[MUD-dev] Player Manipulation of Environment

[Eli Stevens]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Hefford (Coregen)" <andrew.hefford at coregen.net>
> On 22 November 2001 16:40, Paul Schwanz
> [SMTP:paul.schwanz at east.sun.com] wrote:

>> When you allow players to manipulate their environment, how do
>> you ensure that manipulation doesn't create imbalances?  Should
>> you even try to do this?  What about if the imbalances lead to
>> some sort of dead end.  (i.e. Do you allow the Empire to crush
>> the Rebel Alliance?

> Then you cause the Empire to fragment - the players have a chosen
> to embrace the Dark-side.  They have embraced conflict allready,
> just give them the means and they themselves will allmost
> certainly cause the Empire to split like an over-ripe mellon, most
> probably without even the slightest help from the GM/GameDesigner.
> As long as you provide the potential for Chaos to evolve,
> stability will be short lived.  Just look at the world arround us.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already (I am behind on my
reading).

My thought was that you could even encourage it, by providing
moderate long term benefits for alliances, but
members-in-the-alliance-squared short term benefits to backstabbing
them all.  Large coalitions would be inherently unstable, as the
group got larger, someone would inevitably backstab for the short
term boost.

Ahh, politics.  :)

Most likely, such a system would stabilize into many small
alliances, constantly (but slowly, perhaps) mutating as members
would enter and leave.

Any ideas how to actually make this work in gameplay terms?

Fun!
Eli

--
Never use brute force in fighting an exponential.
      -- Andrei Alexandrescu, "Modern C++ Design"


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