[MUD-Dev] New Topic: Butthead features

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.GSO.3.96.970805131619.26353J-100000 at tay>, on 08/13/97 
   at 07:58 PM, Martin Keegan <martin at cam.sri.com> said:

>My solution to this is to make it a "free will" thing, and deal with
>abuses harshly. Therefore I favour giving game managers considerable
>powers - the ability to snoop, read through players' command
>histories, follow them around invisibly, teleport them, etc. It's
>always a joy to behold someone lying about their command history when
>they can't read it and you can. 

>"216:    rob heronumus      ... retract the lie, apologise and repay
>the gold. You have 15 seconds. Failure to comply will result in
>sitebar of your entire country."

>This *is* heavyhanded and it *is* how I operate.

There is an old, and possibly apocryphal tale relating to the
construction of various Pacific Islander mausoleums which were dug
into cliff sides:

  The King comes by to survey the progress.

    "Not good enough!  Tell them to work faster!"

    "But they are already working as fast as they can!"

    "Kill every tenth man and then tell them to work faster!"

    The men are publicly killed in sight of the other slaves, and 
    the survivors do indeed, work faster.

There's a value in this technique, as well as a value in merely
putting a head on a pike (tho what that damned fish ever did is beyond
me).

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...