Shattered Kingdoms

Not really. In some cases, it wouldn't be anymore difficult than taking on two Lower Morea or Temple of Murder enemies at once, which is something that happens all the time. That said, I personally enjoyed random encounters as a player for this reason, but it's tangential to the discussion of how to make them a better experience for their primary intention, which is making areas more challenging than they would be by simply walking around all the monsters and going straight to the final goal. Only the most hardcore challenge seeker is out there leveling on white Fytrysks, spoons on legs, or giant c'thonians. I've already taken some measures to address the c'thonians, and I plan to put in some time looking into the random encounters in the Dreamscape, since they seem to have been almost universally complained about, to see if I can make them less of a nuisance and more of an appropriate challenge as "extraplanar mooks."


I'm never going to buy into the "it gives vets an advantage" reasoning. Vets always have the advantage in games. Is chess a poorly designed game because vets have the advantage? Hundreds of years of history and millions of players over that time say otherwise. One thing that lets new players accelerate their knowledge of chess is the extensive library of books available about the game. In the context of SK, and we have already been over this in another recent thread, there are many legitimate IC resources available to players who want to share information and make the game more accessible to inexperienced players. If you think an information disparity between new players and veterans is a detriment to the game, I encourage you or any player who feels similarly to generate content that addresses that. Rather than dumb down the world, I would rather smarten up the newbies.

Regarding expansions, if you have to go from point A to point B to point C to get some item at point C that you want, but point B is annoying to a great many players, and someone adds an alternate route that lets you go from point A to point C without going through point B, is that bad design? Is it bad if you don't immediately know about it as soon as it goes in? I'm not going to put in a sign that says HEY GAIZ COME CHECK OUT THE NEW PASSAGE HERE!!11! or a series of arrows and NPCs telling you specific directions to draw attention to it. The game is always going to have some mystery, and puzzles, and things for people to find via exploration. In my experience, a lot of players really do enjoy finding new things instead of being told exact steps to go through. This is among my personal motivations to put area expansions and new areas in, because we have some explorer type players who enjoy them. That, and maybe some loot and efficiency minded people like having more options for how to get from point A to point C without going through the dreaded point B.

There also should not be secret words you have to guess for anything. If you find something like that, it might be old and didn't get properly updated at some point. Secret words for quests or items are usually attainable by clues on the items or in rooms, either in descriptions or lore, or in the form of information you can get from NPCs. There should be nothing in the game that requires OOC knowledge or brute-force guesswork.



It is the choice of the players if they want to share the information they learn on adventures. Some do, some don't, but you're always going to be more knowledgeable about the game world if you go out and explore than if you sit in an inn. That's just how it is. Regarding shortcut items, there are some out there that people even have in their possession that they never bothered to get a bard to check the lore. They don't even know they have them. There's not much more I can do on that front than build the items, make them accessible, and put some clues on how to use them in their descriptions or lore. If they just end up in a container or worn, unexamined, there's not anything I can do about that.



This is also a case of the survivorship bias in action. You don't see all the wear on the path that got used. You just notice the wear on the grass. You could not look at that after it has been in a year and determine that more people used the grass than the path; you just know that not everybody used the path. That doesn't make the path bad design.

Chess is not designed where you dont know all the rules. Many of the situations in SK where there is a secret or such it does break the common rules of the game. Think about if in chess castling or En passant was not in the rule book, a player who was never told they could when they see it happen and are WTF isn't that against the rules. Many scripted items fall into this line of thinking from one who hasnt seen them before.
I had a much bigger response but it was derailing to the main point of the thread which is random encounters. The point I am aiming at with this is things that break conventions of play learnt to a point should have extra attention payed to them. Random encounters happen at lower levels but are normally cake walk until you get to master level or above areas. Where they can wipe groups. The responsibility of these "rule changing" situations is on the builder to make it clear to the player there is a new set or rules. The paladin at the start of the wastelands could be a great place to have him talking about the larger the group the more likely you are to get found by foes for example. The actions of the players take given these adjusted rules should be looked at as well with regards to if the adjustment is having the desired effect. Random encounters desired effect as I see it is to make a place more risky. The player response is to travel with less people returning it to low risk and exposing less people to said area. Conclusion is the rule change isnt giving the desired goal of increase risk it is reducing party size.

If you think of conventions and personal experience as defining the rules of the game, you are making assumptions that aren't true. Assumptions are not rules of the game. Consider that one rule of the game is that there are exception-based mechanics present on SK and, realizing that, you have to be prepared for almost anything. Normally, you can always track a character walking around. But, with a certain ability available in game, you can override that. Likewise, items and encounters can be thought of in that light. If you think that a mercenary cannot normally open a rift, but an item lets him do that, an exception that you may or may not have expected has been introduced. An exception that is well within the rules of the game world. If you are used to encounters being no more difficult than the spiders in Uxmal, then you run into a white Fytrysk one day, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised, but you will soon come to realize that encounters in the Outer Planes are just generally harder than the encounters in Uxmal.

In response to the specific complaints and suggestions from players in this thread, the following changes have been implemented:

- The deadliest encounters in the Infernal Dominion have had their frequency and difficulty ratcheted down;
- New equipment has been added to the Dreamscape;
- Dreamscape encounters have had their frequencies tweaked to be less onerous on groups;
- Over-the-top Dreamscape monsters have been dialed down;
- Instances of forced lightie-on-lightie fighting have been eliminated;
- More rewards for beating random encounters in the Dreamscape have been introduced, one of which is a game-changer;
- Beneficial random encounters have been added to the Dreamscape;
- New equipment has been added in static locations in the Dreamscape.

This is meant to make the Dreamscape a more fun experience, but it doesn't mean the place has become a Monty Haul treasure trove or a cakewalk. If it is determined more changes are needed after players have had some time to soak in all the changes, we can revisit the zone then. I will likely continue to add more items and rewards in here and there.

It's cool that Thuban made those changes. Thanks! But I also have not ruled out making a few code changes for this as well.

I think code changes that don't punish large parties as hard would be welcome. Things that take player actions and abilities into account might be cool, too, like pathfinding or sneak. Stuff like that. A quiet person shouldn't be as likely to attract the attention of a wandering monster as a loud person. Mechanics like that, or stand-ins for them, have long been in place in tabletop and computer games.

This is an excellent addition and I think it could be done elsewhere to be thematic and immersive. Using DnD random encounter tables as comparison like we were before, not all of the entries are negative and it's a great idea to incorporate that chance of something good happening as well. Good thinking.

My favorite code-based suggestion in this thread has been the RE NPCs spawn a room away rather than in-room. Maybe have their spawns on a timer so they don't just generate and sit around forever, but keep the timer long enough that it would be senseless to wait for them to despawn before moving each time.

Not entirely related to REs, but every lion NPC in the plane of earth is aggressive and light aura'd. Could this be changed please?

Preferably by changing their aura as scouts have no way to detect aura