NPC Ecologies [was 'New to this mailing list']

[Greg Munt]

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Richard Woolcock wrote:

> If you ARE interested, then I don't
> mind opening a few of my ideas up for criticism (anyone else coded
> mudsex, with the chance of pregnancy and child birth?).

Mudsex, pregnancy and childbirth initially provoke the 'Why? What value 
does it have?' sort of questions.

However, it is when you consider dynamic muds (such as a those that a 
number of us are working on) that grow, change and evolve *without* 
player intervention, that these sorts of things start to become real issues.

I first became interested in NPC ecologies when I read a post to this 
list concerning an orc society, which was concerned not only with 
different types of orcs (including breeders and nobles), but with the 
births/deaths of the race, and even its social/power structure (the 
system even allowed for PCs to 'join in' the competition to become the 
next king/leader of the orcs). I contacted Batzing, since I knew he had 
an interest in ecologies also (and appears to have studied them in 
reasonable depth), and he expanded on this by discussing food chains, an 
'energy pyramid', and other related things.

Batzing's main concern (although his thoughts may be constrained by the 
LP mo(u)ld here) was the memory required to support numerous ecologies, 
encompassing births/deaths, a food chain, and a race-specific 
society/power structure. Admittedly, it does concern me too, although I 
have not looked into it in much detail - certainly not enough to be able 
to judge whether this would become a problem.

Does this sort of thing interest anyone else? (I don't believe I've seen 
any real discussion of this issue here.)

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