[MUD-Dev] Re: Implementing god.

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998 12:20:12 -0400 
Adam J Thornton<adam at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 04, 1998 at 06:51:44AM -0700, quzah wrote:
>> At any rate, here is a sort of interesting blurb on handling those
>> player-killers and general bad-persons. The url is rather long, so
>> I've broken it into two lines.

> Very interesting.

> I'm using a secret police rather than an Omniscient God model,
> myself.  However, the crux of the matter for maintaining social
> control is that even if there are no other players on the screen,
> someone else may be watching from behind closed shutters, as it
> were.

I'm tending more and more to the model where NPC's are either pawns or
targets, and don't pretend to any intelligence in their manifest or
virtual (ie never realised but presumed present) selves.  They're
straw men.  Cunning and even clever straw men, but expressly shallow,
uninteresting, and overtly mechanical in nature.  Robots with a mean
streak.  

Outside of targets and pawns I can't see the need for NPC's given
enough players (questions on how to raise a large enough player base
are left to reader).  As such (and this is echoing Nathan's post on
the three types of game models ("simulationist", "dramatist", and
"gamist" (which was really worthy of good response except that after
attempting three replies, each of several hundred lines, I found they
all summed to, "Yeah, wot he said!")) I'm going for the simulationist
and gamist models to the exclusion of dramatist (not too surprising
considering my lack of RP bent).

This raises several other ideas from the old standards of mounts and
other organic conveyances to pets.

  What is the value in charming, befriending, or otherwise gaining the
affliation of an NPC?  What about taming an NPC into a pet-state?
Bubba attacks Tiamat in concert with his pack of 600 pet wolves?
Boffo encicles the town with his pet elphants and wages a toll on
everything and everybody that attempts to pass until the town starves
to death and he can loot it in morbid peace?  Bernie looks like a
mild-mannered and harmless chap until you meet his swarm of pet killer
bees?

  How about such affinity-bound NPC's as weapons?  "Go get him Fido!"
You raise the demon Wroth, wave Bubba's grimy cloak under his nose to
give him the scent, and release the holding spell to have the DW track
down and slaughter Bubba like a mangy cur?  

  Sufficient affinity to teleport or control the basic motions of, but
not enough to befriend?  A swarm of killer bees suddenly take hive in
the cathedral causing all to flee in bee-stung agony.  You walk thru
looting peacefully, unaffected by the disinterested bees (assuming
affinity is a linear signed scale and you rate zero).  With your minor
encouragement the wolf pack changes it annual migration route to pass
thru Bubba's sheep farm.

> You never *really* know if you've gotten away with antisocial
> behavior or not.

Is anti-social behaviour to an NPC something to be concerned about?

--
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...