Posted by Zebulost on May 13, 2000 at 22:26:00:
It has been mentioned that it is ridiculous for people to cross oceans in canoes and rowboats. This is absolutely true (though it has been done on occasion, it is usually not by choice and often fatal).
Idea: Institute a system of ships and navigation for Thera's oceans. The sea areas would be made vast, based on a grid rather then rooms. Ships would traverse the sea by moving across the grid in a direction (set by the 'course' command and deviated by navigation skill, weather, and possibly current), at a particular speed (set by 'speed' command, maximum set by ship, and modified by seamanship skill, weather, and possibly current). Every round, the ship would move a set distance - ocean voyages being continuous, progressing while people sleep, etc.
Coastal areas would have the grid layed over the rooms, to interface between small craft (canoes) and ships. Ships could only anchor in coastal areas. Coastal areas would also present dangers to navigation in the form of shallows, rocks and shoals.
Ships themselves would be 'rooms' that could be entered by a 'board' command and left with a 'debark' command. Larger ships would consist of more then one room. Ships would be susceptable to damage, resulting in degraded performance and eventual sinking. They would be a safe place to quit for the owner and any crew (those in the owner's group, or set by a 'crew' command of some kind). People on a ship could use a 'repel' command to automatically engage non-crew boarders in combat.
The scan command at sea would give a list of everything in scan range (which of course would have to be translated from rooms to grid) with a direction (the 'where' command would only apply to within the ship). Example:
scan
You look about the ship:
A sleek black sloop, showing port aspect, bearing NNW at 4 miles
A decrepit bark, showing stern aspect, bearing ENE at 6 miles
land bearing S, in the distance
Darkelfguy in a canoe, bearing SW at 1 mile
An albatross, flying, bearing SW at 1 mile
The course command accepts compass points as arguments (N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, NNW) as well as keywords of objects in scan range (from the above example: sloop, bark, darkelfguy, albatross). A skilled pilot would also be able to use locations as arguments (arkham, tarvalon, newthalos, jademountains - see next post).
The speed command accepts as arguments: full, half, slow, stop.
The anchor command accepts: [nothing] (to drop anchor), weigh (to raise the anchor), and kedge [direction] (to slowly move the ship when becalmed or to slightly adjust position in berth).
Water forms of transmuters would, of course, have to be modified, and the modifications would apply well to air forms should they be allowed to fly across oceans. The modifications would be to let them use course and speed commands without being in a ship, and to allow swimto/flyto to only work on those in scan range - though their scan range may or may not be increased.