[MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

JC wrote:
 
> Sudden thought:
> 
>   We've long concentrated on theplayer as being "in" the game and
> adopting a direct personality there.  How about a different view?
> The player is really a significant landholder, a succesful merchant
> with a retinue and extensive holdings and staff, the ruler of a
> small city state.  Ergo, he gets to play meta-politics, and
> pseudo-sim games, which can be fun, or he can dip into the head of
> any one of his vassals/staff/retinue and play them directly, much
> like our current MUDs, and then when he wishes, he can jump back out 
> to the over-view, or dip into someone else.  While the player is not 
> occupying a particular junior they run on automatic, doing whatever
> it is they do in normal (boring) fashion.  AI is not terribly
> significant -- there's no attempt at representing humanity here --
> all the interesting things happen because human players pick up
> individuals and make them do interesting things which affect other
> human players.

I think that this has LOTS of potential.  However, I think the exercise becomes 
even more interesting when the vassals/staff/retinue are controlled by other 
players.  Runing the city state is the end game.  (Or perhaps the mid-game, 
since there may exist empires to run as well.)  In the beginning, you compete 
with other players to claw your way to the top tiers of your house through 
promotion.  If the landowner wants his city state to flourish, he promotes the 
most capable staff and gives them increased responsibility.  As he moves from a 
small city state to an empire, his man-at-arms becomes the Supreme Commander of 
the Armed Forces and his butler becomes the Chancellor of the Empire.  But maybe 
the Supreme Commander will become tired of playing second banana and take 
matters into his own hands...and perhaps the Chancellor will uncover his scheme 
and use it to his own advantage.  

It seems to me that such a solution could provide lots of tension in a way that 
is quite compelling.

--Phinehas




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