Subject: Proposal: NewMadScientist

From: "Kevan Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 18:27:07 -0000

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Proposal - NewMadScientist

{ Hacking back quite a lot of arguably extraneous stuff (random
auto-reanimation, text repetition, over-explained PDP updation),
changing the Soul-control mechanic so that other Players can
administer it if they remember (and making it more costly,
since 1 per day is hardly anything), getting rid of the
pointless Mad Scientist NPC and making the *assistant* the
Mad Scientist (far more impressive a title), and giving
Zombies full Player rights.

Still quite a hefty Rule, though. I'd split it up into "Mad
Scientist" and "Zombies", but my Agoraphobia is twingeing. }

Reword "Article 1: Animation" of the Zombie rule to:-

The Mad Scientist has the ability to animate corpses in the Morgue and
assign their actions to a Player. An animated corpse, defined as a
"Zombie", is still treated as a Player, except that it is allowed to
have a negative Soul. If the Zombie's Soul ever becomes positive, it
is immediately set to -1 and all control of the Zombie is lost. 

During the Mad Scientist's Office Hours, each Zombie's Soul is divided
by two (rounding toward 0), and each Zombie loses 5 Body. When a
Zombie's Body reaches 0, it decomposes and is removed from play. 

A Player (including the Mad Scientist themselves) may, no more than
once per day, petition the Mad Scientist to re-animate a specific
dead person, or take control of a specific Zombie. These petitions
are detailed below.

* Animation: To attempt to Animate a dead body, the Player pays 4
soul and 25 Cash to the Mad Scientist, who must be in
the Morgue. There is a 76% chance the body will be
animated. The Player being reanimated is renamed to
"Zombie<OldPlayerName>", has their Body Points set to
100, their Soul Points to -1 and is cured of all
Diseases.

* Control: To attempt to gain control of a Zombie, the Player pays X
Soul and 50 Cash to the Mad Scientist. The chance of
taking control of a Zombie is ((10 + X + Zombie_Soul) *
2), with a maximum of 67%. If the attempt succeeds, the
petitioning Player becomes the controller of the
specified Zombie, and the Zombie's soul is added to
(-1-X/2), rounded toward 0. If the attempt fails, the
Zombie's soul is added to (1+X/4), rounded toward 0. 

Reanimation is self-service - the Player should process all rolls
and effects, before announcing the results to the mailing list.

Controlling the undead is a harrowing business - any Player may deduct
2 Soul Points from the controller of a given Zombie, unless its
controller has already had such a deduction applied that day. A Zombie
controller may surrender control of a Zombie by declaring this
intention to the mailing list, at any time.

Upon administration of this Proposal, the previous Mad Scientist's
Assistant shall become the Mad Scientist.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 18:54:47 -0000

I don't have a problem with this. BUT:
The mad scientist can never go to the morgue, and if he does he is 
trapped there. I think the increased cost is warrented. 
OR,
1 soul/day + 2 soul/action (max 2 action/day). This would penalize 
the player for influencing the zombie, and makes sense in the game 
world.

What happened to the Zombie's actions?

Feyd

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 16 Feb 2001 14:40:19 -0500

ACCEPTED. 1 green. (I'll comment the last paragraph.)

-- 
- Doc

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 16 Feb 2001 14:49:59 -0500

By Proclamation, I am keeping this paragraph which otherwise would
have been deleted:

Items may be given to zombies, but zombies may not give items to
other players. Zombies are not players.

-- 
- Doc

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 20:17:04 -0000

> other players. Zombies are not players.

Add the following to the above sentence:

Zombies may catch any diesase, but the suffer no ill effects from any 
non-injury. Furthermore, zombies never lose or gain soul from any 
disease. Injured zombies may attack other players (even if rule 1000 
states otherwise), however, for each physical injury other than icky 
rot, the Zombie suffers a -5 penalty for any attack roll. Injured 
zombies may move without paying cash or pill requirements [[body 
requirements remain, and two broken legs will still make the zombie 
unable to move]].

Zombies may receive surgury as specified for injuries for the same 
cost as stated for players, but these are performed by the Mad 
Scientist (not the Surgeon) in the Morgue (not the Trama Center). 
All benefits normally paid to the Surgeon (i.e. 20% cash, etc.) will 
go to the Mad Scientist instead of the Surgeon.

---

From: "Kevan Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 12:18:06 -0000

> other players. Zombies are not players.

Hm? Why? Don't we want Zombies to be counted as Players for the 
purposes of being Attacked, crowding the Toilets, not being able to 
walk through locked doors, and everything?

I don't think there's a way for Zombies to give things to people 
anyway, if they can only perform one of four very-specific Actions 
each day...

Kevan

--
http://uncertain.org/~kevan
"Not dead but sleeping."