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M y s t i c A R E N A
Main Rules
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Overview
========
Imagine Wrestling - only with weapons - that's ARENA. Well, sort of.
ARENA is a combat simulator, basically. It requires players and human input
to turn ARENA into a real game, but it's a lot of fun if done so.
The setting can be almost anywhere, I prefer a near-future or contemporary
setting where (this is the only important thing!) gladiator fights are still
common. Modern time settings have the advantage of television and other
broadcasting technology, which is vitally important for those parts of the
game not depending on the program.
Each player is one Gladiator (or his manager or whatever) and there are two
parts to this game.
Part one is the fighting itself. This is done with the ARENA program, that
takes the Gladiator data files as input and simulates their fight. It also
takes charge of the daily maintenance and other stuff, but more of that later
on.
Now the fights have to come from somewhere and that is part two. Part two is
the communications part. Via e-mail, echomail on FiDOnet or newsgroups, via
whatever, the players have to communicate. As in the WWF and other wrestling
leagues, they insult each other, claim to be heroes and of course much better
than the rest, and - very important - challenge each other to fights. Once
two Gladiators have agreed upon a fight, the GameMaster aka Commissioner
starts the ARENA program and then publishes its output. Sometimes, he will
also have to send a Gladiator a private mail, as Gladiators can increase
their skills with experience and buy new equipment with gold won in fights.
All other details of the game are in the hand of the GameMaster. He may
schedule fights himself, introduce titles or tournaments and much more. The
program doesn't care how the fight was arranged.
Fighters also heal with time, not automatically. ARENA runs maintenance once
a day, where all fighters regain Wounds and Fatigue. Most Gladiators will not
be able to have a fight every day, or not even every other one. The game is
designed for around 2 fights per week per Gladiator, but if someone gets
really hurt, it could well happen that he'd better stay out of the arena for
a week.
Oh, yes. Gladiators CAN die in this game. It should happen seldom, but it
is well possible. The program doesn't kill (erase their data files) anyone
automatically, but I really recommend that anyone with less than 0 Wounds is
considered dead. Gladiators with 0 Wounds should be considered very seriously
injured, taken out for two weeks or even more, and also get one or two of
their attributes decreased. As usual, this is in the hands of the GameMaster.
Creating Gladiators
===================
Here is what you do if you want to play the game and need to create a new
Gladiator.
Well, actually there's no fixed rules for this, as the ARENA program only
checks if the attributes are within the allowed ranges.
But what follows is the recommended procedure for character creation. If your
GameMaster decides to use something different - he may.
You have 55 points to distribute among your attributes. There are 8 of them
in total, though they work differently:
Weaponskill How well you can fight, actually. Important one.
Endurance How tough you are.
Strength How strong you are. Stronger Gladiators inflict more damage
and some weapons require a certain Strength.
Tactics Agility, tactical fighting, dodging etc. Does NOT help you to
hit your enemy, but may help to avoid getting hit yourself.
Also very important for team-fights, especially tag-team.
Willpower How fast you fold. Sometimes, it may be the better choice to
surrender, so high Willpower isn't always in your best
interest. That's why it costs no points.
Wounds How much real, bleeding wounds you can handle
Fatigue How much pain, blows and extertion you can handle
Gold Needed to buy equipment
Weaponskill is NOT a simple number in this game, therefore you will not get
one for it. Instead, all Gladiators start with the same abilities, but you
may increase your Weaponskill outright for two points (sic!) per increase.
Endurance, Strength and Tactics range between 5 and 18 and cost one point
each. i.e. Endurance-12, Strength-10 and Tactics-7 will cost 29 points. A
value of 10 should be considered "average" in this attributes, but keep in
mind that Gladiators should be above-average, as Wrestlers or other pro-
fessional fighters usually are.
Willpower ranges from 5 to 15, too. Actually, up to 18 as well, but you
cannot choose values above 15 for a starting character. Willpower is free,
just choose a value. Remember that high values may cause your Gladiator to
take risks too high for him, while low values may cause him to give up too
early. On the other hand, with a high value he may win a fight in spite of
heavy wounds, or with a low value he may be smart enough to surrender early
in a match that might have turned into a slaughter otherwise. Choose with
respect to the "style" you want your Gladiator to be.
