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Deities giving power to the coders

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Posted by Grymlar   (10 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Mon 08 Dec 2003 11:45 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
I want to set it up so that the builders can only make items/mobs/spells of a strength that has to do with either the number of worshipers they have (builders are each aligned with a deity) or the amount of total favor that deities followers have. I'm wanting to make it this way so that the gods are waging war against eachother, as well as competing for followers, but not just followers in total, but who has the most devoute followers has access to more power. Any suggestions or does anyone know if anything like this has been done before?

Thanks in Advance.
Grymlar
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  [Biography] bio   Moderator
Date Reply #1 on Mon 08 Dec 2003 11:51 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
My gut instinct tells me that you will get into serious trouble if you start mixing the fundamentally different concepts of out of character building, and in character deity role-playing.

One simple problem is that your world will have horrible item inflation, where everybody is in a race to make the next best item. What it means is that older areas become outdated and useless because the newer ones have much better items anyways.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Grymlar   (10 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Reply #2 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 12:15 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
sorry, i've been playing a LPmud my whole life, the world is a world, not split into items dependendent on areas, new items are put into place within the set world, not new areas set up and added to, i was planning on doing it that way, is there a problem within smaug of doing things this way? I am interested in making my mud so that its a living world ever changing, ever growing, probably starting it in the beggening of the second age, so that some things are set, and have happened, still in very early stages though, this is just a thing that has always interested me, giving gods a miniture game within the game, also giving them a reason to be helpfull to newbies and older players alike, who would want to devote to a god that ignored you, or never helped when you needed it. Again, like i said, never played Smaug muds before, so i am guessing i'm comming from an entirely different type of Mudding background
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Posted by Meerclar   USA  (554 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Reply #3 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 04:15 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
A few observations on immortals and why they are hired:
Most builders are hired by muds because they can do one specific thing reasonably well - build. Same for coders, they're hired to code, not to do public relations and roleplay support. Most PR imms dont know dick about coding, building or day to day administration and weren't hired for their knowledge in those areas in the first place. Wanting a worship system is all well and good but basing the powers your builders have around how good their pr skills are is rather self defeating. Your best builders typically have little or no interest in dealing with the general player population when they're trying to get work done and generally won't be around if they aren't trying to get work done, unless they've been hired in another capacity as well. Forcing your builders into a pr role will either piss them off and make them leave or punish your best builders for being focused on world development instead of player support. Granted, one could argue that player support and world development go hand in hand, but I've never seen it that way and I probably never will.

I also notice you say you've *played* LPmuds, not that you've been an imm on any. My very strong advice is to get a position on an existing mud and see how things are handled before you attempt to run one of your own and make it fit your image of how things ran as a player. Most players are sadly ignorant of how much goes on behind the scenes at a mud and are woefully unprepared for the sheer magnitude of whats involved in running a mud, much less actually developing one to where they want it to start from.
Meerclar - Lord of Cats
Coder, Builder, and Tormenter of Mortals
Stormbringer: Rebirth
storm-bringer.org:4500
www.storm-bringer.org
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  [Biography] bio   Moderator
Date Reply #4 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 05:36 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Another note is that if you force builders to do PR to be able to build something half-decent, then they'll spend more time doing PR in an endless competition for devotees, than they spend actually building. So you might have very popular imms, perhaps, but not a lot of work will get done.

What I would suggest as an alternative is to tie objects to a deity's devotees post-creation. The builders have normal powers as they would on normal MUDs, but all objects (or only some, whatever) are tied to a deity. If that deity is doing well, then those objects become more powerful. If that deity isn't, the objects are quite weak.

Note now that you reestablish the distinction between the two fundamentally different tasks, and the different skills that are necessary to do PR and building. You can now have "teams" to represent a deity; you have one person who is the builder, and one person who is the public image.

Note that nothing says that there has to be a one to one correspondance between an in-game deity character and an out-of-game player. Nothing prevents you from having three people "be" one deity character, or conversely, having one player role-play multiple deities.

I agree with Meerclar, and I stand by my initial gut feelings that implementing your solution will ultimately lead you to heaps of difficulty, if not disaster and, ultimately, failure.

Now, on a brighter note... :) If you tie objects post-creation to a deity file's number of worshippers, then you could have something really interesting going on. I also agree with Meerclar that you should do some research and practice before actually starting. There is actually a very good thread on this forum about that subject:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=2293

Read first, think second, do lots of meditating afterwards, and act last. Much like graphical video games (but to a lesser extent) these things do not build themselves overnight, and require much more infrastructure and skill than most people assume. I guess it's because there is the head start of having very functional code bases already out there; people assume that the MUD just runs itself, I suppose.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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