ABSTRACT
Darren Gray, who is pretty sharp on roguelike ideas generally, suggested that people participating in the Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge don’t bother implementing an item ID system. Rogue is probably the most tightly designed computer game, and every aspect refers, in some way, to another aspect, no part of it can be considered in complete isolation from the others, and that includes item identification. The core idea is that items in an identification system, the things players collect in the dungeon that go under the increasingly overused name loot, can have hidden properties. Many items have individual properties themselves that have to be discovered uniquely for each one, like plus or curse status, but for this discussion we’re concerned about the descriptive classes of items, not miscellaneous aspects. The idea that magic items may not be known to the player immediately on finding is something that dates back to the roots of fantasy role-playing gaming: fantasy literature.
