Dance Skill

[Kinaed]

Code: Select all

Syntax: Dance begin
        Dance begin <name>
        Dance <message>
        Dance end

Dance begin will allow you to use "dance <message>" with the 
skill dancing. The output is very similar to pmote or acting.

Dance begin <name> will allow you to use pmote with a partner,
displaying both of your dancing skills together.

Dance <message> will emote a message that displays the skill
in which the dancing is done.

Dance end will complete the dance.

[Zeita]

Thank you, this will be awesome, and very much appreciated! I hope that I haven't been too much of a greasy wheel about this one. I do think that the code support for dancing with other players will be particularly appreciated widely.

[Temi]

Would the other person have to begin the dancing as well before their dance skills are showing up and factoring in?

[Kinaed]

Probably should. Thanks for the clarification!

[Amdair]

I just hope that we're not expected to have this skill for generic ballroom dancing and such. :/

[Kaemgen]

Yeah, I agree with Amdair.

[Kinaed]

Why not?

[Amdair]

It'd be another skill pretty much all nobles would be expected to have above 25- really, most noblemen should have ride, too, and a foreign language never hurt anyone, but with all the assorted things educated folk ought to know vs. non-educated, it would leave little room for practical skills like combat, magery, stealth or trades.

Just based on the nobles from "A Knight's Tale", they would need:

-riding
-dancing
-(possibly French!)
-polearms
-block
-sword

We're at 6, already, which is sometimes how many learn slots one possesses- never mind that we allow three defenses, presently. :o

There's a lot of 'background skills' that require no rpxp, like sailing, tactics, architecture, agriculture, accounting, philosophy, theology, law, geography or cartography. For the most part, we agree that making them skills would just serve as a sink for rpxp and/or cause players to create less interesting characters who can know/do far less.

Similarly, dancing (for the non professional performer,) would just be something most noblemen (and some noblewomen, too,) would pass up out of desire to be practically useful, versus having a courtly skill that comes into play only once in a while, and with limited real results- dancing is just something nobles are 'expected' to know, since it comes up in courtly affairs regularly. We've gotten by thus far with emotes alone.

[Kinaed]

I think with the addition of skills, there should be additional learn master slots instead of limiting someone to sixish/tenish skills, especially if it'd mean that characters are too limited to be rounded out. This said, I generally don't think the argument that one shouldn't have to pay for a skill just because it's never been paid for before, and other skills aren't, is really a valid reason.

Instead, by that logic, since we cannot code every skill, we may as well remove all skills and go to a more mush-like game where only a very few things are coded (which I'm personally not against, but I think it'd be interesting what it might do to our system and how long it'd take to redo it overall).

This said, no one is limited from learning all skills, they're limited from GRANDMASTERING all skills. I think it's perfectly acceptable to be a noble who is adept at ballroom, but not necessarily the epitome of grace.

[Amdair]

In counterpoint to your response, Kinaed, I don't mean to imply that 'we shouldn't pay for the skill because we never have before'. Instead, I just feel that the merits of requiring this for ballroom dancing are few, considering that all skills cost the same per rank, you must learn them by use and it requires a learn master slot to get above Adept (not to reach Grandmaster. Were this the case, the limit at which one must learn master would be 60 going into 61, not 25 going into 26.)

There are tons of skills left in the background because they aren't as easily measured by code, like tactics, philosophy or theology, or because they are not things frequently used and would see extremely limited use, even amongst their targeted audience, like architecture or dancing.

Adding more learn slots is not going to encourage most to pick up skills like this. Instead, it will mean more combat skills for poor mages, who already use up almost all of theirs on magic, more practical skills for combatants, who tend to have their slots filled up with various defenses and tricks, and more trades for merchants, who will be less dependent on interactivity.

So, I still don't feel this is the way to go. I'm sure the troubadours would like this skill, and I'm all for giving it to them as a performance method, but as for requiring it for all dancing- I don't think I'm alone when I say I would find it more than inconvenient to suddenly have to drop several thousand experience or hours of LBUing on acquiring a skill I've been roleplaying as having all along, at a reasonable level for my character's IC background- just like many of the others I've listed. Similarly, most other characters have tons of non obvious skillsets they employ that aren't measured or noted.

In summary, I think my opinion is more along the lines of 'we shouldn't need to pay for / acquire this skill because it's not all that important, would inconvenience most of us and is a background trait better left for RP.'

Although one could, like you did before, argue that my points suggest we should just become a MUSH and not use coded skills at all, I could counter that requiring everything to be coded and enforced through command output makes us closer to hack and slash, as there is far less left to our imaginations to write about.