[MUD-Dev] XP as gift (was: Attractive Grouping)

[Eli Stevens (WG.c)]

John Buehler wrote:

> In scenarios like that, I believe that distribution of items can
> be performed in some orderly way.  The people who are fighting all
> know each other.  They've been fighting together for a week, a
> month or a year. Everyone knows who did what during the fights.
> If that can be represented in the game award structure, I think
> it's a winner.

At the GDC dinner, JCL described an interesting, simple game:

  - Select a number of players P (with P > 3)

  - Each player has N stones, marked as owned by that player (with N
  > 20)

  - On a player's turn, they can offer to sell _one_ stone; other
  players then offer a number of stones and the active player either
  selects one offering or declines to trade.

  - The game lasts for M turns, decided in advance (with O(M) <
  O(N))

  - A player's score is the number of other player's stones they
  have at the end of the game.

The general idea is to give away two of your stones for one from
everyone else.  You end up with P points and they end up with 2
each.  Of course, as soon as everyone realizes this, it turns into
an arms race and I suspect there is an optimal strategy that makes
the game not very much fun at all.

When I said it was "an interesting, simple game," I meant to _think_
about, not play.  ;)

To cut to the chase:

Why not do this with XP?  Define a play session somehow (the
duration of a group, etc.), and at the end of the play session have
the character assign the XP they earned to other players.

You cast fireball at the ogre: 100xp
You cast silence at the ogre mage: 150xp
You cast silence at the orge: 10xp
Total: 260xp

Your group:

  Bubba the warrior: [80xp]
  Buffy the rogue: [120xp]
  Boffo the incompetent: [20xp]
  Left to assign: 40xp

To encourage the assignment of XP, have a player not recieve XP from
a play session until they assign their share to others, with
penalties for waiting too long.

A player's level becomes derived from how much XP they have from
other players.

Thoughts?

Eli
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