Now, Wounds is a little complicated. You have 15 Wounds automatically. You
can increase that with points. The first additional wound costs 1 point, the
second two MORE, then three more and so on. Therefore, a total of 18 Wounds
will cost you 1+2+3 = 6 points. Maximum is 20 Wounds which would costs some
1+2+3+4+5 = 15 points.
Fatigue slightly depends on your Endurance. You will have a Fatigue of 25
plus half your Endurance (rounded up), plus two per point spend. Therefore,
if you have 10 Endurance and spend 4 points on Fatigue, you will have a total
of 25 + 10/2 + 4*2 = 25+5+8 = 38 Fatigue.
Finally Gold. You start with 250 gold on hand. Each point spend on gold
during character creation earns you an additional 50 gold.
It's actually quite simple once you got into it, but in case you are a little
confused, there is a JavaScript page on the Mystic ARENA homepage (see bottom
of this file) that handles Gladiator creation.
For equipment, please refer to the extra EQUIPMENT.DOC file. All weapons and
armour are listed therein, together with the few rules that restrict their
usage.
Finishing Touches
=================
That's not all there is. This is the mechanics part, but there's another, a
roleplaying and communications part. Once you've got the attributes, think of
a name for your Gladiator, then write down some more words about him. How he
looks, what his fighting style is like, his colours, music, anything that
adds to the atmosphere. View some wrestling-shows for ideas. :)
To introduce some personal touch into the fights, every Gladiator has one
offensive and one defensive "special move". Much like the "finishing moves"
of wrestlers, this is the personal mark.
Special moves will not happen very often, but most of the times, they will
have visible influence on the fight.
After finishing your Gladiator, you should think of a name for your two
special moves and send them in to the GameMaster. These can NOT be changed
later on, as they are your "personal symbol". Both names can be up to 25
characters long. Choose something that fits your Gladiator.
You also have to choose your Fighting Style. There are three available and
you may change your Style for no cost, however I recommend that you don't do
so very often (hey, it's your STYLE after all!) and as Commissioner I would
never let you go from one extreme to the other, i.e. if you're Aggressive,
you may opt to switch to Normal, but not to Defensive, at least not at once
and most probably only after a couple of fights.
Now I've already mentioned the three Styles, here's an overview:
Normal This is what most of you should try first. This is also what
everyone was fighting like before I invented Style (in v1.6
actually, together with Drugs).
Defensive "Let's be careful"
You fight more carefully but don't attack that good as a
result. Technically speaking, you get +1 on parries and -1
on attacks, so there's no overall gain or loss, but you might
get away less injured. You might also win just by having the
opponent exhaust himself in wild attacks on your defense.
Aggressive "Smash 'em! Only wimps parry!"
Well, that says it. Technically, it's +1 on attacks and -1
on parries, so same thing, no overall gain. But you might
just blast your enemy away with your ferocious attacks. It's
just that you have to get your attacks in, first of all and
that you need a good parry to get a chance to strike if the
other one is attacking.
Again, technically, there's no overall gain with either Style. But different
from your Fan-Factor, this DOES have some noticable influence on your fights.
Choose your Style to fit to the kind of Gladiator you want to have and then
change it for special fights as a strategical means, like being a little more
careful against that guy with the Battle Axe may be a good idea.
Playing a Gladiator
===================
Now that your Gladiator is finished, you will be introduced into the league
by the GameMaster and off you go.
Playing ARENA is mostly writing RolePlays. RolePlays are all the interviews,
speeches and stuff that create the atmosphere that makes the difference be-
tween a real ARENA fight and simply two guys hacking at each other. Again,
watch a wrestling-show for ideas. :)
Although it doesn't make the impression from this rules, the RolePlays are,
what this game is actually all about. The fights are just kind of background
for this, and you should really put your effort into the RolePlays, because
otherwise it's all just about who created the best Gladiator.
Now for those who can't resist trying to actually WIN their fights, you might
want to know that fighters are getting a Ratio for their performance. How
exactly this is calculated is one of the big miracles of Arena Operations,
but you should know that your old performances don't count as much as your
recent ones. So to stay on top, you have to keep winning. Each 1st of the
month, your performances are reevaluated. You can also see this on your
status report. Behind the figures Victories or Losses, that show your total
performance, there are two figures in brackets. The first one is how many of
these Victories or Losses have happened this month, the second one shows how
many happened last month. Anything older than that is not forgotten, but its
impact on the rating is not that impressive.
