Early DM box and ideas that it inspires

[Sophia]

http://dmweb.free.fr/Images/DMScans/DMA ... oxBack.jpg

This, of course, immediately got me thinking of options for things to add on, or at least hooks to add on, and raises questions like:

- What do you think the two attack method menus are for? One for the currently selected, one for the leader? One for the mouse hand? Or... what?

- What about "Charge"? "Bargain"?

- What about being Friendly or Hostile, Feasting or Fasting, or Relaxed or Wary, what could this do?

Any thoughts, or just conjectures? Random musings do sometimes lead to interesting dungeon ideas...

[beowuuf]

bargain seems cool, like an option to get shop stuff, or perhaps get monsters to run off for money

it seemas like the action hand options are present with also scrolling (see the arrows) general options for the characters too, perhaps

and the three bars seem to be food rating, fear rating, and not sure about friendly./hostile, perhaps you can lose champions by not making sure they are healed when needed, fed when needed, and dont take all the damage and have at least a share of the items?

and look, a book i nthe inventory

and interaction

I love DM but imagine if some of these options had see nthe light of day!

[MitchB1990]

Also there seems o be a early warning system via the scrolling text, "Zed sees movement to the left." or "Halk calls a warning cry."

[Adamo]

I guess these test versions of the game are printed on the box by mistake. Take a look at the second picture; there`s no "save" nor "Zzzz" options in the corner.

Maybe you coud cast spells only using the book from inventory?

first guy has two axes on the second picture. That means both hands could be used for the fighting (Zed carries a sword in left hand).

[Joramun]

http://dmweb.free.fr/Images/DMScans/DMA ... oxBack.jpg
- What do you think the two attack method menus are for? One for the currently selected, one for the leader? One for the mouse hand? Or... what?

I think they are for the two front row characters

- What about "Charge"? "Bargain"?

Bargain is to argue with trolins, charge is to argue with golems.

- What about being Friendly or Hostile, Feasting or Fasting, or Relaxed or Wary, what could this do?

Friendly / Hostile : a character can agree or disagree with your decisions, especially if you lead them on a relentless rythm, fighting their kin, or being in the same team as an enemy (like elf and dwarf). If it reaches zero, the character leaves the team.

Feasting / Fasting : is the food counter.

Relaxed or Wary ; depending on the sleep, morale, and the enemy fought (some of them being able to frighten your chars), it influences notably the chance to cast a spell correctly.

[Trantor]

Lots of ideas for that...

- I suppose the two characters in the front would make the most sense for the two open menus.

- "Charge": This could do a number of things. Maybe the party lunges a whole tile forward and attacks the enemy immediately, like a super-fast attack made by either all characters or just the ones in the front row. This attack could also deal extra damage. As a downside, the party could be immobilized for a few moments after that, so it would be a powerful, but risky attack. A variant would be an option that simply lets everyone attack, like the "all attack" button in EOB3.

Those two options would apply to all party members. Keeping with the theme of an attack option only applying to the character that uses it, "Charge" could be just a powerful, but risky and exhausting attack that deals lots of damage, but has a long cooldown and a rather low chance of hitting the enemy. But this would make it just another attack option like all the others...

Beware: the concepts I wrote about above are very hard to balance, I suppose...

- "Bargain": This could do all kinds of stuff involving interaction with monsters or other dungeon inhabitants, but this would be very hard to incorporate into the current engine. I suppose it could be an option similar to War Cry, but rather than fleeing from the party if the attack is successful, the monster would just wander around randomly unless attacked. The rate of success should depend on the monster's type (Trollins, maybe even Screamers would be more likely to get affected than, say, Skeletons or Deth Knights) and some attribute of the character - maybe his/her priest level?

- Friendly and Hostile: I'm with the other users here, if you treat a character badly (lots of injuries, no food or sleep), he gets hostile and eventually leaves.

- Feasting and Fasting: Probably just food.

- Relaxed or Wary: This could mean two things for me (probably because of my bad English ):
1. Fresh and Tired: If a character doesn't get enough sleep, he gets tired. This could mean that his/her attacks are more likely to miss, that the cooldown after his attacks takes longer, and maybe that spells even require more mana. The interesting part about this is that sleep would actually matter in a new way. Currently, sleeping is just speeding up the natural recovery. This way, sleeping would be an actual gameplay element.
2. Calm and Nervous: I think this would be even more interesting than option 1. If a character is nervous, his attacks could also miss more often, he could be more likely to fizzle a spell, or he would even do random things like turning around in the heat of battle or attacking thin air if a monster is nearby, but not directly in front of the party, resulting in an annoying cooldown when you actually face a monster. In order to become more calm, the character might need sleep and some special food. Apart from the nutrition value that food currently holds, each food type could be given a second attribute, the "calmness-level", so to speak. Maybe Screamer Slices are sort of drugged and add a lot to the calmness. Or the vitamines in an apple add to the calmness. On the other side of the spectrum, drumsticks and dragon steaks could (should?) add little to the calmness level. This makes different types of food interesting for different reasons. There could also be a new "calmness potion" as a priest spell, but this should be made extremely hard to cast (similar to VI in Conflux maybe).

Just a bunch of random ideas, maybe there's is something among it that warrants further discussion.

[Gambit37]

This is the first time you lot have seen this? I'm amazed, I thought everyone knew about the different box!

[beowuuf]

I don't think we've really looked at it properly before if we have seen it!

[MitchB1990]

This is the first time you lot have seen this? I'm amazed, I thought everyone knew about the different box!

I had sen it, but the only thing I really noticed at a glance was that the hallway was never in the original DM.

[Trantor]

This is the first time you lot have seen this? I'm amazed, I thought everyone knew about the different box!

Nope, I've never seen that box before.

[Kain]

There's even a SPELLS AND SKILLS button implying the RUNE system is not being used.

[beowuuf]

That would be a sad loss!

[Gambit37]

I definitely need to find out more about this early version. It seems as if many gameplay mechanics changed DRASTICALLY after this box was designed, which is quite unusual.