Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

Alright.. in PnP, Knowledge Skills are one of my favorites... here on FK MUD, I've seen them used a bit, but I've thought of a way that they could be used even more:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/knowledge.htm

The SRD 3.5 D20 link above wrote: Below are listed typical fields of study.

•Arcana (ancient mysteries, magic traditions, arcane symbols, cryptic phrases, constructs, dragons, magical beasts)
•Architecture and engineering (buildings, aqueducts, bridges, fortifications)
•Dungeoneering (aberrations, caverns, oozes, spelunking)
•Geography (lands, terrain, climate, people)
•History (royalty, wars, colonies, migrations, founding of cities)
•Local (legends, personalities, inhabitants, laws, customs, traditions, humanoids)
•Nature (animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, vermin)
•Nobility and royalty (lineages, heraldry, family trees, mottoes, personalities)
•Religion (gods and goddesses, mythic history, ecclesiastic tradition, holy symbols, undead)
•The planes (the Inner Planes, the Outer Planes, the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, outsiders, elementals, magic related to the planes)

Okay, what I'm proposing with this one is that these skills can be gained and then used to grant access to "Help Files" or, more accurately, an online Bestiary. This suggestion comes after encountering an actual situation where a Character (or maybe even player) didn't really know what a particular mob was. Yes, looking at them grants a description.. but my proposal goes a little deeper.

I once played on a Free to play MMO, the name I won't mention, but it had a pretty cool feature. It worked similarly to the knowledge-geography skill here on FK, where fighting a creature could give you information about that creature. This knowledge could also be shared between players which used up Will (a simple points system that allowed various things, similar to Stamina here, but replenished at a fixed rate). Mind you, it could take 100s of fights with some creatures in order to gain that creature's info sometimes, as I'm pretty sure it was % based, and a low one. 5% chance or so. At any rate, there were 3 levels of info: Basic, which gave you more or less fluff; location, which told you where in the game you could find that mob (x,y co-ordinates and on which map); and item, which showed each item that mob could drop, and what the chances were in adj format, for instance: very rare, rare, uncommon, common.

That's where I pull some of my ideas from, as far as how the system would work, but not the results.. essentially a 3 point system so that the more you fight that particular mob/race/ethnic type the more info you could access in the online bestiary, perhaps via a 'beast[iary] <name>' command. Following is an example, mind you, this is just an example, and the reality of it would have to more conform to the workings of FK MUD's systems.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/goblin.htm

'beast goblin'

The SRD 3.5 D20 wrote: Goblin
Goblin, 1st-Level Warrior
Size/Type: Small Humanoid (Goblinoid)
Hit Dice: 1d8+1 (5 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 15 (+1 size, +1 Dex, +2 leather armor, +1 light shield), touch 12, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +1/-3
Attack: Morningstar +2 melee (1d6) or javelin +3 ranged (1d4)
Full Attack: Morningstar +2 melee (1d6) or javelin +3 ranged (1d4)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: —
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft.
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +1, Will -1
Abilities: Str 11, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 6
Skills: Hide +5, Listen +2, Move Silently +5, Ride +4, Spot +2
Feats: Alertness
Environment: Temperate plains
Organization: Gang (4-9), band (10-100 plus 100% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults and 1 leader of 4th-6th level), warband (10-24 with worg mounts), or tribe (40-400 plus 100% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults, 1 or 2 lieutenants of 4th or 5th level, 1 leader of 6th-8th level, 10-24 worgs, and 2-4 dire wolves) Challenge Rating: 1/3
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Usually neutral evil
Advancement: By character class
Level Adjustment: +0

A goblin stands 3 to 3½ feet tall and weigh 40 to 45 pounds. Its eyes are usually dull and glazed, varying in color from red to yellow. A goblin’s skin color ranges from yellow through any shade of orange to a deep red; usually all members of a single tribe are about the same color. Goblins wear clothing of dark leather, tending toward drab, soiled-looking colors. Goblins speak Goblin; those with Intelligence scores of 12 or higher also speak Common.

Most goblins encountered outside their homes are warriors; the information in the statistics block is for one of 1st level.

Combat
Being bullied by bigger, stronger creatures has taught goblins to exploit what few advantages they have: sheer numbers and malicious ingenuity. The concept of a fair fight is meaningless in their society. They favor ambushes, overwhelming odds, dirty tricks, and any other edge they can devise.

Goblins have a poor grasp of strategy and are cowardly by nature, tending to flee the field if a battle turns against them. With proper supervision, though, they can implement reasonably complex plans, and in such circumstances their numbers can be a deadly advantage.

Skills
Goblins have a +4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks. Goblin cavalry (mounted on worgs) usually select the Mounted Combat feat in place of the Alertness feat, which reduces their Spot and Listen check modifiers from +3 to +1.

Okay, so in the above example, parts in red could be 0 points, orange 1, yellow 2, and green 3. Anything included in red would be visible to someone with yellow, etc. Green sees the full entry. Red would be that basic knowledge type stuff that everyone knows. The fun part about this system, is 'boss' type mobs.. those one-two of a kind mobs in an area that you can't just spam kill. Perhaps they'd have a -slightly- increased chance, 10% instead of 5, for example, but perhaps you'd need to use gather info type skill to get additional info instead. (See other post by yours truly with fabulous ideas by others).

So, I know it seems like it would be a LOT of work to integrate all this.. BUT.. I've already expressed by desire to Dalvyn to join the builder team, and pending that, I'd be more than happy to be the pioneer and chief executor of this project. Even if not, I could do a lot of the bestiary soft file writing offline, and would be more than happy to. I know it sounds like a tedious project to others, but this is coming from the guy who would hand write all his known spells on 3x5 cards for tabletop, including which book the spell came from, the page, etc <.<

I really like this idea. It could be presented in something similar to the qlog, perhaps mlog as I like to call it. I'm not certain how possible it is to link this with help files, as I believe that is done with a database software, and SQL. It would certainly be a large undertaking, and most likely a low priority on the totem pole, but when refined...it could be something interesting for the future.

Moloch wrote:I really like this idea. It could be presented in something similar to the qlog, perhaps mlog as I like to call it. I'm not certain how possible it is to link this with help files, as I believe that is done with a database software, and SQL. It would certainly be a large undertaking, and most likely a low priority on the totem pole, but when refined...it could be something interesting for the future.

Thanks Moloch =D

It could work with a wiki, the only issue is having an editable wiki not connected to the helpfiles in game being used for ic reference by characters for that purpose. An mlist could list links but FANG users on the macintosh may not be able to cut and paste these links.