Moderator please lock this forum.  It is turning from an interesting idea into flame wars.

I was not saying that all books give knowledge.  Books that give knowledge, have pages tagged.  

Other options.

1. I pick up a book that gives a rudimentary skill in knife making.  (I know not implemented.)  And I can learn from that book only the first level of knife making.  Later on I find the book again, having a skill four in knife making.  Oh well, the book gives me nothing, as I already know that basics.  But I can give the book to someone else who can use it.  If the book is too advanced for me it also does nothing, I have two levels of skill in knife making and the book teaches level 5.  It will be too advanced for me to learn anything out of.  

2. I read a book that teaches me the theory for mage craft, not the practical exercises.  I have to practice the skills to gain the level in them.  (Realistic, and possible.)

I am going to agree with the original poster on this.  It helps develop the character.  

Examples:

A player decides that his elf will use a bow.  The game decides that he is good with a sword, or worse an axe.  He may never develop a skill in the sword or axe not knowing the game selected it for him.

A mage is getting hard pressed in battle, he is loosing ground with his magic and grabs a sword off a fallen enemy.  He finds that the sword feels right in his hand and he has instinctively some skill in it.

A hardened warrior, winner of many battles, has never even opened a spell book.  One night he is heading home from the tavern without his sword and runs into a group of street toughs.  He fights with them and gets stomped.  He goes to the temple the next morning and is introduced to healing magic, he finds that he has a knack for it and afterwords adds it to his skill list.

These are three possible selections.  Character made his character and did not think about anything else.  Later he finds out where the skills the game chose for him were.  

How about these examples.:  

The toughened warrior has to spend the night in the wilderness and kills a deer with a skilled shot from his bow.  He turns to deal with the kill and finds it comes easy to him.  He thinks about it and after eating a meal from a poor inn, that he could do better.  Turning his mind to learning the cooking skill.

A young mage yearning for excitement tries to pick a lock and finds that he can.  He quickly turns to a life of crime, as his skills that he never thought to develop were in the thief arts.

Then you get things like.:

The young fighter that hates animals sees a horse racing towards him at full gallop.  He dives to the side and notices that the horse in going to trample a nice looking young lady.  He throws himself in the way and attempts to calm the animal to make himself more interesting to the young lady.  He sees the horse calm and realizes he is good with animals.  

The young herbalist sees a bit of metal sticking up from the ground and digs it out, knowing he has always been good digging, it takes little time but is damaging to his plants.  The lure of mining does not appeal to him.  He reburies the ore and replants the herbs that had to be dug up to get at the metal.

I suppose it\'s a good step to \'force\' players to actively move around now. Although i would still prefer seeing messages like this :

/dig for gold \"
\"You could not find any gold here\"
Move a bit to the left
/dig for gold\"
\"You\'ve found a MINOR vein of gold!!\"

[minor might mean only 3 or 4 ores can be mined before you have to move ]

/mine gold\"
\"You failed to mine any gold\"
/mine gold
\"You successfully mine an ore of gold\"

[amount you can mine in a single mining op can depend on
mining skill]

/mine gold
\"There does not seem to be any gold here\"

[gold depleted]

..and you move on to find another vein by doing a search and then mining.

Now of course this is bottable, assuming movement is bottable. Unless of course you replace the \"/search for gold\" with a visible \"sighting\". I doubt you can bot something you can only see on the screen [instead of text].

This will require gold deposits to \'spawn\' just like mobs [and randomly too]. I\'m sure you can restrict the spawning to a particular rock wall. So you have a situation that everyone will still go to mine at a particular place [i.e. magic shop] but if everyone is mining along the same rock wall the entire wall will \'run empty\' and then respawn after a some time. The Major/minor veins can spawn randomly along the rock wall.

In the end, it\'s similar to the \'can\'t dig here twice\' except for two main differences:

1. You can actually dig twice depending on the \'size\' of the deposit [i.e. 20 ores if it\'s a major vein, deposits also reset if someone only digged halfway and left]

2. Currently the \'no-twice\' system can be \'fooled\' by moving left and digging and then moving back to the right and digging at the original spot [so you just move left and right all the time = easily scriptable]. Spawn/depletion of ore will require a lot more movement than \'left-right\' which is pretty hard to bot i\'d say ESPECIALLY if there\'s other players using up \'dig-slots\' .

So even if you don\'t want to visibly show dig-spots and only use a type \"Search for gold first\" command then you will need a really good bot to move along an entire wall [and probably walk across the room to another wall eventually].

I agree with this idea and the last one.  The thing that most people do not think about is that there are different types of gamers. I like to settle down with a game that allows me to go out and mine for hours, to get the stuff needed to make a sword.  Or go out and chop lumber then craft it into planks for making things out of.  I know that my type of gaming is not for everyone.  But I like it that way.  If a monster randomly wanders up, then I have to deal with it.  Not have to expect monsters to wander up because I am mining.  Or cutting lumber.  Both acts make noise and would scare off normal animals.

Very interesting, but if I make a reskin, does the other players see my skin or their preloaded one..