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I like the concept. I liked it when we discussed it, and I like it more the more I think about it. It is simple, elegant, and allows for greater variety between races than seen in most muds, as well as easier control of balance and race restrictions.
Although simplicity is one of its charms, it could be easily extended by making the talents (both racial and normal) more synergistic. If you allow for a selection of possible prerequisites, you can have the talent behave differently for each of them (or even in combination with other talents which are not required). So the Psychic Wall talent, for example, could look like this:
[code]
-------------------------------[ PSYCHIC WALL ]--------------------------------
Talent availability ; You don't fulfill the requirements for this talent.
Method of purchase ; During gameplay or character creation.
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Required stats ; Discipline 7+
Required skills ; One magic colour 75+
Required styles ; None
Required talents ; Psionics or Mind Over Matter
Banned talents ; None
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This talent indicates that you have learned how to build a strong psychic wall
within your mind, helping you block mental probes and attacks. This provides
you with a +25 bonus to Protection, added before percentages, and - because the
mental barrier is automatic - pain penalties will no longer reduce the result.
You also gain the following bonuses from additional talents;
Psionics; increases Protection bonus by 10.
Telekinesis; gives you a chance to block small thrown objects and projectiles.
Mind Over Matter; negates all pain penalties.
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[/quote]
In a race system based on the concept, this would allow diversifying how each talent works for different races and encourage specialization. The Metalworking talent could be available to dwarves (allowing them to forge weapons), gnomes (allowing them to construct devices made of metal) or anybody with the Alchemy talent (allowing them to produce alloys). Of course, being a human alchemist with Metalworking probably wouldn't be a blast, unless the demand for alloys were really high. For a dwarf or gnome the combination might be more tempting, since a dwarven alchemist could produce steel weapons and a gnome alchemist could make brass clockwork golems (or whatever).
Of course, the same could be achieved by having separate talents for each combination, but the list would get very long fast, and with a limited number of talent slots for each character, most of them would probably prove too obscure.
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