Moria (PLATO) - Gameplay - Characters

Characters

Players create characters who possess skills that describe abilities on a 100-point scale. Cunning affects a character's life expectancy and the odds of evading an attack, tricking or surprising monsters, and opening boxes and chests. Piety affects the success of prayers and some non-battle spells. Wizardry determines which spells can be used and their odds of success. Valor affects what weapons can be used, as well as reducing damage received in combat and affecting success in attacking monsters.

In Moria, character generation is automatic. A player chooses from among four possible skill combinations, each totaling to the same amount. The game does not enforce a rigid notion of character class; characters may use any weapon or spell as their individual skill levels permit.

A character's Vitality level combines the concepts of character level, hit points, and endurance. A character's vitality level determines chances of success or cost of actions such as fighting or fleeing a monster and spell-casting. Performing actions, sustaining damage, or depleting food and water supplies consumes Vitality. Each turn a character rests while stocked with food and water restores Vitality. Should Vitality drop to zero, the character dies.

Score points are given for defeating monsters.

Read more about this topic:  Moria (PLATO), Gameplay

Famous quotes containing the word characters:

    No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has....
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
    which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.
    Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

    The major men
    That is different. They are characters beyond
    Reality, composed thereof. They are
    The fictive man created out of men.
    They are men but artificial men.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)