[MUD-Dev] World Seeding (was Task Parsing)

[Stephen Zepp]

JC Lawrence wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:27:51 PST8PDT
> Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Final note, ever considered adding an extra tier to your mud?  Let's
> > take the PBeM approach. :*) The PBeM players would control a nation
> > and submit turns in weekly without ever realising it is based in a
> > mud.  They can advertise for a scout to make a recce into enemy
> > territory and a player would take up the job, do the biz and write
> > up the report (well, fill in the blanks).  As usual, there is the
> > problem of synching the two tiers and certain design problems...

Umm, this is inherently what my design does, without the "two tiered" concept.  Players that are
heavily into the "Sim Mud" concept do just that..hire other npcs or players to gather their
information, _or_, alternatively, go get it themselves, but that takes time and effort. I personally
feel that some of the RP feeling of both running and belonging to a political entity ( an estate )
is lost if you isolate them.

> 
> One problem is ensuring that neither side finds out about the other
> (balance and collusion problems), or that both sides always know about
> each other and so does everybody else.  Its a system where the control
> of who data on who owns the power is actually much more valuable than
> the power itself.  You either need to ensure that everybody knows,
> thereby devalueing the data, or nobody knows, thereby rendering its
> value moot.

If you don't spread them into two seperate "games" in the first place, then who knows what about
where and which becomes part of the the entire gaming concept...a desired effect, instead of a
problem.

Z