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Traits/skills modify your zombified form (and a related incentive to hunt it down)


ReverendNow

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So, for... closure... I like to hunt down the zombified form of my previous character when I reload a map after my old character's untimely demise.  This ritual made me think of a few complementary mechanics that I think could be pretty neat and satisfying:

 

1) Zombified player corpses could have attributes that reflected the player's physical attributes while living, presumably with some degree of deterioration.  Most prominently, I'm thinking of sprinting, fitness and strength: If the player had trained, say, fitness and strength up to 9+, his character's zombie form would have relatively high strength and durability.  Similarly, if the character had been like greased lightning in life, his corpse would be a fast shambler or even runner after death.  Perception traits could also be incorporated (e.g., eagle eyes = zombie with better than average sensitivity to its environment).  This could also work in reverse: a character with obesity or weakness could give rise (ha!) to an appropriately-hobbled zombie.  Just to be clear: I'm not thinking of "special infected" here - player zombies wouldn't be superpowered mutants or anything, just relatively strong or weak in standard zombie capabilities depending on the player that gave rise to them.  Arguably, this is also more believable than having a player zombie's attributes be entirely generic or random.

 

2) Zombified player corpses could be likely to become the center of gravity for hordes. This would increase the drama and peril of hunting down your previous character, which you would want to do (for more than just my eccentric reasons), because...

 

3) The payoff: Hunting down and killing your corpse would earn a modest xp bonus.  Mathematically, the way I imagine this working is that the bonus would be a pool of xp set to a fraction of the total xp gained by the previous character.  Points from this pool would be dolled out bit by bit as your new character earned its own experience.  To make the process lore-friendly, you could have the bonus tied to a special "journal" item carried by zombified form of your previous character.  Thus, the story conceit would be that your new character is benefitting from the accumulated survival wisdom of your old character by reading his or her journal.  To go a step further, you could even have the journal be an item that needs to be "updated" while a player is living to be truly valuable to its recipient: Each time a player writes in his or her journal, it sets the pool of bonus xp associated with the journal to a fraction of the player's accumulated xp at that moment.  The length of time it takes to update the journal would also be proportional to the delta of the old xp pool value and the new one.  This would also provide a way to make slow reader a more interesting trait: You're not going to be reading skill books every day, but you would be advised to update your journal.  Slow reader would, of course, significantly increase the time this process took.  Illiterate would preempt the mechanic entirely - and become an even more serious disadvantage.

 

Just a suggestion to add a little extra color and interest to the inevitable embrace of death!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by ReverendNow
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I really like this idea. It certainly makes sense, since if you previously had rippling muscles, why wouldn't your zombified self also be pretty strong too?

 

However, it wouldn't make sense long-term, since after a while their body would start to decay like all the other zeds, so they wouldn't really retain their new-found abilities for that long.

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You could definitely set a player zombie's unique attributes to deteriorate over time...

 

Interestingly, that could be self balancing along with the other suggestion about the xp bonus.  You probably wouldn't want to try to game the system by waiting until your corpse had gotten really weak to try and hunt it down: 1) you might lose track of it, and 2) the xp pool would be relatively less valuable to you after you had already leveled up a bunch, because it's based on a flat amount, not a percentage - so it's most useful for bootstrapping (as it should be).

Edited by ReverendNow
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As a proof of concept, I think I'm going to try making a mod for this system.  "Legacy" has a nice ring to it...

 

Looking at the API now.  For any experienced modders out there... are there any aspects of the mechanics described in the OP that seem like they would be infeasible (or would require a hacky implementation) in a mod based on the standard functions/events exposed to modders?

 

Edit: The journal handling mechanics will take some care.  If possible, I might implement the journal as a zero weight item that can be looted but not dropped - capable of being "updated" if personal, and "read" (consumed) for its xp bonus if belonging to someone else. 

Edited by ReverendNow
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