On Distance, Room Size, and Travel

[RogueGunslinger]

Soo measurements are driving me a little bonkers. Mostly because I'm terrible at math... Not sure if this has always been the case ,but this is in the documentation:

Longer distances use units called cords, which are 15 inches long. Such
units as miles and leagues are also commonly used, descended from the
Bendune conventions of the nomadic tribesmen, a mile being 5,333 cords, and
a league equalling three miles.

5,333 cords? So a Zalanthan mile is not equal to an earth mile? If an earth mile is 5280 ft at 12 inches long, shouldn't a Zalanthan mile, at 15 inches per cord be like. 6666.25 cords?

Or is this me being horrible at math? 5,333 seems like such a weird number to go with.

[Bushranger]

Soo measurements are driving me a little bonkers. Mostly because I'm terrible at math... Not sure if this has always been the case ,but this is in the documentation:

Longer distances use units called cords, which are 15 inches long. Such
units as miles and leagues are also commonly used, descended from the
Bendune conventions of the nomadic tribesmen, a mile being 5,333 cords, and
a league equalling three miles.

5,333 cords? So a Zalanthan mile is not equal to an Earth mile? If an earth mile is 5280 ft at 12 inches long, shouldn't a Zalanthan mile, at 15 inches per cord be like. 6666.25 cords?

Or is this me being horrible at math? 5,333 seems like such a weird number to go with.

How did you calculate that?

I'm completely unfamiliar with Imperial measurements here but from my quick search on the internet: 1 Earth mile = 63360 inches.

63360 / 12 = 5280 feet

63360 / 15 = 4224 cords

Where does the 6666.25 cords come from? 6666.25 x 15 = 99993.75 inches!

If inches are equal between Earth and Zalanthas then miles in Zalanthas are longer. There are 79995 inches in a Zalanthan mile (5333 x 15)

I've always thought there is a small variance though in all measurements. Inches/Cords/Miles/Leagues are just English translations of the Sirihish words.

[RogueGunslinger]

I thought it should be more, not less, interesting. As how I got 6666.25... It's embarrassing of course but lets see. I took 5,333(Which is now obviously part my mistake, shouldn't be working with that number at all) and divided by 12, then multiplied by 15.

I did it the opposite way as well and got 4266.4 but that didn't seem right, but is also closer to your number.

[Kismetic]

Maybe Zalanthan inches are equivalent to Earth feet, and even dwarves are gigantic to Earthlings.  Who knows?  I wouldn't get too caught up in it.

When in doubt ...  wizards.

[RogueGunslinger]

Maybe Zalanthan inches are equivalent to Earth feet.

The third time I read this it sort of blew my mind. Good point.



RAT: Clans seem to be doing really well lately? Lots of long lived characters are staying long lived. Most of them seem to be in clans.

[MeTekillot]

Hold globule
Poison arrow

[RogueGunslinger]

You smear sticky golden sap all over the arrow making a delicious yet deadly instrument.

[MeTekillot]

Shoot rugged south


One down, eleven to go .

[Fujikoma]

You smear sticky golden sap all over the arrow making a delicious yet deadly instrument.

say (peering southwards, with a smirk) A bittersweet fate, indeed.

[flurry]

Maybe Zalanthan inches are equivalent to Earth feet, and even dwarves are gigantic to Earthlings.  Who knows?

It says right in the help file:

Short distances are measured in inches (which bear a strong resemblance to the English inch in real life). An inch was considered to be the length of the Emperor's thumb, but was long since normalised to mean a single unit of distance.

[flurry]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Quell]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Tell that to Leaguewalker the dwarf, may she rest in peace.

It's just been buried over the years.

[Delirium]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Preach it.

300 cords, now, that I could see... you gotta pick and choose when to apply believable distances to desert rooms, heh.

[BadSkeelz]

The surface of Zalanthas is loose elastic over a fluid-filled interior, like a waterbed. Outside of the cities, rooms change their sizes and their relations to each other based on pressure being applied to that room, or adjacent rooms, or whichever.

City and other settlement rooms remain in fixed distance to each other because the weight of the structures weighs down the "room," preventing them from moving.

