[MUD-Dev] curses and grief players

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:51:44 -0500 (CDT) 
Patrick Dughi <dughi at imaxx.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Greg Miller wrote:
>> The way I see it, I'm designing my game for the players, and I
>> leave it to their opinions what is and is not acceptable
>> behavior. If I were designing more for myself, I'd agree with
>> you.
>
> Yes, but you're putting your system at the mercy of your players.
> While that may work in a utopian world - oddly enough - your game
> system is in the real world.

There's a more simple alternative point: I define a set of
mechanical relationships and capabilities, some pseudo-physical some
social, and make them available to potential players.  It is up to
those players to create games out of those systems.  Asides from the
fact that I do something else for a living, I don't consider myself
in the game design business.  I'm in the toolkit building and
manure/ferilizer farming business.  To do that well I need to know
game design as I'm building a meta-system, but its a different
target.

> If your players said that they'd like to all have equipment that
> could slay any character in the game, or infinite life, or etc,
> then you'd give it to them?  

No, I give them a set of mechanics which attempt to be internally
logically consistent, direct in-game access to the internal
programming model, and let them to build whatever they want.  If
they can figure out a way to build immortality that doesn't violate
the basic model, then either bully for them, or my model was flawed
and needs (expensive) correction.

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                               Other: coder at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga/nu/~claw/        Keys etc: finger claw at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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