[MUD-Dev] Affecting the world

[coder at ibm.net]

On 23/11/97 at 10:51 AM, Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> said: >On Mon
15 Sep, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

>> > > A politician holds a position.  That position should allow control of
>> > > certain environmental systems.  Those systems should affect the game
>> > > in positive and negative ways.  If there's nothing the statesman can
>> > > do, it's merely a title.  A couple things come to mind. Allow
>> > > statesmen to control taxes, pass laws, commision buildings and
>> > > improvements, regulate guilds, raise and equipment armies, etc. 
>> > > Create positions that have effects on players.  
...
>On the discussion started on rgmd a long time ago, that started of my web
>pages,  somebody came up with the idea  to simply have rank assigned by
>other players in the guild.  Players could not advance unless  promoted
>by their organisation.  Of course this completely upsets the system of
>levels  found on most muds,  but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Some while back I proposed such a rank point system:

--<cut>--

A simple model:

  Player characters can award each other "rank points" (RP).

  Each player character is given (free) 1RP per day.

  A player character with sufficient RPs can be automagically 
  promoted to a high status position.

  Maintaining a high status position costs a player character 
  XXX RPs per day (automatic debit).

  A player caharacter can promote other player characters to other
  (lower) status positions.  

  Such a promotion costs the appointing player a one time cost of 
  YYY RPs.

  The promoted player has his own daily RP cost for his position.

  Should the high ranking player lose his position thru lack of 
  RP's, all appointees will also lose their position as it they 
  had failed to acquire enough RPs to maintain their own position.

  A junior ranked player can still appoint sub-juniours with the 
  same mapping as above.

Ergo: To survive a high ranking player must persaude many many other
players to give him their daily RPs so he can keep his position.  A high
ranking player may appoint juniours who are then also in the same
position, but can be required to funnel some portion of their collections
to their appointer.  

--<cut>--

This RP handling would be totally seperate from any concept of levels or
individual advancemcent within the game, thus you could have an overly
popular newbie character who thru RP's help the position of Emperor, and
an unpopular top high level character who would have a tough time getting
a position as a cockroach skinner's assistant.

>Nobody can deny there is some kind of economy  on even the simplest of
>muds. The problem is that they all suffer from rampant inflation both
>over time and between levels. When a mud first starts money on players
>and monsters is reasonably balanced.  As the game progesses players begin
>to hoard enormous amounts of gold. After a while they have more millions
>than they could ever hope to spend. Unless there are drastic and
>unrealistic measures  to reduce the amount of money again like rent or
>taxes.  Most likely however  this is "solved" by setting prices for
>certain services at extremely high levels. At the same time however you
>can see that new players have the same amount of money that was
>reasonable when the game started.  As they increase in levels they too
>must hoard worse than a dragon to be able to play the game properly.
>The problem of course  lies in the fact that the supply of gold and
>equipment  (which is sold in shops with an infinite supply of gold) is
>endless. Ever more money is brought in and nothing is ever taken out so
>the prices go up. You have to break out of this cycle to get a real
>economy.  No equipment enters the game unless it is created, and
>equipment is destroyed  at about the same speed  as it is made. For each
>new player  a certain amount of money becomes available so the number of
>players does not affect the economy. Of course when a player is deleted
>the same amount of money must be removed from the game again.

I approach this by having an underlieing particle/energy economy for the
entire game.  It costs resources (particles of specific types as described
earlier) to create any object.  The guarantee of the game is that the net
sum of all particles of all types will always be zero (0).  Nothing is
actually ever created.  The only import to the universe is "willpower"
which is the main causitive factor in forcing particle transformations,
and is thus used to increase the gap between (sum of all negative
particles) and (sum of all positive particles).

Some objects, such as magical objects, actively consume specific particle
types during their lifetimes, and self-destruct when they are unable to
consume the requisite particles (see UggUgg's mana fight for an example). 
Other objects just decay progressively, dissolving to their constiuent
particles.  

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...