I can, however, be killed during progression. This requires the Player to act quickly to plunge down to Lair / Slime and defeat the Jelly competitor or at least take away things that allow it to grow/experience. The Jelly transforms things it defeats into slimes. In this fashion, it leaves behind allies for the player or Mummy competitor to confront.

In the same fashion, Tomb begins somewhat empty and the mummy competitor makes its way up out of Tomb, through Crypt, then Vaults, populating each with mummies or enhancing the populace. The mummy charms things it defeats into slaves. In this fashion, it leaves behind allies for the player or Jelly competitor to confront.

This is a very broad concept at this time (which is why it's posted to CYC), but would it be an interesting variant to the overall Crawl? It would certainly force the player to act quickly.
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