[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor Problem

[Chris Gray]

I've just been chatting about this with my mother, who is staying for a
few days. One thought that came up is this: would the game be enjoyable
to Marian if the only fighter characters in it were played by NPC's, and
so *were* bound by the normal expectations of what happens if you walk
into a tailor's shop and massacre the tailor? In "real life" in the
medieval days, if a fighter did that, there is a pretty good chance
they would be caught, and then either killed outright by guards or
outraged citizenry, or would be slapped into the local dungeon for a
very long time.

It seems that the real problem is that the "teenage boys" players mostly
only enjoy the game when they are free to maraud around. So, if we make
a game where they are not free to do that, they likely won't enjoy it,
and so will go play something else. So, in this negative sense, there
is *no* solution to the problem as posed, but not because of game
mechanics, but because of the kind of things that those players enjoy.

--
Chris Gray     cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA