Thought on a level-less and class-less system

From: Gerald Florence (septe@earthlink.net)
Date: 01/18/02


I've been toying with ideas, looking at different possibilities and throwing
out the non-workable ones and keeping others.  I'm trying to come a way to
adequately have an "open-ended" system where not everyone look alike and yet
balance the system.  Take for example, let's say I code in GURPS system and
allow profession templates.  I had in mind where you take the knight
profession but you still can learn thief skills, just at a higher cost.  You
could also learn magic, provided you customized and took magery advantage.
Now, would that still be a class system as defined by the current systems?
Or could that be considered class-less?  Words can be vague and misleading.
I guess one has to examine what do people mean when they say class-less or
level-less.

As for being open-ended, I had in mind where you could increase your stats
but it gets harder and harder to increase your stat or skill to the next
point.  I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good or bad idea.  I am on a
mud that has the remort system and stats that can go as high as 500.
(really expensive but doable and time-consuming).  I guess it's a system
just like any other.  One can only come up with a system and hope that the
game is fun enough that people want to play. :)

As for coding in the GURPS system, I'd imagine that I wouldn't be able to
put the mud up since it's a copyrighted system.  I'm pretty sure that I'd
have to request permission from Steve Jackson Games to do so.  I can't
imagine they'd deny it since I wouldn't make any money off it.  :)  Assuming
that I get it off the ground, of course. :p

Coding the game is the easy part.  What's hard is coming up with a good
system that stands out and is fun and playable.  As for my doing the above?
I'm not ready for that since I still need to finish studying and annotating
circlemud stock code.  I'm just tossing out thoughts and ideas and seeing if
anyone else would get ideas from my ideas.  Sometimes all it takes is a
spark and a whole flame of ideas burst forth.

Enough of my ramblings :)

Gerald Florence (Septe)

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