The Long-Awaited Furnok Fix

As long as the free room can be got somehow - I don't suppose anyone will want to have to chat to ol' Ostler every time they want to rest.

 

Interesting ideas, Cujo. They're probably a bit beyond what I had hoped to undertake here, but I am still contemplating other changes.

 

Well based on Cerulean's deconstruction, it seems until you use someone with some decenet stats, you're never going to get it (as Gaear has it now)... so there's a simple RP question: do we want any old twit to be able to expose Furnok (on the grounds that playing it over and over again is annoying) or do we want the person to expose him to at least have the capabilities to do so?

I'm starting to come round to Geaeaear's way of thinking: this mod allows you to bypass something annoying if u don't want to jump right in (and from RP perspective, Ostler shouldn't just offer it to you instantly) and also allows you to catch Furnok quicker, IF you have the sense to use a character who can 'spot' what he is doing.

If there was a tag to allow people who want to deal with the Furnok issue straight away, to do so (in the opening conversation), I tihnk we'd be almost home here and actually have something that everyone is happy with. Maybe Or as Spike said, do we want the party to really have to earn a free room and not just have it spontaneously offered to them? Personally I would say "Here's the people who cleared the bandits from our roads, you sleep here any time you like" would make RP sense (ie once they have done the moathouse, if they killed Lareth: if they let him go, well then it gets complicated...) but then, at that point, more than 1/2 Ostler's paying customers may have been killed off by the Moathouse exit and he may be rather strapped for cash

 

Okay, a little catching up . . .

I strongly suspect that this whole free room thing was done solely to serve as the Hommlet equivalent of the house in Nulb, which spares players the tedium of having to click on the local innkeeper every time they want to spend a night in town. That's a legitimate purpose imo (who enjoys clicking on innkeepers? ), so with that justification I think the free room should stay. I'm not at all adverse to making the room gettable by some other quest however, including perhaps a more commensurate one, as Cujo suggested.

Well, two things I'm fairly sure I'm going to do at this point are make a room attainable through the normal means (gold) at the outset and make the Furnok thing doable from the outset, some way or other. What I'm not so sure about are whether Furnok's gaming should have anything to do with the free room (module consistency, per Spike) or whether the free room thing (whatever form it takes) should be available from the outset. I have no desire to punish players like Sitra by witholding the chance for the free room at the beginning, but yet, to what degree should realism play a factor? Juggle, balance, juggle . . . :dizzy:

For the sake of argument, let's say that players will take on this quest with a first level human rogue with 10 wisdom (no bonus) and a class skill of 4 in Spot, giving him 4 ranks total in that skill, which I don't think is unreasonable. Per Troika's original code,

Code:

game.global_vars[8] >= (7 - (pc.skill_level_get(npc,skill_spot)/2)

the equation would break down to 7 - 4/2 = 5. So you'd have to lose to Furnok five times before you caught him cheating. Assuming we're playing cards and Furnok is winning at a rate of 62.5%, you'd have to play 8 games before you lost 5. This means Furnok wins 50 gold, and you win 30 gold, making your net loss 20 gold. If you're playing dice and Furnok is winning at a rate of 71.4%, you would play 7 games before you lost 5. So Furnok would win 50 gold and you would win 20 gold, making your net loss 30 gold. (I'm no mathematical wizard, so forgive me if all that's in error in some way.)

The difference between Troika and me appears to be 20 or 30 gold lost vs. 10 gold lost and 7 or 8 mouse clicks and "Why . . . look at that!"s vs. 1 of each. On average anyway. :shrug: The only real difference, as I've been saying from the start, is a sacrifice of irritation for convenience. Plus 10 or 20 imaginary gold pieces. :errf:

At any rate, I'll be happy to leave the Furnok gambling as is if we change the free room quest to something else. That way players will continue to be free to play Knucklebones and Ferdian Gambit ad infinitum if they so choose.

 

Alright, see post #1 for the revised version of the long awaited Furnok fix. The Furnok gambling code has been completely restored, with the only remaining changes to Furnok being a couple modified mp3s and a few rewritten lines of dialogue. As for Ostler, you now have options to get a room normally or seek out the Furnok quest at the onset through separate dialogue chains. The two are no longer intermingled, yet each remains easily accessible for different playing styles. Lastly, the Know When to Fold Them quest remains unaltered, meaning that you still get the free room by catching Furnok. No new/substitute quests added or anything like that.