part written, part selected, all edited by Ortoslon
The late “bad ideas” entry of LearnDB started as a list of rejected feature requests and ended as a dumping ground for ##crawl visitors' tongue-in-cheek suggestions. Here are the best of them:
- “The royal jelly is dead, long live the royal jelly.” (Promote any existing jelly on the level to a new royal jelly.)
- Axes of distortion can play loud music.
- When the player is confused, the map rotates or flips after every move.
- Ettin species: dual wield and worship two gods. AI controls your character every other turn.
- If you butcher while confused, you slice a chunk of flesh off yourself.
- Trapdoor hydrae.
- Statue species: blink to get around. Start with Apportation memorized, a book of Spatial Translocations lying one tile away and scrolls of noise to attract monsters until you get to XL2.
- Tengu cannot see transparent walls until they collide into them.
- Orc non-priests can bow down to Saint Roka as their messiah. Their goal is then to ensure that he gets the Orb and gets out safely.
- 1/27 chance of reaching the orb chamber and finding a talking fungus. “Thank you, playername. But our Orb is in another dungeon.”
- Fixed chance of instant death on every turn. This allows for precise calibration of game difficulty.
- Play the Benny Hill theme when the player is pillar-dancing.
- New light armour: bandage. If you die when wearing it, you’ll resurrect as a mummy.
- Bottled efreet looks like potion bottles. “Tastes like chili.”
- Facebook integration. The player only meets ghosts of his friends.
- New item: vomit bag. Can be filled when nauseated and evaporated for massive poisoning, confusion and Xom amusement.
- Carnivorous characters can eat small paralyzed monsters alive.
- New spell: Turtle Form. Changes your controls to {turn left, turn right, step forward}. Each of these takes a turn.
- Nemelex worshippers’ lowest title: Hoover.
- Nagas’ tail extends each time they eat permafood. Bumping into their own tail is fatal (“Why would you want to do that?”)
- Sultanas, strawberries, grapes... Small food needs more variety. Add rice.
- Multiple oklobs follow the Game of Life rules.
- Orb of quicksave.
- Teach basics of the probability theory in the manual.
- Vampires with an amulet of gourmand give preference to particular blood groups.
- Stare contests with floating eyes. Also known as starve contests.
- Kamikaze casters who miscast level 9 spells near you.
- Electric eels become whips of electrocution after you kill them.
- Telefrags.
- Unique kobold with a weapon of draining that shows up early on D:1 if you’re on a streak. This kobold is a unique unique in that it looks just like any other kobold until it kills you.
- New “irony” game option that makes sure you receive great but inappropriate weapons and armour. (Maybe the option should be to turn this off.)
- Give transmuters a new nose-picking command when they memorize Blade Hands.
- Legendary Shuffle card shuffles skills instead of attributes.
- Rock worms in labyrinths.
- Balls that can be thrown to catch monsters, which can then be forced to fight for you.
- Autoexplore is a level 1 Translocation spell that causes maprot on miscast.
- “You spit the six-headed hydra like a pig!!! Six-headed hydra squeals in 5.1 Surround Sound! Two-headed orge is jealous!”
- Crawl porn: a video compilation of Sigmund being killed by characters of every possible combo.
- IKEA shops: you pay for a lajatang and get a quarterstaff, two scimitars and sticky tape.
- New monster: pillowcase. If you score a powerful hit on it with an axe, you “open up the pillowcase like a yaktaur!”
- If you haven’t been playing Crawl for a year, Sigmund spreads his arms, runs to you and hugs you with tears in his eyes when you return. Then he kills you with a +5,+5 scythe of pain.
- D:1 bats turn back into vampires if you don’t kill them quickly.
- Carry stairways in your inventory. When you’ve explored the whole level, drop a > and descend. You may want to stash some <’s for Zot.
- When you kill a jelly with sticky flame, it becomes a delicious crème brûlée.
- In one out of five games, put Roxanne on top of the Orb of Zot.
- 6’s and 7’s. And 6’s always run in fear from 7’s. Because... well... you know.
- Temporary summons leave edible corpses which disappear in your stomach and leave you starving. “Purple smoke pours from your ass.”
- Being seduced and killed by a siren rewards the player with ASCII porn after his chardump.
- Convert ASCII porn into ziggurat monster sets.
- The moment you take the Orb, closing credits start rolling from the bottom of the screen, with obligatory blooper scenes (Geryon laughs because he used the wrong end of the horn).
- Armour acquirements have a chance of summoning a hostile gold dragon.
- A unique shapeshifter that shapeshifts between different uniques.
- Dip a box of beasts into lava, then evoke it to get all the meat rations.
