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LearningSpells

The DreamStones game system has no levels, no skills.

Yet, characters do progress - by learning new spells.

A specific spell can generally only be learnt on one FloatingIsland, but it will not be forgotten. To be used, all that is needed is a focus (A scroll, a wand, a mushroom, a mirror … a focus is often specific to a single spell, or to a class of spells). A focus may or may not be destroyed when the spell is cast, but as all other physical objects, a focus can not be carried on the AstralTravel? that allows dreamers to travel between islands.

Spells are useful for combat, for world modification, for activating special objects, etc.

Justification

The spell system is a GameMetaphor for the character progress. Among the GamePlay constraints, it is said that servers do not keep player information when they are offline. This means that all information relevant to a player must be kept on the client side.

How does this work (or rather, how will it work - it isn't implemented yet :-P). There are two parts in a player's "profile" :

Why does a spell require a focus ? Well, the goal of this system is to allow DreamLords (hmm, sounds good) to create new spells on their FloatingIslands, and then allowing other islands to use them too. The problem is, if a player learns a spell on island A, and notices he can't cast it on island B (because that spell has not been integrated into the code on server B), it won't be realistic. However, if he knows he can only cast the spell if he finds the right focus (and of course, only islands that have "integrated" the spell make that focus available), then the fact that a spell "doesn't exist" at some places doesn't mean anything.

This does have a few disadvantages as a progress system :


CategoryGameplay