2. There needs to be an outlet for these kind of discussions, or else
they pop up in other (perhaps inappropriate) places. Having a
mailing list makes tracking all the ideas easier than if they're
spread out across the Net.
3. It's fun. I like yakking about game features. And it's an extra
dose for players (and GM's) with strong Olympia cravings. :-)
4. Really good ideas do come out of these discussions every so often.
On the other hand, we have really high traffic, lots of suggestions
for radical features that aren't going to get added to an essentially
frozen design, and repeats of a lot of stuff seen in previous Olympia's
and on previous design lists.
You can FTP the design discussions which started towards the end of
the Olympia I playtest from ftp.pbm.com in pub/olympia.old. (It's
over a megabyte).
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@pbm.com>