The Tavern

Ghosts provide a very interesting experience. Let's consider extending it to include player graves.

Graves would appear as ghosts do -- either 50% grave vs 50% ghost, or perhaps generated as either a grave or ghost at death time. They'd disappear the same way too. Possibly both - the good and the bad.

Graves don't move but, like ghosts, appear on the level of the death.

The grave's description would be similar to the ghosts.

The grave would have resting on top of it something wielded/worn/in_inventory at the time of death. It could be completely random from the above set, or could be based on algorithm like:

Again, this would be determined at death time.

Another possibility would be to treat the grave like a store and present several items from the inventory for 0 gp.
Taking any could be considered an evil act.

Would we have to be concerned about people hacking the bones files to give themselves uber-gear? I'm not concerned, anyone with a modicum of skill can hack this game six ways from Sunday.

I find the loot piñata that is a bones level in Nethack is detrimental to the game. Sometimes you get a freak Minetown Juiblex, and that's not fair. More vexingly for confident and competent players, however, is the fact that an early bones file in that game DOUBLES your loot and cheapens the playing experience. While there are many aspects of Crawl's player ghost system that I do not like, being able to get the previous player's inventory out of the process is much, much worse.

I have mixed feeling about bones. (This part is about nethack. If you don't care, don't read).

On the one hand- it's fun. You can tell pretty quickly when you find a bones level because of the messed up level gen- so you're instantly on the alert for whatever killed your predecessor. It can be challenging or interesting to overcome how the dead guy messed up the level (like rebuilding a broken temple, or a looted stash. Or finding a damaged shop, with angered shop-keep. Or a level with way too much digging). And I enjoy the identification minigame- especially in early bones (< ~D10), weighing the potential worth of unknown items against the significant risk of curses. I also like the forensic aspect- determining class, build, and trying to determine what they were up to (especially in the aforementioned damaged levels).

Keeping levels interesting maters with nethack's repetitive floor gen. Hearse helped keep it interesting.

Bones are also the best way to get Magicbane. Nearly every wizard corpse has one, and that little thing is awesome.

Later bones are boring, and pretty much serve only to provide a little boost to score- some more gems and gold to throw in your bag of holding, maybe another artifact for the list. Not that I mind collecting, but eh.

Bad bones are when you show up in minetown and find 20 corpses of the same guy, and the equivalent of 3 ascension kits stashed away. There's nothing to do but ragequit in disgust of save scumming contamination. If I wanted that, I'd mess up the game myself. >: (

...I'm not going to complain about the freak early demon lords because I've summoned them often enough myself. My chaotic characters do tend to get a little altar happy, and there's nothing like deliberately summoning and then cheap killing old Juiby with a wand of digging.


(This bit is directly relevant to crawl).

That said, I don't believe bones in crawl should supply character loot. A gravestone, telling you how the player died, could be flavorful and interesting though. Occasional mundane loot could be flavorful. An offering of a few arrows before an archer grave, an unadorned sword standing before the marker of a fallen knight. We don't have flowers as items, but we could make a few grave vaults. A grave with flowers. A dark lonely grave. A desecrated grave. We could have vaults for gravestones of specific races/jobs/religions. A shrine to a fallen paladin, a necromancer's crypt, a Fedoras-ite's tree, the blasted grave of someone under penance, a stonehewn dwarven marker, a temple of spriggan druids to honor one of their kindred? I'm thinking small sized vaults, around the size of overflow altars, mostly without loot and monsters. Maybe a few medium sized ones- ramp up from one grave to a graveyard- idilic with flowers, or abandoned with zombies. It would leave some interesting scenery to make up for the horrible player ghosts.

I don't recall bones from Nethack -- it's been too many years since I played it.

I certainly didn't say that the entire inventory would be available. Providing one item that the player happened to have equipped is hardly a pinata, or even necessarily useful for whatever character finds it -- naga barding for example, would evoke a mixture of pleasure and pain if I found it while playing a not-naga.

