Posted by Pyla [Player](VIP) on September 28, 1999 at 22:05:15:
A long time ago, pre-cf, I played another MUD. Anyway, we had something there I really liked. We had the knowledge of riding. Here are the skills and commands, as I recall them, and a bit of text explaining how it worked in the game.
Riding – a skill determining how often you would fall of your animal. This was checked, each time you walked out of a room and into a new one. If the check failed, we would fall down from the animal, re-stand, and re-mount it.
Trample – In combat we could trample our foe. The number of attacks and damage would vary with the animal. An eight-legged horse would trample more then an ostrich.
Mount/dismount – This one I don’t have to explain.
Tether – If we for some reason didn’t want the animal to follow we could tether it up. That way it would wander of, and people could se it belonged someone.
Put saddle/saddlebag/reigns animal – Almost all animals required a saddle, some even special once. The same was with the reigns. The saddlebag allowed for extra weight to be transported, but couldn’t fit on all animals.
Lead animal – If we didn’t want to ride it, we could just lead it around. There could be reasons for this, for instance you couldn’t trip people if you were riding, neither could you pick up things from the ground.
I think that was about it. The animals was very unique, some had special features. Dragons flew, Nightmare-steeds hoofs were fire-attack, Windmare would find its owner within a given time and so on. It was a blast to find and subdue the most exotic animal. This would lead to groups going out in order to subdue a dragon. We would bring healers to sanc the dragon, so it would not be killed, people would remove their weapons and fight them barehanded in order not to kill them. Very fun and good role-play. We also had people subduing animals for gold (Pyla Auctions “I’ll bring you an enslaved Tiamat with golden reigns for a practice dagger”). Anyway I always liked them, and even though it was often a hassle I would always try to be riding. Some of the reasons were, that some of the animals had way more moves than players, you could carry more junk around and they looked cool. Some of the animals I remember are :
Pyla [The Player]
Subdue – A command one would have to subdue wild animals. This could be used on dragons, some bears, all horses, a few spiders and some I have forgotten. The idea was to engage the animal and right before the animal died, you could subdue it. If you failed there was always the chance, that the animal would be killed the next battleround. If you got a message like ‘ the animal looks friendly’ you would have to flee in order not to kill it.
Splif – A gigantic two headed dog
Ostrich – Very hard to find.
Windmare – Was flying and invis, very hard to subdue and would return to it’s subduer with time.
Old blue dragon – Had a lightning breath that destroyed eq.
A crimson carpet - Flying, had a zillion moves, needed a magical robe as reigns and a soft blue pillow as saddle (My favorite)
On Carrion Field I see a chance that some of the animals might be able to behave deferent depending of the conditions. Say a ostrich might not want to walk in the frozen without a frostshield, a horse might move fast over the open plains but slow in the underground tunnel.
I think this would add a dimension to the game, not only would it allow us to make our chars stand out more (Always riding a gargoyle is something people remember), also it would give us more things to play around with and that way make our chars more real.