[MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics [was Affecting the World]

[Mike Sellers]

At 12:09 PM 12/6/97 PST8PDT, Felix A. Croes wrote:
>> Rather, I believe that we can (and must) make use of that small proportion
>> of people (the usual 10% or 20% who do 80% or 90% of good things in any
>> community setting) to create and enforce their own societal mores.  We can
>> best do this by understanding who these people are, and then giving them
>> limited, compartmentalized, generally localized power -- but real power
>> nonetheless to affect the social landscape of the game.  In effect, this
>> enables "the game" to settle their grievances, only now some of them have
>> essentially become part of the game from others' point of view -- and as we
>> know, often the best game play is created by the people in the game, not
>> the monsters or situations we create externally.  The same goes for
>> resolving problems.  
>
>Unless the power to affect the game is available to everyone, this is
>still what you called an externally-imposed solution -- there has to
>be a sheriff to appoint the deputees.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  How is having a PC Sheriff appointed by a
PC Mayor who is elected by the PCs themselves an externally-imposed
solution?  I'll grant you that the Sheriff's powers are enabled by the
game, and to that degree it is external -- but we're talking about a
virtual world where at some level *everything* is externally imposed,
including basic things like gravity.  (And as discussed, I think you could
call this "Sheriff" solution a first-generation solution... there are more
elegant ways to get the same effect, of course.)  

>In my experience, the mature, responsible players are even less
>motivated than the paid staff to deal with the jerks.  Dealing with
>the jerks is not actually a very enjoyable occupation.

Maybe.  This does not fit my experience, at least when these players are
given the equivalent of *limited* wiz powers.  They are only unmotivated
when nothing they do is going to make a difference anyway.  

>Also, I think that you perhaps use the idea of letting the game solve
>itself too easily.  Any workable solution has to include the troublemakers
>in the game, too.  

Good heavens, yes.  This is precisely what I meant about creating social
ecologies.  Briefly, the "troublemakers" take on the role of "decomposers"
in biological ecologies -- they are important to redistributing power and
wealth, just as vultures and worms are important to redistributing the
energy encased in any consumer, so the producers can use it again.  

>> ... My goal
>> is to make that pain as small and short as possible, and to eliminate as
>> many of the code crutches as we can.  I don't think the solutions we've
>> seen thus far scale to where the Net and online entertainment spaces are
>> going to be in, say, three to five years.  IMO, we absolutely must stop
>> looking at this as a problem with a technical solution, and begin
>> addressing it as a predictable and tractable situation with social
>> solutions.  
>
>Agreed, with one qualification: I want the result to be a mud.

As opposed to what?  What would make something like this _not_ a mud?


Mike Sellers                                    Chief Alchemist
mike at online-alchemy.com                         Online Alchemy              

        Combining art & science to create new worlds.