Geekdom collision: Doctor Who Meets Nethack

[annathepiper]

Over on nethack, cyranojoe has pondered playing with making a Time Lord character class for Nethack. This makes me laugh and laugh and laugh with geekish glee, and the entire Murkworks promptly came up with various ideas on how to implement such a character class:

• Your character is allowed twelve regenerations, based on the code for an Amulet of Life Saving. Each regeneration, however, will reset all your stats, cause a hit on your Constitution, possibly knock you out for X number of turns, and wipe a random number of things (identified objects and visited levels) out of your game memory. Also, every item of armor you're wearing will be polymorphed.
  

  
  To accommodate what we saw when Tenth Doctor's tenure began, for a limited number of turns after you regenerate, you should have the (aheh) regeneration intrinsic: i.e., your hit points automatically go back up similar to wearing a Ring of Regeneration.
  
  

• A Time Lord character should have telepathy as a starting intrinsic.
  
  
• The character class always starts with a dog as a pet. Default dog name is, of course, K-9.
  
  
• Possibly as an aspect of the Time Lord Quest, or even as a starting part of the game, you have the option of picking up a human Companion. (If the Companion is a result of the Quest, I can see his or her name being randomly generated from a selection of established Companions from the show.) Hee--to make having a Companion more desirable, maybe having one exercises your Wis. Hrmm. I can also see this just being a possible thing you can do at any point in the game, i.e., #chatting at random human characters to invite them to come with you. That would be funny. ^_^ I could totally see a Time Lord character doing that with oh, say, a watchman on the Minetown level, or any other peaceful humanoid character.
  
  
• Addition to the game of a new tool object: sonic screwdriver. Lets you open anything on the game, and will also let you scare monsters in a given range via sonic attack.
  
  
• Addition of another starting tool object: TARDIS. Based on the Bag of Holding code (cleverly suggested by bitterjesus), your TARDIS should be a part of your starting inventory. Usage of your TARDIS should be based on your Int and Wis, and if you #invoke it, you should be able to travel backwards or forwards in your game. If the TARDIS is blessed, you have the option of spinning off a save file from a specified prior point in your game and jumping back to that point. If uncursed, you have a chance at teleporting at random either backwards or forwards in the dungeon. If cursed, you will be thrown significantly farther ahead in the dungeon, which can be a major problem if you're still a low level character. ;)
  
  
• The Quest Nemesis should of course be the Master, who has stolen the Eye of Harmony. The Quest will involve the Council of Time Lords summoning you back to Gallifrey to get it back. Your Quest monsters will be randomly generated Daleks or Cybermen!
  
  
• Time Lord gods: Rassilon and Omega, and the third is possibly The Other; I'm not quite versed enough on Gallifrey lore to ID all the important historical Time Lord personages. Also not sure how they'd match up with Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic character alignments.
  
  
• New potion: a potion of tea. Could act as a specialized potion of healing, perhaps? I could see it bolstering your Constitution rather than your hit points.
  
  
• Running into your own ghost files might be a problem. Can't break the First Law of Time, you know!
  
  
• If "Time Lord" were a race in Slashem, you could use several of the abilities of the Time Lords as #techniques--such as, say, temporarily shutting down your mind in order to resist telepathic attack. Could be useful against mind flayers.
  

I love my house so much. ^_^ Got any further ideas, folks? Drop a comment on this post!

Comments

[grian-ruadh.livejournal.com]

Oh! And the famous Scarf has got to have an AC. *heehee*

[annathepiper]

Bwahahaha! Yes, the Scarf has to be in there somehow. The question would be how, since there's no accommodation for a scarf-type object in vanilla Nethack (don't know about Slashem). You'd have to spin off a new object type, perhaps, or else have it occupy your amulet slot.

Either way, it should give you a Charisma bonus when you're wearing it. ;)

[keethrax.livejournal.com]

Amulet seems the logical easy(ish) way to go to me.

Perhaps allow it to be used as a blindfold as well.

[annathepiper]

Oh, well, speaking of blindfolds, maybe a scarf could just be a generic object. You can wear a blindfold by itself, after all, or a towel--so there ya go, a scarf is either a specialized blindfold, or a specialized towel. ;) Good thought!

[alstaria.livejournal.com]

Nethack? From the descriptions above this sounds like something akin to Zork or a MUD. This intrigues me...

[annathepiper]

Nethack is about as old as Zork, yeah. :) You can learn all about it here.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Mmm. jellybabies *recovers hit points*

[annathepiper]

*giggle!* Right, jellybabies need to be in there somehow. Perhaps a replacement name for food rations. ;)

[grian-ruadh.livejournal.com]

Yay, jellybabies! \o/ I was just coming back over to suggest that! :D

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What do we know about the effects of the Daleks' EXTERMINATE ray on Timelords? I know it's pretty much instant death to anyone else.... except maybe K-9, who IIRC survived such an attack, albeit much the worse for wear...

[annathepiper]

Hrmm. I can't think of any instances where the Doctor himself gets hit by a Dalek ray. The fun part in general would be how to implement a Dalek creature in Nethack terms--the easiest cop-out way, I suppose, would be to have it disintegrate you similar to a black dragon, in which case you could survive it via disintegration resistance.

However, I am informed by resident Doctor guru spazzkat that what actually happens if a Dalek zaps you is that it kind of scrambles your insides around, and there's this negative/x-ray-ish sort of effect that I certainly noted in all the Dalek episodes I've been watching recently. Also, they do leave bodies. ;) I'm not entirely sure that Daleks in the Ninth and Tenth Doctor episodes do--that requires doublechecking--but!

Most everybody that gets hit by a Dalek ray does die, though, yeah. So this would definitely argue for Daleks not showing up in a Time Lord Nethack implementation at least until the Quest. ;)