Re: Suggest Birth System in Majik


Subject: Re: Suggest Birth System in Majik
From: Sinister (sinister@kaapeli.net)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 13:21:39 EET


Tommi Leino wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Dave wrote:
> > Just as someone who has nothing to do with the work on Majik, I
> > think a "birth system" would be very cool.
> > However the way you described it gave to much power to the adults.
> > No one should pick who their parents are, It should be random,
> > Like if someone wants to play they send in somthing and who they
> > are born to is random.
> That is not good. The player should have control over what kind of
> character the player is going to play. Not all would want to play a
> strong and stupid troll or a nimble elf. If needing to play a
> character that the player doesn't want, then the player quits and
> creates an another character and that is _not_ a good thing. It is
> meant in Majik that players concentrate on the character, not just
> test around and do something, we want it to be taken seriously and
> no-one can't play seriously a character that they don't really want
> to play.

First I have to say that I like this birth idea very much. However, it
is not an easy task to do it "correctly". I will comment your ideas and
give my ideas for this, too.

1) Random parents & children?

Not a good idea. Players should be able to pick a race etc. for their
characters instead of random roll. Here is my alternative solution for
this and it could be so that new player characters do not know/have
their biological parents, but instead have adoptive parent(s) or smth
like that. This could also be a stepfather or -mother who would guide
the new player in the world of Majik. This would be make possible
"weird" father-kid relationships such as human as a father/mother and
elf as a kid. 

2) Age

Also, I would like to present the idea that new players would be yound
adults/teenagers rather than children. This way this "birth" system
would be more like real role-playing games and no-one would have to play
through their childhood (which would take years unless artifically
"speeded" up).
However, if later time PC's would like to procreate this could be
possible if PC's of different sexes met and decided to breed etc. How
fast their kids would grow up is another thing and who should control
their kids when they are young is another. This is another issue of
which I am not going to babble anymore this time.
 
> Another problem of this birth system would be the unavoidable fact
> that most of the players are male and thus choose their characters
> to be male too, so we would a have shortage of female characters
> and for this system to work optimally, we would need much more
> female characters.

We could have NPC's which could procreate with PC's as well. Also, this
would be handled with "adoptive parents system" because orphan PC's
could be taken care of by other PC's who would act as parents.

3) Why would anyone be a parent?

Parents could be rewarded with experience and/or other things when they
raise a child. This reward could become from a god the parent is
worhshipping since of course gods like new population -> more population
means more worshippers and the more worshippers the more power the god
would get. Thus, gods could reward their worshippers when parent PC's
would raise a child or when they would give a birth to a new life.

4) What the child would get from his/her parent?

Skills, knowledge and experince about the world. Maybe the parent would
introduce his/her friends to the child and thus the child could learn
more about the world and its inhabitants. The child could be taught by
another adult to learn a few skills and thus get a profession. These are
just examples of the benefits of childhood and so forth. Probably you
know a lot of disadvantages for this system as well, so feel free to
tell about them and give ideas and comments to this idea. This is just
another option for birth/desendant system and not necessarily the best
one >,]

 - Sinister the Serpent -



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