When you encounter a room that's too full to drop anything, that's because you've reached the maximum weight that that room can support without rupturing the Waterworldbed.

[Rahnevyn]

The surface of Zalanthas is loose elastic over a fluid-filled interior, like a waterbed. Outside of the cities, rooms change their sizes and their relations to each other based on pressure being applied to that room, or adjacent rooms, or whichever.

City and other settlement rooms remain in fixed distance to each other because the weight of the structures weighs down the "room," preventing them from moving.

When you encounter a room that's too full to drop anything, that's because you've reached the maximum weight that that room can support without rupturing the Waterworldbed.

I'm Rahnevyn and I endorse this explanation.

[Kismetic]

Ah, it's right there in the docs, but I think I had good intentions, i.e., don't get caught up in the reality-to-fantasy meta.  Speaking of which ...

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Heheheh.  Well, you see, an ox can travel 100 rooms in ten minutes, so that's 100 leagues, or 533, 300 cords, or 126 miles per hour, a.k.a., the ground speed velocity of an unladen plains ox.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

I wish that room sizes were normalized to be constant, and either affect moving speed, or have the number of rooms in the world changed to make things consistent. For instance, the fact that you can walk around Allanak in less time than it takes to get from the Templar's Gate to the Merchant's Quarter is annoying to me.

I also wish that instead of @ $ north, you say individualized, room specific exit messages. For instance, @ $ north into the street, or @ walks down the stairs, or @ $ up the mountainside.

[Armaddict]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

I wish that room sizes were normalized to be constant, and either affect moving speed, or have the number of rooms in the world changed to make things consistent. For instance, the fact that you can walk around Allanak in less time than it takes to get from the Templar's Gate to the Merchant's Quarter is annoying to me.

I also wish that instead of @ $ north, you say individualized, room specific exit messages. For instance, @ $ north into the street, or @ walks down the stairs, or @ $ up the mountainside.

Along those same lines, I'd like to see cities -minorly- shrunken down (like they have done with Tuluk various times), but have the wilderness -greatly- expanded.  I don't mean adding new content, I mean making the existing content more spread out.  Add clone rooms, make it so that going -deep- into the wilderness is truly possible.  Then, keep sandstorms about the same size (I know this is hard), so that you can actually skirt around them without the whole zone-barrier.  I think people should be able to enter actual isolation in the wilderness.  As is, most of the deep wild is actually pretty close to a transit/hunting route.  With some exceptions.  Make deep wilderness raiding groups viable.  Make solitude achievable.  Make exile...crazy.  So on and so forth.

[MeTekillot]

I wish the new codebase they were working on would get implemented.

[CodeMaster]

Also the subject of measurement can't be mentioned without a public service announcement that a league is not a room. There is no such thing as a 3-league bow. There is no grid marking out the desert into squares of 1 league by 1 league. There just isn't. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

I wish that room sizes were normalized to be constant, and either affect moving speed, or have the number of rooms in the world changed to make things consistent. For instance, the fact that you can walk around Allanak in less time than it takes to get from the Templar's Gate to the Merchant's Quarter is annoying to me.

I also wish that instead of @ $ north, you say individualized, room specific exit messages. For instance, @ $ north into the street, or @ walks down the stairs, or @ $ up the mountainside.

Along those same lines, I'd like to see cities -minorly- shrunken down (like they have done with Tuluk various times), but have the wilderness -greatly- expanded.  I don't mean adding new content, I mean making the existing content more spread out.  Add clone rooms, make it so that going -deep- into the wilderness is truly possible.  Then, keep sandstorms about the same size (I know this is hard), so that you can actually skirt around them without the whole zone-barrier.  I think people should be able to enter actual isolation in the wilderness.  As is, most of the deep wild is actually pretty close to a transit/hunting route.  With some exceptions.  Make deep wilderness raiding groups viable.  Make solitude achievable.  Make exile...crazy.  So on and so forth.

Would all that be achievable by just ramping up movement penalties in the desert?  Or would that just make it unpleasantly hard for players to get from Tuluk to Allanak?

[MeTekillot]

Not really. It would make life easier for rangerarrows maybe.

