All ideas tagged "the watch"

#4225

 · 
vanilla

Bribeable humans may refuse an initial sum of money you throw at them, with 50% chance. Usually they say “It would take [some number of] zorkmids for me to abandon my duty!” which you can then provide if you wish.

#4223

 · 
vanilla

Enhance Minetown with a bunch of new NPC denizens:

  • Dwarven trainer: found in a largish room.
    • Chatting to him makes him ask if you want to train, for a fee. If you say yes and pay it, he shouts “Defend yourself!” and begins to fight with you. This lasts until you chat with him again. While you are in this training fight, neither of you deal damage to the other one, though you can still deal damage normally to other things.
    • If you don’t want to train, he offers to teach you how to disarm for a large sum of money. Disarming is a technique you can use with the #disarm command after you have learned it from him. Possibly, it unlocks a “disarming” skill that you can’t get elsewhere. When you use the disarm command, you are prompted for a direction to pick an adjacent monster. The monster must be wielding a weapon, and you must have some minimum amount of skill in your weapon (which can be martial arts). The chance of success is 20% base, +1% per point of Luck (or -1% per negative Luck), +5% for every skill level above Unskilled you are in either your weapon skill, or the disarm skill, +2% per level you have over the monster, and -2% per level the monster has over you.
  • Elven enchantress: Mutually exclusive with the trainer. Chatting with her prompts you for an item to enchant.
    • Items that are not naturally enchantable with enchant scrolls get refused.
    • Artifacts or items at their maximum enchantment get refused; she gives a line about how it is already surrounded by powerful magic and she dares not attempt it.
    • If the item is damaged, it gets repaired, for a modest amount of money per level of damage.
    • If the item is undamaged but not blessed, it gets blessed, charging a slightly higher amount of money.
    • If the item is blessed and undamaged, its enchantment is increased by 1, charging a larger amount of money that scales in direct proportion to the preexisting enchantment on that item.
    • She possibly fooproofs the item if it’s at maximum enchantment.
  • Dwarven innkeeper: also found in a large room.
    • Chatting to him has him offer you an ale, for either 5 zorkmids or the appropriate buy cost of a potion of booze, and accepting produces the effects of an uncursed potion of booze, as well as identifying the potion of booze. 50% of the time, he also gives you a random rumor as if from an uncursed fortune cookie. (Criticism of this is that on-demand confusion makes several early-game challenges involving confused effects of scrolls trivial.)
    • He will also offer you a room to stay the night if the Watch is not angry at you, for either $50 or the cost of a potion of full healing. Accepting fully heals you (or produces the effects of an uncursed potion of full healing, without identifying the potion since one wasn’t involved). Not specified how it should deal with the time you are sleeping, whether that means literally putting you to sleep or something else.
  • Old gladiator: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn; chatting to him produces some old battle stories and a request for an ale (same price as if you were buying it yourself). The first time you buy him an ale, he will teach you a random weapon skill. Subsequent times he only thanks you drunkenly for the drink.
  • Aged traveler: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn, mutually exclusive with the gladiator; chatting to him has him offer to tell you the depth of the Oracle level for 50 zorkmids, or offer to “teach you some things he’s learned in his travels” for 1000 zorkmids, which acts like a blessed potion of gain level, but is not available after you get it once. Alternatively, he could teach you several random item identities.
  • Dirty drunk: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn, mutually exclusive with the gladiator and traveler.
  • Bar brawler: found in the inn, interacting with him in any way will make him angry and start a fight. You’re allowed to fight but not kill him (which would anger the Watch), and you can pacify him by putting him to sleep, paying him off, beating him close enough to death to make him give up, or whatever. If the fight breaks out in the inn you owe the innkeeper money for broken furniture.
  • Criminal or mugger: chatting to them makes them aware of you and they will try to steal from you later.
  • Merchant: Wanders around Minetown, slightly weaker than a shopkeeper. Will sell you food rations at the standard price. Criticism of this is that an unlimited source of food rations is unbalancing and makes a delicatessen obsolete. To add balance, he might have a limited quantity of them to sell, but then he is still kind of pointless.
  • Beggar: Has one randomly generated item, which he will sell at either its standard price or a discount. Most of the time this won’t be useful, but occasionally it could be something good.
  • Bureaucrat: sits alone in a small room. Chatting with him makes him sneer at you, “I’m busy”. However, if the Watch is angry, he will offer to take a large amount of gold from you to pacify them.

A secondary proposal is to make some of the denizens who teach you things actually useless a random amount of the time. For instance, the gladiator is a liar who’s good at spinning stories and not much else, or the aged traveler is a charlatan who gives misinformation, abusing Wisdom or sapping your experience points.

#3830

 · 
vanilla

Blowing a tin whistle makes any watchmen on the level converge on you. They won’t be angered, but may be slightly miffed about the false alarm and/or get angered if you keep abusing it.

#3762

 · 
vanilla

5000 turns after you kill or get rid of the last guard in Minetown, orcs invade and transform it to Orcish Town.

#3447

 · 
vanilla

Minetown shopkeepers should be gnomes, and the priest and Watch should be dwarves, either by creating new racial variants of those monsters or via a monster race implementation. It doesn’t make any sense that everything in the town is run by humans.

#3429

 · 
vanilla

When you do something to anger the Minetown Watch, they become hostile but will demand that you pay a fine when they come face to face with you, and will only attack after you refuse or are unable to pay the fine.

#3202

 · 
vanilla

You can chat to the Minetown Watch to pacify them if they’re angry, but it requires high Charisma and Luck to pull off (and is never guaranteed). There probably also needs to be some limiting factor so that you can’t retry this.

#2901

 · 
vanilla

Watchmen don’t yell at you to stop picking a lock if you’re using a key and therefore not picking the lock.

#2391

 · 
vanilla

Watchmen that you chat to on the Tourist quest give special dialogue themed to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

#1725

 · 
vanilla

Soldiers and watchmen can be tamed by throwing gold at them. In order to make them tame, you must give them over a certain initial amount X, which will give 1 point of tameness, and giving them additional gold will increase tameness by 1 for every Y gold. Tameness steadily declines over time, removing Y gold from their inventory each time it drops by a point. Should tameness drop to zero, they become hostile. Chatting with them while tame will give you a clue about how tame they are: they will either talk about how they’re going to spend all their money, or wonder when the next payment is coming, or threaten you for more gold, depending on the amount of tameness. Normal magical taming methods do not work on them (as currently happens).

#919

 · 
vanilla

When you get arrested by the Watch or a guard, you are teleported to a prison level, from which you must escape.

#907

 · 
vanilla

Watchmen will attack monsters that they see attacking you unprovoked.

#137

 · 
vanilla

The Watch should turn hostile when you apply a cursed tin whistle within earshot of them (because it produces a shrill whistling sound).

#107

 · 
vanilla

Add a dogcatcher, who will come and impound your pet if it misbehaves (stealing from shops, killing Minetown citizens) and you don’t get it leashed before a certain amount of time has passed.

#3

 · 
vanilla

The Watch start with a small amount of gold, and will throw it at a player of the opposite gender while the player is disrobing.