How do you imagine the items in ADOM look like?
I know we have tiles but beyond the general pic, it doesn't give much detailed information about items.
Taking into consideration the weight, I just realized that some items might be pretty surprising.
For one thing I always imagined chaos orbs as large things, probably the size of a basketball with four "legs" so that it doesn't roll on the floor when you put it down.
Depending on the element in question, they could have a raging fire inside, a tempestuous storm or a water vortex etc.
Now that I consider the weight of 10s, which is 5x that of a scroll and twice the weight of gloves, it occurs to me that orbs may very well fit into the palm of a hand, perhaps two of them at the same time.
I guess this would explain to some degree why they bestow the attribute bonuses when used in tool slot - you're pretty much keeping it next to your skin and so it has a different effect than, say, a pick axe.
Another thing is eternium gear. It's easily recognizable in the game due to its low weight but when you consider an eternium two-handed sword, it's by definition a pretty big piece of metal, yet it only weighs 50s.
I kind of see it as something so sturdy and durable (as in "indestructible", save for intervention of a deity, annihilators and eyes of destruction) that it really doesn't need mass to achieve the damage dice it boasts.
It's super-sharp and doesn't dull, hence, eternium two-handers are in my imagination very lean blades with a grip that doesn't need much counterweight to balance the whole sword.
I guess since it doesn't corrode or rust, it doesn't oxidize either and is always shiny bright. Blood and other bodily fluids don't adhere to it so you don't really need to keep the weapon clean after combat.
Not that you ever had to do that but I always felt that iron items really only rust or corrode because the PC failed to keep them oiled, cleaned and protected. Eternium and to an extent mithril and adamantium don't really need that sort of attention.
What about shields? A small shield for me is perhaps something the length of half of one's arm so it covers your forearm. I imagined it is round, while large shields are triangular and tower shields are rectangular and offer a protection from knees to the top of one's head, much like a real world medieval pavise, which would explain why it is useful to deflect enemy attacks (DV) - you need little effort to place it on the path of an attacker's weapon.
As for scrolls, I always imagined them as the Roman/Egyptian kind - a long and narrow piece of paper that has been rolled from both sides so it looks like a double tube when wound up.
I could go on and on but I feel that ADOM and roguelikes in general are played a bit like reading a book - you have the general idea provided by the creator/writer but your mind fills out the details and builds the visual representation.
Everybody has a more or less different view of the same elements of the game, what are yours?
PS. I imagine AotME much like a tank's turret held by the end of the gun barrel, that's how damn big and ungainly it is.
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Originally Posted by boat
