[MUD-Dev] regulating player-created objects

[Dan Shiovitz]

(apologies if I get something wrong here in the posting style .. I've
been reading for a while but haven't posted anything in ages)

Anyway, so it seems like players creating objects is a major part of
any sort of "big ecosystem" game (ie, one where players play more
roles than "insert coins into circulation; remove loaves of bread and 
monsters from circulation"). I know a bunch of people here are working
on variants of this. I was wondering what kind of regulation there is
on the objects players can create. 

For instance, say I have the woodworking skill. Assuming I have some
logs, appropriate tools, and nails, I ought to be able to build a
table. This seems like a reasonable use of the skill. But how does it
work? Are there are a list of five things I can create with
woodworking, so I type "woodwork #5" and it says "ok, you create a
table"? I guess the alternative would be to make no such game object
as "tables", but you'd do something like "carve flat piece of
wood. nail sticks to the bottom of the flat piece of wood" and presto,
there's your table. This is obviously more flexible than the previous
method but also pretty clearly harder to do. Or is there some
in-between stage that I'm missing?

Regardless, once I've made a table somehow, can I customize it? It
seems like you really have to let players do this to make object
creation of any interest and have the hopes of creating a real economy
where someone could sell tables for a living. But how do you let
people create tables that look like "This table is made out of
polished oak with a carving of a dragon inlaid in dark stone on the
surface" but not tables that look like "*** YOU HAVE DIED ***" or some
other sort of joke items, which AFAICT totally blow away any system's
chances for realism. 

I know other people have thought about this more than me, so has
anyone come up with a good solution? (one obvious one is that wizards
occasionally check out newly created items and dispose of those that
aren't in the spirit of the game. But that's a pain in the
ass. another is to disallow player customization and describe the
table based on character skill level, so a woodworking 10 person makes
"This is a rough wooden table, sturdy but with lots of splinters" and
a woodworking 90 person makes the previously-mentioned dragon
table. But what if the woodworking 90 person wanted to make a rough
table? Yet another solution is to say all items get made by wizards,
so if you want a table, you place an order with Bob the NPC woodworker
and he carves you one to order, unless you give a silly
description. But this is even more of a pain in the ass than wizards
just checking out new items.)
  
--
(Dan Shiovitz) (dbs at cs.wisc.edu) (look, I have a new e-mail address)
(http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs) (and a new web page also)
(the content, of course, is the same)



--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.