[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Jon A. Lambert]

On  3 Aug 98, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:37:24 -5 
> Jon A Lambert<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> > A player run police force.  Many of the systems of seen in this vein
> > are dependent on the game system automatically "marking" certain
> > characters as killers.  And fail when the mayor or otherwise honest
> > citizen is "marked" by the system as a killer.  There is only a
> > built-in automated "direction".  Obstentiously this is to curtail
> > potential abuse. ;)
> 
> Most of the designs I've noted are predicated on storage and
> computation being expensive or in difficult supply.  (cf my own wars
> on this front) Instead of a life history we get an interpreted summary
> of the character's kill rates or some such cheaply derived statistic.
> 
> Outside of the given that storage, computation and bandwidth are
> becoming cheap enough to ignore, two things about this bug me:
> 
>   1) The selection of interpretations is made my central authority
> rather than individual players.  This does a lot ot pre-define and
> characterise the game world and removes key aspects of the world's
> interpretation from player ecologies.
>

Correct.  An artificial social ecology is imposed upon players.  It 
may or may not be a valid model.  A valid model could be defined
as one that achieves the desired reality and/or one that is enjoyable 
and fun.  

My own thoughts are that designs which are freely open to player 
abuse and yet temporally unstable at the individual level are most 
desireable.   

>   2) The statistic is a) not subject to "spin" and b) can and always
> is subject to deliberate manipulation (yes, I killed the baby, but I
> also helped 50 little old ladies across the street).  This #2 is
> actually a direct reflection of and result of the removal of the
> statistic from the player ecology space.

Nod.  You have activities which are temporarily beneficial or 
enjoyable to a set of players but which have undesireable game 
consequences.  Playing the numbers in order to engage in these 
activites and yet mitigate the undesirable consequences is a very 
natural human game-playing trait.  Knowing that my game will manually 
weed out those who walk the "edges" of role-play, it is something 
that does not concern me.  However this would be a key issue for 
those designing for game players.   

Still, it is my intention to provide an NPC subsystem that can 
substitute/fill-in for players in these power roles.  In lieu of a 
playerbase that is not large enough to fill these roles on a 24/7 
basis, an automated authority over social ecology[1] is needed either 
full or part time.   I think I mentioned earlier (a long time ago :) 
that these subsystems could be modified and extended through time by 
succeeding generations of player controllers.

> What if instead we made all the base stats and counts available, and
> even supported player annotations to individual statistic entries (cf
> EBay's reputation system), and _then_ allowed player written and
> defined "scripts" to automatedly interpret the statistics in the
> manner they prefer, resulting in the display interface they prefer.
> 
> I can forsee standardised annotation forms to equate to court or legal
> pardons (pick your social heirarchy), with the resulting derived
> statistic accomodating those (that one's pardoned so ignore, that
> one's damned by the king so give quadruple value...).
> 

Yep.  The player who has custody over the Argos code may well 
insert signifcant amounts of anti-Phoenician code.  His successor  
may well remove it, bypass it, provide exceptions and individual 
inconsistencies and preferences.   Ideally, much of the code will 
affect NPCs and players which provide feedback into the system which 
affects the code custodians powerbase.  An in a perfectly designed 
world (heh) the anti-Phoenician code will provide input into parallel 
subsystems of control.  Possibly resulting in trade barriers, 
external subterfuge or war. ;)   


[1] - Initial code could be set up similar to historical tendencies 
of background cultures like Civilization, Age of Empires where 
aggression, economic, militaristic and cultural antipathies are 
initially mapped into the thematic background subsystems of the game 
world.  Player control might override the natural tendencies with 
some background resistence from the system.     

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