ProfeSsoRCHIld Posted:

Speed & Pets

I’m not too keen on the speed idea, personally, but the switching pet idea (I’ll be damned if I can find the thread where the White Knight idea was originally cooked up as a skill) sounds interesting. Perhaps make it cost an action to switch in pets, with a refresh time of 5 before you can switch it again.

As an elaboration on the pet system, make it a minigame to ‘maintain’ your pet. Let’s use the troll’s sockpuppet as an example because I really rather like that idea. Now, in order for the troll to maintain his sockpuppet, he’ll have to make constant posts with it: depending on the choices you give your sockpuppet, it could evolve through various stages, each stage giving it different powers. A sockpuppet could even potentially become a forum moderator, for instance, given real-life time and the right post combination.

The simplest way this pet evolution system could take place is, of course, through a dialogue tree that pops up after you have your pet for a certain time; say, 10 days for the first level, 20 for the second, 20 for the third, 25 for the fourth etc. At certain branches, the player may also be required to run a fetch quest for the sockpuppet or it wouldn’t be able to proceed on.

Alternatively, have the pet grow by the player feeding it useless junk. Depending on the type of junk you feed it, it grows into different pets with time. I can imagine this would be a coding nightmare, though, since you’ll have to give each item a certain “element” (i.e. Internet Toughguy, GB2BYOB, Pothead/Alcoholic) and value to that element (i.e. +3 to GB2BYOB, +1 to Internet Toughguy). All the same, for the sake of archiving I’m throwing it up here anyway.

Think of it as a parody of Digimon or Pokemon if it makes you happier. Log in to see images!

EDIT: White Knight here.