- Acid reflux mutation: reuse the effect of the last drank potion with the cost of some acid damage.
- Rename Boris to Boris of returning.
- Let players save their lives with quarters. This idea will eventually make the developers into millionares.
- If you enter a unique’s name at the start of a game, you start with their equipment, items and spells.
- When you fire an arrow in abyss, there is a chance it will hit your back.
- Jellies can burn through the floor and appear on the next level. Sometimes they land right on your head. Get used to your new cursed helmet. At least you make Jiyva happy.
- New monster: yak-47.
- Summon too many air elementals on a level and you suffocate to death.
- When you hit Tiamat, draconians jiggle out of her.
- If you’re undead or mutated, you can’t pick up the silver rune.
- The more sheep that are within the line of sight, the greater the odds of one casting a sleep spell on you.
- Python, a unique anaconda that appears early. Despite being injured, it refuses to wear braces. Appears as a white space.
- Titans bounce their lightnings at you instead of firing them straight.
- “Unseen horrors” are renamed to “seen horrors” if you can see invisible.
- You can’t change inventory letters of cursed items.
- Drowning guys with confusion is fun, a whale that will beach itself when confused is even better.
- Animate Dead turns sausages into dachshunds.
- Deep elves, like their deep dwarf bretheren, do not regenerate.
- Spriggans can wear gloves as body armor.
- Wizards can make Horcruxes.
- Kickishment, a new monster spell that sends you into the abyss, but on top of the gateway out. A favorite spell of curse feet.
- New title for long bladers using triple swords: “Race Helicopter”.
- Boots of digging: every step you take, a floor deeper you go.
- “You kneel at the altar of Sif Muna. Nemelex Xobeh is extremely pleased with you. The altar of Sif Muna disappears without a glow. Your prayer is over.”
- Arrows of ROT13: polymorph the target into a creature whose new glyph is thirteen letters away in the alphabet from the old one.
- More challenge for the endgame: the Orb of Zot is an orb of fire that you have to lure back into D:1.
- Accupuncture needles for blowguns that heal the target.
- Pythagoras, a unique human who takes √2 turns to move diagonally.
- Antique food shops.
- A unique boring beetle called Ringo.
- Multiple noisy items have conversations in your backpack.
- Tomb card creates slimy walls at low power.
- New school: copromancy. Spells include Shitstorm, Shit Tongue, Sublimation of Shit, Iron Shit, Cigotuvi’s Morning Constitutional, Lee’s Rapid Digestion, Eringya’s Surprising Bidet, Sticky Shit, and Maxwell’s Silver Shit.
- New replacement branch for Vaults: Volts. Signature threat? Nikola packs.
- Wands of draining clear out bodies of water.
- Rename Okawaru to Default.
- Minivault and branch importers from Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft.
- Add scrolls of destroy item to spice up the ID minigame. Make them as common as identify scrolls.
- Ballistae, the giant spiked clubs of crossbows.
- Fights between two rangers with shields of reflection are governed by the rules of tennis.
- Replace the food clock with a possibility of uniques hoovering gold and buying cool gear from shops.
- DCSS manual available only as an in-game manual book.
- Felid ghosts have 9 lives too.
- Felids start with a humanoid pet.
- Casters teach spells to other monsters in sight.
- “A tear in reality is devoured by Cerebov!”
- Erolcha can be generated as part of a two-headed ogre.
- Replace stairs in the Crypt with more accessible ramps.
- Trolls can never be satiated above “hungry”.
- All Hexes are level 6.
- Add this to the Abyss description: “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
- New Transmutations spell: Plant Form. At low levels, it merely functions as a disguise (as long as you’re not in line of sight of any monsters when you transform). At maximum level, you turn into an oklob.
- Rename Ice Cave to Ozocubu’s Refrigerator.
- Amulet of Conversation {Curse Noisy}. Looks identical to an amulet of conservation until worn.
- Emperor’s New Clothes: a high AC modifier that is not displayed to the user. Miscasts are not discernable. Wearing body armor cancels the effect.
- Ashenzari wrath tells monsters where your stash is.
- Sticks to Snakes on a staff of poison summons Aizul.
- “You miscast the javelin throw. You are showered with wood shavings.”
- Polymorph both Dowan and Duvessa into slime creatures and get them to merge.
- Replace the vault guards on V:8 with boggarts.
- Travel exclusion mimics.
- CDO Sigmund gets his own Twitter feed for each kill.
- Spider Form gives you fewer legs at low spellpower.
- Banished monsters sometimes come back worshipping Lugonu.
- Throwing nets of penetration.
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