Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc,rec.games.roguelike.nethack (
More info?)
I'm always for more reality;
[YANI]
in reality, "food poisoning" may be due to active bacteria due to
inadequately cooked food, rarely, heat-resistant bacterial spores, or
heat stable toxin formed by active bacteria before cooking even
though the bacteria die in cooking,( or, of course heat resistant
toxins naturally found in the food while living),, (for you nethackers
with your home tinning kits, botulinum toxin, great for cosmetic
!oparalysis, btw, is broken down by cooking, but C. botulinum only
grows anaerobically)
cooking is a function to sterilize food and possibly eliminate toxins;
freezing or preserving keeps it sterilized, but do little to eliminate
existing toxin in food, and are less effective at killing bacteria
than heat. freezing requires a thawing period before it can be eaten
(a period of resumed but reduced growth).
so; a cooking skill would help one to treat foods in these ways to
prevent food poisoning,butchering corpses to remove existing toxicity
(venom glands in scorpion's tail, for example), and recognizing the
edibility of foods.
Here's a model for food:
a food/corpse has a chance per turn (which increases with its age) to
become contaminated (and/or, with a smaller probability, poisoned, if
corpse isn't already poisonous/contaminated). butchering has a chance
to remove contamination, dependent on cooking skill and age of corpse,
but the age of the corpse can still recontaminate it next turn,per the
previous statement. cooking may also remove contamination/poisoning,
dependent on skill, AND reduces the chance the meat will be
recontaminated (effectively reducing meat's age, dependent on skill).
however, cooking may also burn the food (it's useless, the item is
removed from game), and can only be done once (cooked switch is set).
freezing/preserving decrease the rate food ages dependent on cooking
skill, and can reduce age one time per item, again, dependent on
cooking skill. However, frozen food thaws over time, and must thaw
before eating (for most characters,except say, in ice form),
preservation is permanent, but preservatives are rare (salt deposits
in rocks, herbs from shops or cooking fires?)
however, cooking generally requires a heat source, fire in an enclosed
space is risky (asphyxiation, smoke in an already dim environment) and
without magic, requires a fuel source (clubs?) and an ignition source.
smell of cooking food can attract unwanted guests, smoke can attract
intelligent creatures.
smell of rotting food is more likely to attract animals however.
firewood is rare however, as it must be imported from the surface.
there are other reasons wood might be present in the dungeon however;
I'd like to see more scenery in my roguelikes, which could include
wooden items. Assuming these dungeons are part natural caves, part
artificial construction by different inhabitants over hundreds
(thousands?) of years, there might be : stone or wooden columns or
tunnel supports (esp. in mines) with risk of local cave-in if
disturbed (possibile scenarios: digging wands, pickaxes or kicking in
nethack, you or large creature snatching the column as a large club or
for firewood, burning the column if wood, heating or freezing if
stone, or Lee's rapid deconstruction in crawl, ). also doors could
make for firewood, if wooden.
cave-in's would be proportional in effect to the amount of open area
around, not the usual nethack cave in during a crashed game. like a
previous poster, i agree that mining a tunnel and safely supporting it
are probably too time intensive for a roguelike action game, and so i
don't propose a mining skill (besides, what if you got too good at
mining and couldn't collapse the tunnel when you wanted too?)
other occasional scenery: functional rooms/areas : wells (for water)
maybe the occasional underground stream (in addition to the obligatory
pools currently found, and including deep and shallow points that can
be crossed, )
an rare wizard's library [wooden bookshelves, flammable books, maybe
an occasional spellbook, though even in these rare rooms, such a
valuable item would probably have been removed, unless the library is
still in active use], crypts,
dens (residences of subterranean inhabitants),
shops should normally occur only in well developed areas. who opens a
shop in a dungeon anyway?
Armories would have stored weapons, but locate only in inhabited
levels, and dungeons could have a few weapons, and locate in
inhabited or uninhabited levels, though uninhabited areas should
mostly already have been scavenged of most valuables. dungeons might
also have prisoners to free, (in NH, there are lockpicks)
most of all, these places should be DARK, without a light source or
infravision. the first level could have ambient light, the second
level might have light more likely near the upstairs, rooms in lower
levels could rarely have shafts to the surface to give some light
(incidentally, ventilation for cooking), and inhabited areas might
have torches (to use for cooking/ignition), as well as cooking fires
(even orcs gotta eat)
on the whole, wood is probably rare enough in uninhabited areas, and
inhabited areas would be guarded enough, wood should be heavy enough,
and cooking should be time intensive enough (step away to fight, food
burns...), that cooking wouldn't be too unbalanced.
)
(Not sure, is there any weapon 
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