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

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 9 Jul 1998 01:18:44 -0400 (EDT) 
Matthew R Sheahan<chaos at crystal.palace.net> wrote:

> Jon A. Lambert propagated a meme to the effect of:
>> I assume that self-governance refers to extending the capabilities
>> of Player governance.  It's the nature of these "posited"
>> mechanisms that interests me.  :)

> once upon a time, i had planned out a system of "player government"
> which centered around mayoral and law-enforcement figures for the
> various settlements which function as player homelands, and so on.
> very PC, with elections and so forth, and the only real driving
> force behind it being control of PK.

While I've never verbalised it before, the main flaw I've found in
such designs is that they are dependant on the figureheads being
logged on to the server.  

    What do you do when your mayor isn't connected?  Is off on holiday
in the south Pacific for a couple weeks?

Back when I came up with the concept of Rank Points for building
societal heirarchial structures:

URL:http://www.kanga.nu/~petidomo/lists/mud-dev/1997Q2/msg01504.html

--<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 doesn't attempt to address the general impermanence of connection 
problem.  However a simple extension to the above model may:

  1) Allow players to award their RP's to any number of other players,
and to assign the order of that assignment (ie an order of
preference).

  2) Have RP assignments "tagged" towards a particular position or
status.

  3) Change the definition of the "currently ranking player" in
defining a position to "that player who currently holds the largest
number of RP's based on who is currently connected", where RP's are
only assigned to players that are currently connected.

Ergo, during play Bubba may find that he suddenly become the Mayor as
others disconnect and the balance of assignments to him changes such
that he is now the current office holder.  Later, when a more popular
player connects Bubba will suddenly lose his Mayorship as the RP's
re-assign to that player.

It *should* work, but I'm not very fond of it as I suspect that
attempting to functionally model such heirarchial social models in
code is both doomed and self-destructive.  That said it offers promise 
in a much more interesting direction:

  -- As players accumulate RP's they gain in power and gain new
commands, abilities, and other game and socially useful capabilities.

  -- Vary the RP's exaclty as above.

Thus Bubba is very popular and finds that he can cast dragon toasting
fireballs without a second thought -- that is until he's in the middle 
of toasting Tiamat and VeryPopularPlayer logs on rendering Bubba down
the scale and capable of casting only smoke rings...

Potentially more interstingly this can also be used in small group and 
party scenarios.  A group of adventurers forms to do XXX.  They all
assign their magic RP's to the mage, whose resultant magical resources 
grow proportionately.  They assign their leadership RP's to their
leader with the result that he gains the ability to partially control
their characters and have his commands take affect on all members of
the party.  Etc.  Later, if the party dissolves or fracts, the RP's
are de-assigned and powers wane.

Side effect: Well RP-assigned groups become truly fearsomely powerful
and capable, capable of acting with flawless coordination and
precision.  

Now extend the same structures to NPC AI's and NPS group
intelligences.  Your standard band of maurauding Orcs suddenly becomes
a lot easier to make mildly crafty.

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