ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The idea of "conducts" (i.e., optional limitations or gameplay choices to make the game harder) comes from NetHack and possibly other games. Certain achievements in ToME4 serve a similar purpose, but this seems like an area with a lot of potential for expansion. This would let the skilled players increase the difficulty of the game, and the bragging rights for winning, without the need of new difficulty settings. Conducts in NetHack are not chosen at character creation, but rater your adherence to them is tracked during gameplay; you either break or maintain the conduct with your actions, and the goal is to maintain a chosen conduct until you complete the game.

Rather than adding specific conducts or challenge-related achievements in a piecemeal fashion, I think the best approach would be to create a basic framework for conducts that could then be easily expanded through addons. I don't know much about addon development, but I think these are the general features that would be needed:
1. An option on the character creation screen to select any opt-in conducts, if we want to support these. This type of thing wasn't present in vanilla NetHack, but it might be a good addition to ToME. An example of an opt-in conduct would be getting reduced XP or having a reduced level cap.
2. An in-game menu for viewing all available conducts, including which ones you're currently maintaining.
3. Hooks for addon conducts to appear in the conducts menu and to listen for events relevant to the conduct. This is the tricky part of the project, and I'll leave it to the experts to decide what this entails.
4. Display maintained conducts in the character vault. Broken conducts can just be hidden since most characters won't actually maintain conducts.

This thread proposes a similar idea, but the focus there is more on adding settings with specific effects rather than having optional conducts that you can break at will during gameplay. Personally, I prefer conducts over "challenge modes" since you can abandon a conduct if it doesn't look like you'll be able to win otherwise, but challenge modes as described in the other thread would be enforced by the game once selected. That being said, challenge modes could be rolled into the conducts framework if the option is provided at character creation to select them.

There are chevos for stuff like "don't kill bosses till this one", you think this can be elevated?
Also, I propose "no inscriptions" conduct. Got to be fun.

Some ideas for conducts:
1. Never equipped a unique item. (This applies to both randart and fixedart items.)
2. Never harmed an ally.
3. Never allowed an ally to drown. (Mainly an added challenge for Insane/Madness difficulties.)
4. Never used an inscription. (Or, never acquired a new inscription.)
5. Never cast a spell.
6. Never attacked with a weapon.
7. Never trasmuted an item. (Might need a way to disable transmutation chest to keep this from being too tedious.)
8. Never gained a prodigy.
9. Never rested. (Is this even possible? Does waiting count as resting?)
10. Never exited an area with enemies remaining. (Does the game have a way of tracking this? This would be to avoid recalling or stair dancing.)
11. Never reached level 30. (Is it possible to complete the game this way?)
12. Never reached level 40. (Seems possible, at least on Normal difficulty.)

This is a wonderful idea.

Level restricted conducts could be done if an option to set a lower maxlevel / prohibit experience gain or a possibility to "dump" experience were added to the game. Likewise an option to remove inventory slots to simulate conducts as "always fight with one hand tied to the the back" (remove/grey out offhand slot and one ringslot from the doll) or start the game without inscription slots ("sunburned skin").

So, there could be conducts chosen at birth (major change to the way you play the game), and others you take up on during the game.

Starter perks/conducts:

1) "Showoff" - never stepped into a starting zone (character starts in a random t2 zone).
2) "Sociopath" - can't talk to vendors.
3) "Thin-skinned" - starts with all resistances at -25 or a lower cap.

and so on. But these perks would be rather part of a challenge-mode, so probably derailing the original idea.

I think it would be most fun if the game doesn't *restrict* you when you're aiming for a conduct - so it doesn't limit your XP or remove slots or prevent you from doing things.

Instead, as I think Effigy was suggesting, you just have to make a voluntary decision not to do certain things, and then try and stick to it. That way, there's always an extra layer of choice, and that adds an extra dimension to the game. For example, say, you've got to the East without ever teleporting, but you're suddenly down to 20% HP, surrounded by enemies, and are afraid you may die next turn. Do you give up on the "no teleport" conduct and get the hell out of there? Or do you tough it out and risk losing the character? Tough choices are what make the game fun (in that special roguelike sense of the word fun, where you want to smash your computer and cry).