Challenges and Normal Fights
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The default way to a fight is via a challenge. The RolePlays should offer
more than enough opportunities for challenges. Once both participants have
agreed that they will fight, the GM schedules the fight and excecutes the
ARENA program, publishing its output.
You don't have any influence in the fight itself. It is fully computer-
generated, but it DOES take into account every attribute of your Gladiator.
There are, however, a few options. More precisely, there are three different
types of fights.
Normal is what the fight is when nothing else is agreed upon. It
will come to an end once one Gladiator surrenders, is knocked
out or worse.
FirstBlood For the chickens, or for settling a matter formally, kinda
like a duell. Fight will be over once the first Wound has
been caused. Still this CAN hurt a lot if your enemy wields
a Battle Axe and you don't happen to have a good armour.
FirstBlood fights are rewarded with less experience points
as the risk is not as high as in a normal fight. Expect to
receive around 25% less.
I should add, that the fans usually don't like FirstBlood
that much, it's just not the real thing.
Blood A normal fight with a little twist to it: As long as there
is not much blood on the floor, surrender is not allowed.
Once a couple of (a total of five) wounds are caused,
surrender is again available to both opponents, no matter
who wounded whom.
NoSurrender For the real grudges. NoSurrender simply means what it says:
Surrender is not an option. Fight till you drop. Hope that it
is because of K.O. - and btw: There will be no "simulated"
K.O.s - this is a mean game.
As the risk is considerably higher, NoSurrender fights will
earn you between 10% and 20% more XPs than normal fights.
They also tend to have the crowd get excited more easily.
Timed This fight has a set time limit, mostly somewhere between two
and four minutes, but it can be anything. If one of the two
fighters can score a regular victory in this time, he is the
winner as if it were a normal fight.
If the time runs out, however, a jury will rate both fighters
performance and the one with the higher score wins.
Team Fights
===========
Although One-on-One fights will (and should) form the main part of any good
league, there exists the opportunity for team fights. All of these always have
four instead of the usual two Gladiators fighting it out. Currently, there are
only two different types of these fights:
Tag-Team Every team gets assigned one "corner" (actually, most of the
stadions are round in shape, but it's still called that way).
In that corner, a touch-sensitive pole is errected. If at any
time during the fight not at least one person touches the
pole, you have lost. Hasn't happened in the last years, it's
just a good measure against cheating.
What that means is, that there will always be exactly one
Gladiator from each team actually fighting, but you have the
opportunity to switch with your partner if you get exhausted.
That is - if you get the opportunity in the middle of some
heated fight...
Xtreme-Tag Basically the Tag-Team equivalent to NoSurrender. Not only
will there be no surrendering in this kind of fight, it's
also not over once you finished off one of the opposing team,
because you have to make them BOTH going down to win. This
means that once one Gladiator is K.O.ed or killed, the other
one can leave the pole and charge on in, and if he can pull
off the trick and beat both enemies, his team has won. The
other two guys will, off course, still have to tag etc, so
it is not two guys slashing away at one, the lone one only
has the disadvantage of not being able to tag anymore ('cause
there's no one left to tag with).
The Fans
========
Depending on the performance of both (or all four) Gladiators, the fans may
get really excited or they may become bored. They may even leave the arena,
if you're really fighting like their grandmother.
Currently, there is no feedback of this, so your fight itself will not be
influenced on how the fans like it (or not), as you are far too busy keeping
that sharp thing your enemy wields aways from your precious body. However,
there is a value called Fan-Factor in your status report. It is combined with
a second value called Faction and I'll talk more about Factions in just a
second.
Depending on your overall performance during each fight, your Fan-Factor
will increase or decrease. Bad fights decrease it, good ones will increase
your reputation.
Your RolePlays may (and should!) also affect your Fan-Factor, at the
discretion of the Commissioner. This is especially important once you enter
the realm of indifference with the fans.
In Team fights (Team or Tag), it is also important if you and your partner
are members of the same Faction or not. Fighting alonside the enemy is not
exactly the thing to push your reputation.
Factions
========
Now, to enhance competition, not to say enmity, amongst the Gladiators, there
is not only a Fan-Factor, but also a number of different Factions that you
can belong to.
All Newbies belong to no Faction initially, or rather to a Faction called
"Newbies". Once you have decided on where you are standing and once you have
a couple of fans, you have to choose your side.
Your Commissioner may change this, but as a default, the following Factions
are included in the program. Please note that ALL Factions are enemies, even
the Good Guys and Good Inc. - both believe that the other is doing it mostly
wrong.
