Non-random content

[corremn]

I suppose one point to take from that is don't overload the player with static content early on.  The early game gets played a *lot* in roguelikes, as you go through the cycle of death and rebirth and oops, death again.  It gets repetitive far more quickly.  Late game static content can be something to look forward, but early stuff can end up feeling like a chore.

I second this Simple and to the point.  Static content should be rare in early game.

[Kalantir]

If there is a lot of static content in the early game, like in ADOM.  I believe that one of the following things also needs to happen.

1.  The early game should be easier then is the norm for roguelikes so that we dont feel like we're doing the same exact thing repeatedly while we're getting used to the game.

2.  There should be many different paths to choose from. For example, I choose this quest it starts Quest Chain 1, but if I choose that quest, it starts Quest Chain 2.  If starting one quest chain locks off other quest chains, that gives replay value.  It might be useful to have the quest chains overlap at points if you do this.  Sub quest chains should behave similarly.

3.  Randomness.  I know we're talking about static content here, but there are different degrees of static.  Think of Omega.  You start in the same city every game.  There is always the same shops and guilds and castle and hedgemaze, but all the shops are in different buildings.  Personally, I found that approach to be annoying, but perhaps if there was a map of the town easily accessible at the beginning it would be more of a real feature(because the annoying part was having to open every door to see where all the shops were so I could then fast travel to them later).  You could even take it further than Omega and actually have the building locations change as well.  This is just one example of how randomness can still exist in static content.

Just my 2 cents...

[Ancient]

With point 1 one should take care not overdo it and make the start too easy because then playing through the static content will become even more repetitive. When early game is challenging player still learns new things and does not get bored as easily.

Fully agreed with point 2.

I like option 3 the most. ADOM does elemental temple levels that way. First half generated and second half static. Works very well.

[AgingMinotaur]

It could have been neat if ADOM had twice as much content and half as big a game world, portioning out and randomizing the special places from game to game. The bug-infested temple might show up only once every five games, and always with a different breed of vermin -- it would never grow old

On a more serious note: I think a point to consider is how we define fixed vs random content. It is evident from the discussion so far that there is an intuitive definition that's more or less coherent between the lot of us. But if we take a broader view, couldn't we say that a single orc and a healing potion are both examples of fixed content? The orc has its stats, traits, and behavioural patterns. The healing potion has its predictable effect. I guess what I'm getting at is that most content in RLs are hybrids between static and random content. The perfect balance between static/dynamic would result in pleasantly themed encounters which are still never quite predictable.

Rogue mixes and matches arbitrary prefixes ("red", "blue" etc. for potions) with meaningful suffixes ("of healing", "of blindness") to construct the identification subgame. I think a similar scrambling of fixed content could be used to combine several meaningful elements into a whole. To take quests as an example, they follow some fixed patterns: There is a quest giver, usually also a quarry (missing person, stolen item, etc.), an antagonist with minions, a place the hero needs to reach to solve the quest, a landscape s/he needs to pass to reach that destination, etc. Working with a few quest templates, you can add more specific archetypes to the mix: random helpers, junctures where a choice must be made, etc.

Doing something like this well demands that you have a robust framework, which allows different tidbits of fixed content to fetch other random tidbits in a sensible manner (a random artifact should pick powers fitting a certain theme, etc). Also, we don't want a horde of "villagers" with random titles and nothing interesting to say or do, which means we need a lot of really wellwrought content, to come up with NPCs like: A working smith who lives on an island and hates dogs, and whose son has been kidnapped by a kobold chieftan who makes his lair in a temple ruin deep in the forest.

As always,
Minotauros