Dungeon Master Forum

I just wandered how this worked - if people like Gambit (or Lunevar if he does one) a DM variant that was basically still DM but with cool stuff, could it still get counted in the Hall?

Sounds a good idea.

The whole question of having some kind of "approved" (or perhaps that's the wrong word, but you get the idea) set of dungeons is something that's crossed my mind before but hasn't really needed addressing yet.

The method of marking the dungeons (to show that they havn't been fiddled with) is obviously something that shouldn't be widely known, but I can discuss in private how to do it with people who produce "competition" dungeons which are likely to be played by lots of people (and therefore suitable for highscore tables etc).

Each dungeon however should have its own separate high score table (because variations like damage from charged weapons will change its difficulty), but I'd be happy to host them for the most played dungeons.

In that case I suggest having not 200 variant DM dungeons hosted, but instead inlcude one more beside O-DM and RTC-DM in the RTC download, maybe called experimental RTC-DM, where many recent suggestions that Sophia commented to be already doable are included.

Indeed - it would make sense to have an "enhanced" DM dungeon which included all the updated high-resolution graphics and any additional changes to the mechanics in it.

Obviously, that would require a team effort, and so would depend on the various people producing these things wanting to work together. Of course, if one person was willing to do it all then that'd work too, but that's quite a substantial effort...

George Gilbert wrote: The method of marking the dungeons (to show that they havn't been fiddled with) is obviously something that shouldn't be widely known

I disagree. Security through obscurity is no security.

You could use the common, well-known, and rather secure method of md5sum + crypt.

Or just my bad typing

You take a password and then verify it's been entered by someone with the dexterity and spellchecking patience of a dead squid

Sophia wrote:

George Gilbert wrote: The method of marking the dungeons (to show that they havn't been fiddled with) is obviously something that shouldn't be widely known

I disagree. Security through obscurity is no security.

You could use the common, well-known, and rather secure method of md5sum + crypt.

I agree that security through obscurity is no security but disagreeing with my statement doesn't logically follow.

For example, lets say that I marked files using a well known algorithm but for my own personal reasons wasn't telling you about it. That scenario fits with my statement but not your disagreement.

BTW - you do need more than just knowing a trick to produce marked files. I am aware of such issues

George Gilbert wrote:

Sophia wrote:

George Gilbert wrote: The method of marking the dungeons (to show that they havn't been fiddled with) is obviously something that shouldn't be widely known

I disagree. Security through obscurity is no security.

I agree that security through obscurity is no security but disagreeing with my statement doesn't logically follow.

I was disagreeing with the "obvious" part. I don't see how it is at all "obvious" the the method should not be widely known. A sound algorithm would not suffer in the least from being public.

I am aware that with the smallishness of this community, such things will probably not be an issue. However, it probably only takes a little more work to do it right than to do it wrong, so I thought I'd throw this out there while any such things were in the early stages.

George Gilbert wrote:BTW - you do need more than just knowing a trick to produce marked files. I am aware of such issues

Of course. I was simply trying to be concise.