Good Guys The Good Guys are just that. They are Fighters, but they do
fight for the light. They don't usually use drugs or illegal
attacks, only if justice requires it. They're pretty much
down to earth and normal, just like the "good guys" of your
favorite wrestling federation.
Bad Boys The opposite. The Bad Boys are cheating and getting drugged,
laugh if the opponent gets hurt and generally have a lot of
fun, though not all may show it. They're the "bad boys" from
your wrestling shows. Bad, but within limits.
Neutrals These are the guys who either don't care for good or bad or
who stay out of that war consciously. It may be that they're
motivated by money or fame or just don't want to have any-
thing to do with that whole business.
Loners Loners may be anything, good, evil, neutral, but they're not
on anyone's side except their own. The legendary Elric would
be a very good example of an evil Loner. He might also be the
one True Evil (see below) - we will never know, Factions were
not yet invented in his fighting days.
Good Inc. Now these guys are not only good, the OWN the damn thing.
Good Inc. is bigger than life, much less pragmatic than the
simple Good Guy and these guys have sold their souls to the
war against all evil. They usually wear white clothes and
when not in the arena, some of them participate in welfare
or anti-drug activities. Off course, they would NEVER use
drugs in combat or make illegal attacks.
To cut it short: They're the extremist fanatics of the good.
True Evil The counterpart. True Evil starts where the Bad Guys stop.
Pacts with the Devil, bodies tattooed with evil symbols, not
accepting an enemies surrender (the worst foul possible in
this game!) and other things are the mark of a True Evil
Fighter. They usually spend half their time out of the Arena
because of penalties.
In short: The extremist fanatics of evil.
Obviously, most Gladiators will (and should) belong to one of the first three
Factions. Especially Good Inc. and True Evil are really EXTREMES and should
be played as such.
It is possible to switch Factions, but doing so will reduce your Fan-Factor,
so you should not do it very often.
Wounds and Healing
==================
Immediatly after each fight, both Gladiators will regain 10 Fatigue and one
Wound due to first aid.
Other than that, you will have to wait to heal. The ARENA program should be
run once per day in maintenance mode by your GameMaster and will heal 15
Fatigue and one or two Wounds for every Gladiator. As long as you are really
wounded, you will heal two Wounds. Once you are very close to your maximum
Wounds (so close that you'd be fit the next day), you will heal only one for
the last two days.
Yes that does mean that if you just went to the brink of death with loosing
16 of your 18 wounds (or something like that), you'll be out for a week or
more. Which is still only thanks to modern (or near-future) medicine. In a
mediaval setting, the GM should only run maintenance every 2 days or even
less often.
Experience etc.
===============
Each fight will earn you XPs or eXperience Points. How much you get depends
on whether you won and lost and if your enemy was more or less experienced
than you and by what degree.
Once you collected a certain amount of experience (every few fights, at least
in the beginning) you will receive a note from the GameMaster informing you
that your fighting skills have increased, or it will be mentioned at the end
of the fight, where the XP rewards are listed.
This is represented by two increases to your attributes. Weaponskill is
always increased, plus you may choose one other attribute that you'd like to
train in. You may increase Endurance, Strength, Tactics, Wounds and Fatigue.
Willpower may be changed by +/- 1 for no charge, if you want to. Your GM may
also give you an option to change your Willpower inbetween, like after some
really devastating fight or something. Willpower is always free, it's just
that you shouldn't be allowed to change it too much too often.
For increase purposes, attributes are divided into three categories.
The first one contains only Fatigue and 1 increase will grant you +1 on this
attribute. Fatigue may never exceed 60 points.
Second category features everything else, i.e. Strength, Endurance, Tactics
and WeaponSkill and Wounds. Here you will have to collect 2 Increases to have
them boosted by 1. The attributes can not exceed 20, WeaponSkill is, as you
have already seen and will see in more detail below, rated a little bit
different.
The third category includes Wounds. As long as you have less than 20 Wounds,
increasing it costs 2 Increases as all other attributes. After that, the
prize is 3 Increases. That means, if you have 19 Wounds, you have to collect
2 Increases to raise it to 20. You have to collect 3 more to bring it to 21.
Wounds can rise up to 25.
Now that you have understood this, back to the Weaponskill. Increases in
Weaponskill are different as Weaponskill is not rated in a single value.
