Tuesday 20 January 2009

Gameplay Idea #1: The Portable Stash

"A Stash is a collection of items that the player leaves somewhere in the dungeon with the intention of returning there later should one of those items prove necessary/useful. Stashing often occurs in games with persistent levels in which the number of items the PC can carry is limited"

I've personally never used stashes when playing Roguelikes that offer them, mainly due to the built-in annoyance factors (both in terms of cost or travel time) and the amplication of the inventory management subgame. However, often they are a useful enhancement to the gameplay of a roguelike, and as such, I'd like to offer their facility in a future version of Kharne.

I feel that the concept of a Portable stash could be implemented and provide an interesting enhancement to gameplay. To avoid a portable stash turning into just another bag of holding that increases inventory space, some basic limitations on access would need to be put in place. For example: the stash can be accessed at any time, but costs gold to deposit and remove items from it. Or, the stash can only be accessed upon descending any set of stairs. Or perhaps even, in exchange for its services, the stash slowly drains the magical powers of items placed in it.

Buying, hiring or even stealing portable stashes (of various sizes, filled or unfilled) could also be implemented.

Thoughts?


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Elona uses treasure chests. They are HEAVY (making them impractical to carry around unless the character has some sort of godlike strength) and usually found throughout dungeons. To open one you need a lock pick. Any items you put into it will be added to its weight.

Dave said...

Elona is a Japanese RL?

Do you only need lockpicks to open them the first time you come across them, or every time?

Unknown said...

http://homepage3.nifty.com/rfish/index_e.html

Yes. It's translated to English as well. You only need to open the chest once I think.

http://ivan.sourceforge.net/

IVAN also uses chests, and they're more frequent.

Jotaf said...

As you said, making them portable can quite easily defeat the purpose of stashes. How about this:

You have a spell called "magic stash" or something, which is a minor version of a portal. It can only be cast on a closed chest. It replaces the chest contents with your stash, giving you access when you open it! When you leave, the chest's contents are saved in the game's representation of your stash so it's updated. If casting "magic stash" on another stash in the same level the old chest stops being "it" and the magic stash is now the new chest (or it just doesn't work, if you're lazy =P ).