[RogueGunslinger]

I'm all for making the outside world seem bigger. Riding a mount from one city to the other without rest is a little lame, imo.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I don't think that you can really ride from one city to the next without rest any more, but it's close, and you can certainly make the trip in less than one IC day. Ideally, to make it seem realistic for two large civilizations to exist in the same land, that would be more of a two or three day trip, and Luir's would be your waypoint. For the sake of playability, making it a two day ride would mean a three RL hour play session. I think that's more than fair to both OOC considerations, and IC separation and distance concerns.

[RogueGunslinger]

I don't think that you can really ride from one city to the next without rest any more, but it's close, and you can certainly make the trip in less than one IC day. Ideally, to make it seem realistic for two large civilizations to exist in the same land, that would be more of a two or three day trip, and Luir's would be your waypoint. For the sake of playability, making it a two day ride would mean a three RL hour play session. I think that's more than fair to both OOC considerations, and IC separation and distance concerns.

You can if you're using the most abundant mount in the games existence. As for taking 3RL hours to travel... That might be a bit much. That's WAY longer than it currently takes. I'd settle for even just 1 hour.



I honestly feel icky whenever I hint at how long it actually takes to travel from one city to the other... It's very surprising when you're new to figure out how small the world really is. Don't get me wrong, we're big in comparison to Muds in general due to room numbers, but it still just feels way short when traveling. I think adding rooms is a much better option than slowing movement or upping movement costs. But I know that would be a pain in the ass for staff.


I'd also note that this feeling isn't really static. Play a city-elf  in allanak/tulukl and Luirs could be on the moon for as far away as you feel it is.

[Lizzie]

On increasing time from point A to point B:

It's only a 1/2 hour trip if you're going alone, don't encounter anything, stable and unstable your mount in Luir's. As soon as you add more people to the trip, the trip time increases. So increasing the time it takes to get from A to B does nothing more than - make it take longer. The result is - less time players have available to do whatever they planned on doing when they get to the destination.

If that happened I think you'll see fewer PCs in clans that have rides out of their cities/outposts on a regular basis, and more independents who aren't burdened by the wait-time involved in a trip that already lasts an hour without having to wait for everyone to group up and prepare.

[Kalai]

Yeah, I'm not sure I could feasibly take on a Tuluk-to-Allanak escort if the trip took too much longer. I'm already reluctant to engage in such a trip with anything less than three hours free, though that sometimes has as much to do with surrounding factors/roleplay. Longer trip mechanically is liable to multiply any role-playing time involved significantly; and honestly Arm's bad enough when it tries to eat half my free time in a day, I owe the people in my life better than letting it eat all of it too often. 

[Reiloth]

On increasing time from point A to point B:

It's only a 1/2 hour trip if you're going alone, don't encounter anything, stable and unstable your mount in Luir's. As soon as you add more people to the trip, the trip time increases. So increasing the time it takes to get from A to B does nothing more than - make it take longer. The result is - less time players have available to do whatever they planned on doing when they get to the destination.

If that happened I think you'll see fewer PCs in clans that have rides out of their cities/outposts on a regular basis, and more independents who aren't burdened by the wait-time involved in a trip that already lasts an hour without having to wait for everyone to group up and prepare.

This is true. If you are riding as a solo rider, it is up to you to 'take your time' and not zoom from one destination to another. An opportunity for Solo-RP! If you are driving a wagon from point A to point B, the last thing you want to do (I assume you are playing a sponsored/non-sponsored Agent or Merchant role in Kadius, Kurac, or Salarr) is spend your time online dragging this wagon for 3 hours just so it can park, you can do your business, and then arrange another 3 hour RPT to drive it home.

If the world were made larger, it would also need to be made more spicy, full of critters and dangers, in order to keep said 3 hour trip more interesting.

[Fujikoma]

On increasing time from point A to point B:

It's only a 1/2 hour trip if you're going alone, don't encounter anything, stable and unstable your mount in Luir's. As soon as you add more people to the trip, the trip time increases. So increasing the time it takes to get from A to B does nothing more than - make it take longer. The result is - less time players have available to do whatever they planned on doing when they get to the destination.

