Re: [MUD-Dev] Nation of shopkeepers

[Matt Chatterley <root#mpc,dyn.ml.org>]

On Sat, 12 Jul 1997, Jeff Kesselman wrote:

> At 10:40 AM 7/12/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
> 
> >*grin* I wonder if people would still be laughing when they realise there
> >will be no bread unless somebody else decides to bake it. And sells it at
> >a price justified by demand.
> 
> Interesting question.. id it fun to force players to do basicly boring
> actions as the "price" of playing the game??

Hmm, I'd suggest that you would probably have players wanting to do such
things - or could at least encourage those who simply socialise more often
that not to do it.

Making the entire game rely on players doing a quote of 'boring things' is
probably unwise - but some boring things can be made a bit more fun, to
help out. Having NPCs (nearly) make up the missing part of the quota
solves problems, as long as people realise NPCs will only do a certain
amount of stuff, and someone else must finish the job.

It really depends heavily on the environment of the game. Even if it's not
heavy-rp, it *can* be fun to stand in a shop and talk (this is really my
primary use of muds as a player - to meet and talk to people!).

Of course, there are other non-menial tasks players can be called upon to
do. For instance, the 'starter town' I am currently creating is a small
and fairly rural village (but is quite busy in terms of traffic, since
it's quite central between the main ports of the land it sits on). This
makes it a quite good strategic location. It's total strength of 'guards'
(for law enforcement and city defence) is 20 (armed only with shortswords,
wearing nothing more protective than a tunic), and the captain (who has a
longsword and a leather jerkin).

If the town were to be attacked by a significant force (probably 30+
soldiers), it could quite easily be captured - in the event of such an
attack, the call would go up for everyone in the town (PC and NPC) to
rally to the defences.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine."-Cohen The Barbarian