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Mood Mechanics
May 27, 2020 at 3:34 pmHey guys, so I was just having a thought about a possible set of game mechanics for moods and desires. Maybe mood is simplified to a positive negative scale. Baseline is 0 points. Maximum joy is 100 points, maximum devastation and anguish is -100. The slider slowly moves back towards 0 over time. Events and actions that impact mood have two effects: they add points one way or the other on the slider. The bigger the event, the more points it gives. More points mean you reach a higher level of happiness or sadness, and it will take longer to come down from because the slider has farther to go before it’s back at 0. The other thing that these events do are make Paras have temporary desires. How long these desires last could be somewhat random but depend also on the magnitude of the event that caused them. The fulfillment of these desires could further impact the mood slider.
For example:
My para gets a promotion at work. This makes her happy, adding 50 points to her mood slider. Now she’s pretty happy! Maybe she works more productively, or learns skills faster while she’s feeling motivated and positive about life. In addition, it gives her a pride related desire or two. This is a big event so maybe the desire could last from 12 hours to 2 days. Because she’s proud, she wants to tell a friend about her promotion, and she’d also love to go out and celebrate. Doing either of those things gives her another small mood boost, 5 for telling a friend and 10 for going out in addition to the normal happiness going out with her friends might bring her.
Maybe she watches a movie that she really enjoys. Not a huge deal, but maybe she’ll get a boost to happiness of 10 points. Maybe there’s no desire associated with this, because its small and not a big deal. Or, maybe there’s a chance she suddenly wants to recommend the movie to a friend for a mood boost of another 5 points. The desire isn’t strong so it only lasts a couple hours.
Conversely, let’s say my para gets broken up with. If she’d only been with her partner for a short time and their relationship hadn’t gone far, maybe it’s a smaller hit like -30. Or, maybe she’d been thinking about marriage. She’s devastated. It’s a hit of -70. She wants to have a good cry, which will give her back 5 of those points. Or, she wants to see a best friend for support. That gives back 15 points. Maybe if she goes on a trip to rediscover herself, she gets an extra 10 points back on top of the happiness normally caused by going on a trip.
Not every mood event would have desires associated with it. Maybe small boosters don’t, or maybe desires happen at random when you boost mood. Other things like taking care of needs like sleep, hygeine, and food might either boost mood, move the baseline from 0 up to 10, or help mood decay slower. Maybe personality traits impact what kinds of things boost mood and by how much. Maybe if my para is 70% introverted, she gets a happy boost from a day alone, and gets less of a sad boost from not seeing friends for a long time. Maybe my creative para gets some sad points for not doing something creative for a long time.
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2 Replies
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This sounds like a nice system. I like the idea that the mood changes would be based on how deep the situation is. I would love it if mood boosts and changes could introduce desires for Paras based on their current situtation.
For example, if a Para gets a promotion, they could become happy and want to tell everyone. But if they’re living in a tiny house, maybe they would want to move to a bigger house since they have more money coming in. Or buy a car if they don’t have one (and don’t have any sort of personality where they don’t like cars).
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