Soulhouf

The 8 Rules Of Roguelike Design

1. "No beheading rule." Provided reasonable play, the player's character should not be killed or harmed too greatly & permanently in one attack.
2. "No cyanide rule." No unidentified item should be immediately fatal upon use given reasonable circumstances, otherwise the player should never try to use-identify.
3. "Item masquerade rule." Items should be difficult to identify even for spoiled players, due to similarities between items of the same type.
4. "Situational ID advantage rule." When unknown, item effects in a category should overlap in such a way that use in some situations would be good to discover, while others simultaneously would be bad.
5. "Item enchantment rule." When known, items should as much as possible present interesting decisions.
6. "Two-sided coin rule." Given perfect knowledge of identifications and uses, items should never be completely useless.
7. "Reducing grind rule." The mere act of spending time should deplete some finite resource, forcing players to keep those resources up, while also limiting the amount of "grinding" he can do.
8. "Race you can't win rule." The game's monster difficulty should increase slightly faster than the advancement of the player, given average stats and default equipment, so as to force him to rely upon items and tactics.