Instead, you can choose between different types of increases to this one.
They are:
Reduce Risk This reduces your risk of fumbles, but doesn't actually
increase your fighting abilities.
Get Steady If you choose this increase, you will not get much better,
but you will make less bad and weak attacks, and exchange
those for medium ones.
New Moves With this, you don't work on your weak spots, but instead
try to make more good manoevres. So be sure to have a good,
solid base to build from before you tackle too much of this.
Fancy Tricks For the pros. Fancy tricks, fantastic attacks and brilliant
moves CAN make the difference in a fight. But again, if you
have no solid base to build on, it's a game of chance with
a high risk. Better get a little training in the lower
classes first. One fancy move won't save your day if you go
fumbling around the rest of the time.
You will be informed by your GameMaster if you cannot choose a certain in-
crease. This does NOT mean that you are at your limit there, most of the time
it means that you haven't sufficient foundation to build up from. If e.g. you
cannot learn New Moves, and instead you decide on a Get Steady course, you
may be able to learn New Moves with your next increase.
Now, finally, I will also tell you how your Weaponskill is used in the game,
so that you know what the numbers on your character status mean.
Weaponskill is divided into five categories that show your chances for (in
this order) fumbles, weak actions, medium actions, good actions and finally
fancy tricks or brilliant actions, whatever you want to call the later. The
beginning values for every Gladiator (except if you used your 55 Pts. to
increase from the start on) are:
Weaponskill 15% 40% 30% 10% 5%
Now it will become clearer why sometimes you cannot take certain increases,
that is because you can never get below 5% anywhere.
Final note: Remember, there are TWO increases - one on WeaponSkill and one
that can be choosen from the other attributes. Your GameMaster may also
allow you to earn money with increases, especially if he decided not to
work with gold, rewards etc. in his league. One increase should then yield
you 50 Gold.
Fighting Beasts
===============
This is a new addition since ARENA version 2. If you can't seem to find your-
self an enemy or you just want to earn yourself some experience, you can go
and fight Beasts. Beasts are easy to defeat, so don't expect to earn much
fans with these kinds of fights. You will, however, earn some Experience and
very easy, too.
If you are interested, look into the BEASTS.DOC for full details.
Random Events
=============
If your Commissioner opts to use this feature, he will run the program once
a week to create random events. Here's a list of them:
Interview You are asked for a special interview. It is _your_
duty as the player to write this interview, and if
you do, it will earn you 10 Gold (15 if you own a
title, including #1 Contender) and may increase your
Fan-Factor.
This has to be done manually by your Commissioner as
soon as you have written the Interview, so remind him
of it. :)
Special One TV-station features a Special about you. This
might be a summary of your greatest fights or some-
thing about your history or whatever.
It increases your Fan-Factor.
New Sponsor You have found a new Sponsor. This gains you some
Gold, but decreases your Fan-Factor a little bit.
They want to see blood, not ads.
(Very) Good Training Gives you a little experience for free.
Accident Some Accident has happened to you. This will cost
you 2 Wounds, unless you already have only one or
none currently, so you cannot be killed by a random
event.
Serious Accident Same as Accident, but costs 4 Wounds.
Present From A Fan A fan sends you a present.
No effect besides that. :)
Profit From Merchandise You make some profit from selling T-Shirts or what-
ever with your name on it. Gains you a little less
Gold than a New Sponsor would, but doesn't have any
sideeffects.
Size of Code:
=============
For the curious, here is the size of code and program. I have no idea how
many hours of work went into this, but I guess it must be several hundred.
Don't remind me of the amount of money I could have earned in that time
instead. :)
current version: 2.5
code: 5,711 lines - 174,795 bytes
additional text: 453 lines - 27,899 bytes
documentation: 2,441 lines - 111,329 bytes
total: 8,605 lines - 314,023 bytes
executable size: 78.784 bytes (on Linux - DOS is about 95k)
doesn't look huge? Well, if you're used to Windoze Bloatware only, it doesn't.
If you have ever written software yourself or know that in REAL operating
systems (like Unix) things like full-featured Webservers fit in 180 KB, you
might think differently.
Any Questions?
==============
I hope, you understood everything I said. :)
If you didn't - write me a mail:
Internet: tom@mystery.antar.com
FiDO-Net: Thomas Vogt, 2:240/5442.1
Homepage for Mystic ARENA:
http://home.onestop.net/arena/
Have Fun !