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Evil Knievel
05-12-2010, 07:58 AM
The rubbish we do when we should go to work already...

Psychologically altered states and the like:

could be hard to implement, but at some points, the ideas are obvious:

A schizophrenia makes levels partly look like ID66, creates monsters that are not there, or sounds that do not happen (the game could just simulate a parallel level in the background with different random settings and transmit some of its output, like sounds ... to the level the player actually sees). The levels could even warp between each other to completely confuse the poor player, and he will only know which was #real# after being healed or dying. (but could lead to inconsistencies, so maybe not). Could be acquired by the wrong food, a bad spell, or by pc disposition, randomness and hardship (be it whatever).
It could be permanent and episodically happening, may episodes triggered, or whatever. Minor bonusses can be included, so a psychological stat or perception could be a lot improved when schizophrenic. Alignments could rapidly shift between two states.

Affection of short term memory is obvious... give a random chance of forgetting newly learned things that decreases with time, so freshly explored dungeons suffer amnesia, also item-identification, monster memory and the like.

arachnaphobia - naaa too trivial to overcome...

Phobias in general (vertigo, dwarven tree phobia, rat phobia etc, darkness ... could force coward tactics, and in the extreme suddenly lead to berserk outburst that player can not control - maybe, however, presence of a balor cures all phobias temporarily?)

more spacy states could be implemented, thinking it is a fantasy universe, that resemble things like uncontrolled mindcraft, and of course mind crafter like characters can take advantage of it.

Thing
05-25-2010, 05:18 AM
There was an entry this years 7 day rogue-like competition that had some of these features.
The PC slowly goes mad as you play.

http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~pm262952/madness/

As for the phobia idea it could be delt with by a status effect of some sort.
-Fear: A forced coward mode increasing DV but reducing to hit by a significant amount

I'm not so sure about player specific phobias but some monsters that have this as a special ability with resistance dependant on the willpower of the PC would be cool.

Aielyn
05-26-2010, 05:10 AM
As for the phobia idea it could be delt with by a status effect of some sort.
-Fear: A forced coward mode increasing DV but reducing to hit by a significant amount

I'm not so sure about player specific phobias but some monsters that have this as a special ability with resistance dependant on the willpower of the PC would be cool.

If the PC has a high Courage skill, it should actually work mostly to the PC's advantage - boost to-hit and DV. As a negative impact, perhaps being in close proximity with whatever their phobia involves could have a chance of causing other sorts of insanity.