Mageykun's idea is interesting -- I like the idea of little vaults with information from the bones file included. Simplifying my idea, If the deceased was equipped with a randart, then perhaps there will be a better chance for a randart (not the same one) in the vault.

The point to sometimes bringing back an item or two or three is to give the player a bit of hope that each stupid death might -- might -- eventually do some good later on and to help remind them of the games they played and lost.

Another meta-feature might be that if you actually win you reset all ghosts and graves.

I believe this goes to the "often suggested, but won't be done" category.

Flavourful graves could be cool.

--Eino

Bones are so not a good idea. Graves though, those sure are. Really, it feels kind of lame when I run into a ghost but never actually get to see the body. Making a marker somewhere, or having a skeleton of the species the character was near the ghost would be cool.

Indeed.

We've got grave tiles for some vault or other already, and I think it would be fun to occasionally place a grave (with death description) and/or skeleton of the appropriate type along with the ghost. That would require storing the death message in the ghost struct, and setting up a marker for the grave, but neither of these should pose any problems.

No leaving items. (Let's say the grave's been looted already, and that's how the monsters are so well-equipped. )

One thing I liked in Nethack was that random graves and ghosts you found (Like in the graveyard level or when entering a defiled church) would often bear the names of your previous characters. The loot pinata thing doesn't suit Crawl really, but I like the idea of having details of the previous hero show up in a grave somehow, and giving some kind of loot for a ghost would be cool, since they're often quite dangerous. The ghosts are already wearing everything the player was, so it shouldn't be anything like that. Perhaps some sort of (chance for) reward for laying the ghost to rest based on the ghost's deity? Would be cool to get a potion of berserk {god gift} from Trog for taking out my berserker troll ghost, or a mini spellbook with only 1-2 spells from a caster god.

Loot from player ghosts is stupid and potentially extremely unbalancing. It'd give powerful players more loot faster, and weaker players would be left just the same, at best.

Graves would be rad, especially on CAO/CDO. Just the final blurb "was killed by X (Y damage via Z source)." would be fun to see.

I'm not a fan of having whatever killed a player, persist on the level he died on. It's already bad enough when some high teens or above character manages to choke on like Lair 2 or Orc or early Dungeon, and you can't even scratch them.

I really like the grave / tombstone idea.

I concur. In fact, I'd love to see some of the humorous epitaphs written as well. Say, if a guy gets killed by an axe.. "Never let it be said that he let the Dungeon go to his head."

Except, you know, funnier than that.

Actually that would be really awesome if, when you died, you could write your own epitaph.

I could see writing your own epitaph getting dull, especially given the rate of some us die at. And I don't know about you, but I'm not always at my pity-est right after loosing a character. Maybe as a toggle-able option, or something you can skip?

Glad people liked the idea of loot-less flavor graves.

Of course you'd be able to skip it.

Killed by a spear or javelin: "He finally got the point."

Just my two Czech hellers:

I probably would fail to see who created the grave of a fallen adventurer. I mean - after your death, monsters eat your corpse, sentient beings take away your loot, and then someone or something would just come, dig a hole in the dungeon floor, bury your no-longer-existant corpse and erect a tombstone with an epitaph?
Who would that be?

To partially answer myself, certain gods could make such a funeral after your death if you had a very high piety at the time of your death. I can imagine the good gods sending angels to bury you, or Okawaru making a great warrior's burial.

Of course, Kiku and Yred would use you as a zombie, and Jiyva would slimify you, so no graves for you with those gods.

Maybe instead of a tombstone, people just find your underwear with your name written in it.

Seriously though - I don't think the tombstone has to be explained, it's more a game feature than something "realistic".

Yes, I too am looking forward to scores of ascii dicks in CAO/CDO.

hahaha

I think flavour-graves, if such a thing can be called such a thing, is a really fabulous idea!