Sometimes I want to figure out what terrain type a certain room is. Technically, I can still do that by rolling all the various rangers and visiting the room, the one who gets capitalized WILDERNESS in his prompt will tell me the truth.

But perhaps it's possible to just add a command that will tell if a certain room is forest or plains or jungle or mountain or something?

Something like:

prompt>terraintype
You are in the forest.

Or whatever, the actual messages can be as beautiful as you care to write them, while my English is not good enough for that.

This information is relevant for certain types of rangers. This information is also relevant if you want to fight against a certain type of rangers and want to certainly choose the right room in the area with mixed terrain.

Adding this information to the prompt is even easier, but you might have your reasons not to do it.

1) Way back when, CF had fewer terrain types than we do now. For example, Ysigrath used to basically be a big field that happened to be poisonous. (Technically, its terrain was "poison".) This was because terrain did very little except change the movement cost associated with the room, and impact a few skills like Camouflage. So a lot of old areas have terrain assignments that are, how you say, goofy, at least by current CF standards. (For example, the Galadon sewers used to have a bunch of "mountain" rooms, presumably because the author wanted to simulate rocky ground by upping the movement costs.) We've also expanded an area author's ability to mechanically describe a room beyond just the base terrain-- witness rooms that act like forest for most skills, but allow either Avalanche or marshdweller skills. We'd want a system that gave you accurate information in an IC-appropriate format.

2) I don't think all characters would get the full information. Maybe orcs know a lot about caves and swamps, but not much beyond the basics about cities or forests. Attune and other skills reflect this philosophy.

3) We'd need to think about how the information could potentially be used. For example, it's not presently convenient to build useful triggers that work off of terrain. Would putting the exact terrain in the prompt just empower cheese? One option here is to make it something like Attune where you'd need to pause to assess your surroundings. Useful to the explorer, or for someone preparing an ambush, but not so useful to a certain Scandinavian friend of ours.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Back before neo-ranger, water was water in the prompt (I think), but now water is wilderness (in most cases) in the prompt. Presumably I would know if I was on water even when blind, but since that change I can only tell based on the color of the room name, which is something I can't see when blind. I'd be very interested in having a terrain type in prompt... at least in broad categories.

I'm thinking of it like this: I've never been in a desert, but I'd certainly recognize that I was in one should I become lost in the Sahara. Similar for Tundra, Ocean, Forest, Plains, and Road, Civilized, stuff like that. It doesn't neccessarily have to directly correspond to ranger wilderness hometerrain, so the caps thing could still work, and perhaps when blind it might be less obvious, but some of these things would be useful IMHO.

I'm not sure what kind of useful triggers you could make out of terrain... Honestly... and I think about a lot of those types of things...

Tac

nt

3) We'd need to think about how the information could potentially be used. For example, it's not presently convenient to build useful triggers that work off of terrain. Would putting the exact terrain in the prompt just empower cheese? One option here is to make it something like Attune where you'd need to pause to assess your surroundings. Useful to the explorer, or for someone preparing an ambush, but not so useful to a certain Scandinavian friend of ours.


Said Scandinavian was asked not to use triggers by me on a char or two of his and he complied. Said Scandinavian continued to kick ass and be just as deathful, as triggers make it easy but doesnt give skill.

>2) I don't think all characters would get the full
>information. Maybe orcs know a lot about caves and swamps,
>but not much beyond the basics about cities or forests.
>Attune and other skills reflect this philosophy.

Why not? PCs are adventurers. They're not ignorant of the information that the poster is requesting.

And haven't played or read forums for two past weeks due to the business trip, so only do it now.
The new wilderness in the prompt is very cool and is exactly what I wanted.

Thanks!