[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[Matt Mihaly]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, John Robert Arras wrote:

> My problem is giving players institutionalized positions of power.
> For example, making a player the "mayor" of a city is a bad idea
> IMO. I don't trust players who are given that kind of
> institutional power for whatever reason. If players want to earn
> points and then use those points to influence the direction of the
> city, that's fine. It's just that singling out players for special
> treatment and giving them official titles that they can use to
> lord over other playesr is bad.

Bad why? It works in gameplay (see Achaea/Aetolia for instance), so
is the objection a moral/ethical one?

And incidentally, you don't just appoint a player as major of a
city, you let the player-citizens vote him in, and give the mayor
responsibilities vis a vis the citizenry, so that if he is an
immature ass, he'll quickly be out of office.

The player-base is so good at self-selecting their leaders this way,
in fact, that we give certain members of city government the ability
to change certain room descriptions without any review from the
admins (They can re-design any shop in their city, for instance,
albeit it for a fee in gold). Not that that's a huge deal, but it's
an example of the level of trust we can give them (we'd never give
the owners of the shops the ability to do so, as the bar for owning
a shop is a lot lower than it is for being one of the primary
members of government.))
 
--matt

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