Re: Making Olympia more interesting

William Bruvold (wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu)
Wed, 26 Jan 94 9:11:43 PST

>
> Land ownership.
>
> For sake of argument, lets call it a Kingdom.

Some stuff deleted....

> Comments?

I like some of this but the problem is that it doesn't lead to
competitive/cooperative interaction. If kingdoms are not
restrictive on the activities of others or that valuable for the
"king" than what is the incentive to either construct a kingdom or
to oppose the construction of one? If I want one and "faction x"
sets one up that crowds me a little, I simply move.

An underlying factor which has to be addressed by whatever system is
created is something that, by design, adds some sort of "zero sum"
quality to the game (as is, there is very little that is zero sum
as close as we get are some of the reseources that are partcilarly
rare (yew, etc.)

Some stuff on religion/magic....

> vicious in its competition. [A religions goal might be to wipe out a rival
> religion in its entirety for instance].
>
> Also, schools of magic could be in opposition with necromancers being totally
> opposed to weather mages, for instance. A mage couldn't learn spells of
> opposition schools for instance, and would gain power from destroying their
> opposition schools and promoting their own. [sacking/destroying cities which
> teach necromacy, or founding schools to teach it in a city]. That sort of
> thing. I can flesh these out as well if you like, but I'll leave you with my
> mind-dump of kingdoms for now.

I like this much more. (or perhaps in combo with the kingdom idea).
This encourages conflict and competition and provides incentives for
some aggressive/peacible interaction.

I will try to send out a proposal sometime Thurs/friday that I think
would work and incorporates most of what has been mentioned by Rich.
I do think that a way to progress may be to start "big" - with lots
of things that breed competition/cooperation in Olympia and then
"cut away" the excess to the point that we get something that works
to strengthens the game, keeps it open ended, and adds useful
"color"

Erik


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