If that happened I think you'll see fewer PCs in clans that have rides out of their cities/outposts on a regular basis, and more independents who aren't burdened by the wait-time involved in a trip that already lasts an hour without having to wait for everyone to group up and prepare.

This is true. If you are riding as a solo rider, it is up to you to 'take your time' and not zoom from one destination to another. An opportunity for Solo-RP! If you are driving a wagon from point A to point B, the last thing you want to do (I assume you are playing a sponsored/non-sponsored Agent or Merchant role in Kadius, Kurac, or Salarr) is spend your time online dragging this wagon for 3 hours just so it can park, you can do your business, and then arrange another 3 hour RPT to drive it home.

If the world were made larger, it would also need to be made more spicy, full of critters and dangers, in order to keep said 3 hour trip more interesting.

For once, I agree with you on something. Although I would like to see more inn/tavern/oasis kind of waypoints along the way. Maybe a stinky, noisy, percussion filled gith bar, strange, cursed inn run by sinister nilazi/ashlayer/escaped mul, a quaint little place run by a friendly pair of elderly folks who turn out to be CANNIBALS.

[Rahnevyn]

I just want to chime in and encourage folks to stop and smell the roleplay a bit while traveling. Toss out some thinks. Take a detour. Investigate that weird plant or rock that you always ride on by. Search for secret caverns or buried treasure. If you're riding from Allanak to Tuluk, stop over in Luir's for an IC day or even just a few hours to give your mount (and your character!) some rest. Better yet, find a buddy to ride with!

My rule of thumb is to give myself at least half an IC day's worth of transit time (45 minutes) when a PC of mine rides between a major city and Luir's, including time to pack up and get started, RP along the way, getting in a scrape with critters, maybe stopping to rest my mount or forage, etc. You can definitely do it much faster (and I admit sometimes I do, if I'm in a RL hurry), but normally, it's more fun if I let the journey come to life a bit and be more than just a bunch of rooms to fly through.

[Delirium]

I don't think the world needs to be larger, per se... I think it needs to be more detailed.

[Nyr]

I don't think the world needs to be larger, per se... I think it needs to be more detailed.

travel on skellebain

[Bushranger]

I don't think the world needs to be larger, per se... I think it needs to be more detailed.

travel on skellebain

Kadius' next wagon trip is going to be awesome!

[Delirium]

I don't think the world needs to be larger, per se... I think it needs to be more detailed.

travel on skellebain

We can't stop here... this is kryl country!

More seriously though.... I'd love to see all the outdated room descriptions/typos fixed, mapping inconsistencies fixed, landmarks and details added in (not necessarily in the main description, but in extra descs and such). More small/hidden critters, room echoes, more caves and dens to check out... replace some of those lost quit rooms... basically polish what we already have and make it come more alive. Plus there's been a lot of changes to the gameworld and as a result we have quite a few inconsistencies and things that are just plain wacky/broken. I can think of things I've typo'd months ago and are still broken.

But at the very least please fix all those unlinked air rooms. I'm beggin ya. Begging.

[Riev]

Echoing Delerium and most of the other comments. Travel doesn't need to be longer, exploration needs to be more rewarding. On most of the characters I've had that "explored" an area, it was relatively boring, or was SUPER DUPER INTERESTING but required staff presence to make it come alive.


I mean, once you make a buried treasure cave, the cave is mostly useless and everyone will know about it... but come on. You're telling me Rukkians aren't making tunnel networks with their huge claws? They have those, right?

[CodeMaster]

More seriously though.... I'd love to see all the outdated room descriptions/typos fixed, mapping inconsistencies fixed, landmarks and details added in (not necessarily in the main description, but in extra descs and such). More small/hidden critters, room echoes, more caves and dens to check out... replace some of those lost quit rooms... basically polish what we already have and make it come more alive. Plus there's been a lot of changes to the gameworld and as a result we have quite a few inconsistencies and things that are just plain wacky/broken. I can think of things I've typo'd months ago and are still broken.

But at the very least please fix all those unlinked air rooms. I'm beggin ya. Begging.

I'm hardly one to talk - I haven't explored the desert thoroughly and I don't even know what an "unlinked air room" is!

But being able to see six rooms laterally in either direction seems like it would make an area relatively easy to sweep for other PCs.

