Make yourself lighter to drag

[SekoETC]

I had an idea how to implement making dragging easier if the target is cooperative (in other words, they take part in dragging themselves). People resist dragging with a value calculated based on their strength and battle skill, am I right? So if a person is participating in dragging themselves, the fighting skill would be replaced by that of an awkward fighter (or maybe even zero) because they're not resisting. Similar to how when you hit yourself, your strength and fighting skill are always considered to be at least novice level.

[Piscator]

Why shouldn't a dragging project just automatically succeed if you drag yourself?

[witia1]

But when we agree to be dragged isn't easier to leave building or car using doors?

[SekoETC]

Some people are paranoid enough not to unlock doors even for a moment, or some thief might run in. Besides, dragging yourself offers a handy way of preventing people from dragging you anywhere else - if self-dragging was to work in every case, that method of defense would stop working. Although if the fighting skill is dropped in calculations but still taken into account for the dragger, the result might still be instant dragging, not sure about that.

[Tiamo]

You would have to give the key or open the lock for a short time then, witia1. That would be a risk.
Strange, as in RL dragging would pose a greater risk of someone slipping past.

Edit: self-dragging, used as a defense against being dragged? Now that i call abuse of the rules!

[SekoETC]

[quote="Tiamo"self-dragging, used as a defense against being dragged? Now that i call abuse of the rules![/quote]

Meh, most people have been aware of it for ages and since it hasn't been fixed, I wouldn't call it a bug. Auto-success would fix it, but do we really want to eliminate one of the only strategic maneuvers the game system can offer? Let's say you have a character who guards a locked coaster harbor and has to encounter strangers. With the dragging trick the guard can stay inside to greet the visitors without taking a risk of being kidnapped. If such a trick wasn't possible, they would most likely remain outside the door and communicate with strangers though notes. You still take a risk of being hit, but I've observed that you become lighter to drag while wounded, even when dragging yourself, so it might be technically possible for the dragging to be completed should you get wounded enough. Not sure about this.

[Piscator]

It's at least very Cantrian, but yes, it looks much like bug expoitation. Is there another thing that would be an argument against instant self dragging?

[UloDeTero]

Surely, "self-dragging" would be equivalent to just walking somewhere. The only difference would be that someone else is 'dragging' you into another room to which you don't have the key. Which, when you think about it, is just someone letting you into a locked room. Therefore, it should be as fast as normal walking.

As for avoiding being dragged, I think characters should naturally resist being dragged, at least to some degree. In fact, there should be three possible dragging "states":

Self-dragging: Someone is dragging you, and you're helping them. This makes the whole dragging process quicker, or even instantaneous.

Inert dragging: Someone is dragging you, and you're not providing any input. Like current dragging, I guess. Takes longer.

Resisted dragging: Someone is dragging you, and you're actively resisting. This would either cancel the dragging or slow it down significantly.

Naturally, all dragging would be inert until the character decides to either help or hinder. Maybe there should even be an Undraggable option, but there'd probably have to be a trade-off. Perhaps undraggable characters would consume more food or get tired quicker (because of their alert state).

[Tiamo]

I think dragging yourself shouldn't be possible. It is like lifting yourself by your own hairs: logically impossible.

Willingly letting yourself be dragged (i.e. helping someone else drag you instead of resisting him) on the other hand is a good option. How much this cooperation will help the character who drags you depends on your current strength/tiredness. If you are (nearly) unconscious your help won't make a real difference, but if you are at full health your help should make success virtually automatic. Maybe a strength/tiredness of (less than) 50% would be a nice limit for automatic success?

The problem with this kind of instantaneous actions in Cantr (hitting someone is another) is the fact that the victim of such an action has no influence on the outcome at all, even if he would be online at the time. But simple logic tells us that the victim WILL try to avoid/resist the action. I think characters should somehow be given the chance for a proper reaction (without having to be online at the time).

[marginoferror]

I didn't realize that dragging yourself blocked other people from dragging you. I would consider it a bug unless I was told otherwise by progd. Don't use "it hasn't been fixed yet" as a signal that it's intended to work that way - there is a LOT of stuff that hasn't been fixed yet.

Tiamo hits on the core of the problem. A lot of the more silly rules in Cantr exist to compensate for the fact that you can't assume that two people will be online at the same time, or sometimes even in the same day. And on the other hand, there are also actions that don't compensate for this at all. Some kind of design document that addresses exactly how we want players to be able to respond to various events asynchronously would be helpful. Otherwise we'll change the dragging rules a little bit this way, and the combat rules a little bit that way, and we'll end up with a patchwork of contradictory rules stretching the game towards opposite ends.

[Missy]

Do you have any idea how much dragging yourself offers? It's prevented me from capturing "bad guys" who were smart enough to start t hose projects on themselves. Ergot--They get dragged in a building and realize it, so they drag themselves toward outside so that they can't be put in a nother cell.

Or during heated moments of discussion some one will start one on t hemselves to prevent getting dragged away.

I've seen someone in Blojt complain---"So I see you were dragging yourself." And the person in question says, "So you were going to drag me off, were you? At least now I know what your intentions are."

It allows strategy----the very thing that you people claim there isn't enough of.

[mikki]

I think dragging yourself is a good option.. Especially if you are going to a place you know there is someone that could drag you to a building and lock you in.. I have done that.. Instead of being dragged into a building, I was 'pushed' into a place I wanted to go..

[marginoferror]

It may supposedly allow strategy, but shouldn't we be designing for and programming for strategic depth from the start, instead of taking hold of every ridiculous bug and absurdity that crops up? We'll never fix anything if we aren't willing to take a minor step backwards in order to take two steps forward on the path to rules coherence and elegance.

What realistic rules could we deliberately impose that allow for strategy?


Edit: Let me elaborate:

The problem with dragging is that since other options (negotiation, single combat, etc) often take days, and dragging is instantaneous, it is usually the first resort. Furthermore, once you put someone in a locked building, assuming they can't get out, it's trivial to kill them just by entering and attacking once a day.

This is a design bug. We should fix this.

Self-dragging is temporarily useful because dragging itself is overpowered. Of course, self-dragging is overpowered in the opposite direction. The fact is, if you and three of your biggest pals really want to drag someone off to jail, you should be able to do it. That doesn't mean you should be able to do it easily, or without getting hurt, or that the person you're dragging shouldn't be able to say something, or run away, or use their weapon. And it doesn't mean that dragging should be the only practical way to restrain someone from doing something (like randomly attacking passersby) in any fashion. But there's no logical reason why dragging should be *impossible* just because the person being dragged exploited a hole in the code.

This is a programming bug. We should fix this.

As a Cantrian, I want to fix both bugs. As a member of the programming department in training, I can only personally take responsibility for fixing the programming bug. The Cantr community has to agree on what its design goals are before we can fix the design bug.

So, let's plan a fix to the design bug. Then we can fix the programming and the design bug in one go. But it's ridiculous to say "you can't fix the programming bug because it mitigates this design bug" when in fact both are equally bad.

[SekoETC]

Because the time of programmers is limited, if they accidentally happen to create something that works, it's easier to use that instead of requiring ProgD to implement "project clinging to X", that would make you harder to drag, perhaps by reducing the percentage you would provide if assisting in your own dragging from any dragging project trying to take you away from what ever you're clinging to.

[marginoferror]

But it isn't something that works. It's just something that's broken in a different way.

Let's get the design right. If the programmers don't get around to it, fine. Then we won't get around to fixing the programming bug on its own either. But if we do get around to addressing dragging, we'll need some sort of design that tells us what the community thinks is best for the game.