Comments please!

Here is one of my upcoming ideas. Comments/complaints/suggestions/etc are welcome:


"? box" proposal (stealing from The Founder, *** means a comment):


All items in the game have a non-negative integer property known as "Frequency", which defaults to 0 if not specified.

*** So if a future proposal creates an unrelated item without specifying a frequency, then that item will have no effect in the ? box system (see below) ***


At all times, exactly 10 squares on the board will contain a "? box". If at any time there are less than 10 ? boxes on the board, a new ? box will be placed on a randomly selected square that does not contain a ? box, and if at any time there are more than 10 ? boxes on the board, a randomly selected ? box will be removed.

*** So when this proposal is implemented, 10 ? boxes will be created on randomly selected squares ***


When a ? box is created, it will contain one item, selected as follows:
- Let x = the sum of the frequencies of all items currently defined
- For each item, there will be an f/x chance that item will be selected, where f is the frequency of that item
The exact item that is in the ? box will not be known to the players until someone takes the item.

*** If I explained it right, this should pick one randomly selected item, weighted by the frequency value of each item. This should make it trivial for future proposals to add items without having to redefine all the math. ***


If a player occupies a square that contains a ? box, that player may take the item that is in that ? box. This causes that ? box to disappear.

** And of course, a new ? box will appear somewhere else ***




And now for some possible items:

Item: Mushroom
Frequency: 100
Effect upon use: The player using this item has his Jumps value increased by 3.

Item: Feather
Frequency: 100
Effect upon use: The player is immediately transported to any square of his choice.

Item: Coin
Frequency: 100
Effect upon use: The player receives $500

Item: Fire Flower
Frequency: 50
Effect upon use: All units on the square occupyed by the player lose 10 hit points.

Item: Green Shell
Frequency: 50
Effect upon use: A randomly selected player, excluding the one using this item, is immediately transported to the square occupied by the Rber Ducky.

Item: Ghost
Frequency: 40
Effect upon use: The player using this item becomes "invisible". A player that is invisible does not have his location shown to other players, and any time an invisible player moves to another square, this will not show up on the History page.

Item: Red Shell
Frequency: 25
Effect upon use: The player using this item may select any other player to be immediately transported to the square occupied by the Rber Ducky.

Item: Lightning Bolt
Frequency: 2
Effect upon use: All players except for the one using this item are immediately transported to the square occupied by the Rber Ducky.