I wonder if being able to truly be lost and inaccessible in the deep wild could be addressed by keeping the world the same size but adding more caves, more convoluted canyons with tree-like structure, and more inaccessible valleys and cliffs that require twisty-turny climbs, etc. -- places that are hard to look-sweep while traveling in a single direction.

It's probably possible to procedurally generate a vast number of these, but there might be good reasons for the status quo I'm not aware of.

[flurry]

On increasing time from point A to point B:

It's only a 1/2 hour trip if you're going alone, don't encounter anything, stable and unstable your mount in Luir's. As soon as you add more people to the trip, the trip time increases. So increasing the time it takes to get from A to B does nothing more than - make it take longer. The result is - less time players have available to do whatever they planned on doing when they get to the destination.

If that happened I think you'll see fewer PCs in clans that have rides out of their cities/outposts on a regular basis, and more independents who aren't burdened by the wait-time involved in a trip that already lasts an hour without having to wait for everyone to group up and prepare.

(emphasis added)

Maybe I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that speeding up travel with the stable/unstable trick was considered abuse anyway.

In any case, I've always preferred making the city-to-city trek with an overnight somewhere in between, usually Luir's. Yeah there are rare exceptions where getting somewhere more quickly is important due to OOC considerations, but otherwise I think it's more fun to stretch out the trip a little.

[Armaddict]

Eh.  You guys are all thinking on opposite lines of thinking than me.  I want it more desolate.  I want travel between the cities to be a big ordeal, not something that can just be whipped together.  I want dying of thirst out there to be a big issue if you wander too far from a city.  Though I wouldn't mind more big bad beasties further out.

More rooms.  More time dedicated to travel, when you must travel (the idea of travelling all over the known just needs to be a crazy idea).  More quiet, empty space, though with some hidden gems that small groups can make use of, again, for the idea of isolation, when desired.

If you're building pc's and wanting the world built solely around convenient travel...that's...not really in my own personal view of what the world is like.  Playability is always an issue, but I don't think open, constant travel for entire groups of people is really a goal playability should encompass, because it's -supposed- to be treacherous and difficult.  Groups like Kurac would certainly shine in ways like they're built around, in that sort of setting.

[QuillDipper]

Believe that stockpicking is really an idiotic strategy for man folks

Damn man folks.

[Saellyn]

I don't think the world needs to be larger, per se... I think it needs to be more detailed.

travel on skellebain

nyr is so hardcore he skellebains before he does anything. including going into the byn latrines.

[Reiloth]

On increasing time from point A to point B:

It's only a 1/2 hour trip if you're going alone, don't encounter anything, stable and unstable your mount in Luir's. As soon as you add more people to the trip, the trip time increases. So increasing the time it takes to get from A to B does nothing more than - make it take longer. The result is - less time players have available to do whatever they planned on doing when they get to the destination.

If that happened I think you'll see fewer PCs in clans that have rides out of their cities/outposts on a regular basis, and more independents who aren't burdened by the wait-time involved in a trip that already lasts an hour without having to wait for everyone to group up and prepare.

I agree with this sentiment. I think it's up to the traveler to take their time, or speed through it, just like they can take the time to RP, or rely on code to get them as fast as possible from point A to point B. Each type of trip has its merits. Sometimes you just need to wrangle all the Runners and get to Red Storm before night-fall. Other times, you can take your time and spend the whole day going from Allanak to Tuluk. Really depends on the leader's time limits and their underlings availability.

Making the world more dangerous seems like a better priority than making it bigger. More variation in dangerous flora and fauna seems like a more Zalanthan solution.

I would certainly like sandstorms to be much more dangerous (Health and stamina loss, while in one of the 'fierce storms', and lesser in a regular sandstorm). Allow tents to avoid this sort of damage, but a chance of being destroyed as well. Let tribals have mobile foxhole yurts they can build to weather out storms, and make them sought out as caravan guides. By creating obstacles on the way from point A to point B, it will possibly take longer, or possibly not, depending on your luck. The less static the environment is, that dynamic nature will really dictate things like hiring the Byn, deciding how many people to bring with you, and when to leave. And so on.