From: Julian.Anderson@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Julian Anderson)
Subject: Re: Wizardhood on LPMuds.
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Victoria Uni. of Wellington, NZ.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 02:44:12 GMT

>In article <By11yL.8HI@news.iastate.edu> griffon@iastate.edu (Tamber Kelsain) writes:
>	   Well, with all the ideas that are being thrown around, I
>   thought I'd add in a few of my own.

>	   a) An advancement system that is practically infinite (For Mud, anyway)
>	   b) The ability to affect the world and how it is designed without
>		   becoming a coder.
>	   c) The ability to make a place of your own, to call your own.

A local LPmud I Wizard on here has already been through the eye of this
needle. The proposal we came up with was:
 1. Hide levels: As far as a newbie player is concerned, the only way
of telling how powerful a character is, is by looking at them, ie
Blarg the Magician-Destroyer is probably higher up the scale than Vern
the Insignificant. Also, players do not know who the wizards are,
unless the wizard makes it known themselves. This can free people up
from a tremendous amount of Us-and-Them mentatilty.

 2. Wizards don't fix problems, Leo does: Well, OK, Wizards do fix
problems, but Leo is allways on the who list, and is labeled openly as
a Wizard. If anyone has a problem, the tell Leo who has been enhanced
to forward the message to:
    a - The Wizard whose area it is, if that person is on.
    b - Contact the most suitable other Wizard who is on (ie I might
        nominate myself as `weekend wizard', and most problems in this
        category come to me), or the highest level Wizard, etc
    c - Mail someone suitable about it; for example, if the player
        mentions "guild" then Leo will attempt to get in contact with
        whoever maintains the guild that the player is currently in,
	etc.
  The real win here is that if it is possible to fix the problem
invisibly, such as updating a room, or patching stats, etc, a Wizard
can go and do that invisibly, and then get Leo to respond and say that
it has been fixed.

 3. Monster.c allows wizards to control monsters remotely, so monsters
can come and fix problems.

All of the above allows us to have _very few wizards_, and in fact
de-emphasis the wizardness of the game. So, in replacement, we have a
feudal system, in which a player completeing all quests, and obtaining
enough XP, etc, can become a Lord/Lady/BeastLord (collectively :
Lords). Each Lord has a certain number of LordPoints, which can be
used to do things. A Lord has most of the non-destructive powers of
wizards, minus ed, ls, rm, cat, etc. In place of those are a set of
tools in the Lord-soul, to read documentation, etc. So,it might cost a
Lord 10 LP to teleport to somewhere, and 100 LP to transport a player
to him. 

Lords also have a group of `retainers', which are NPCs. The currently
envisaged set are:
	Master Builder - Interactively creates rooms, asking for
details about where it connects up, descriptions, exits, etc.
	Master Craftsman - Interactively builds `scenery' items, such
as tables, chairs, crowns, shrubberies, treasureetc.
	Master Breeder - Creates monsters / NPC s to populate areas
with.
	Master Smithy - Creates weapons, armour, etc.

Each of these Masters writes the descriptions of the relevant objects
in LPC, and links them into the castle for loading/placement, etc.

A Lord will use LP to build items, using some sort of metric based on
weapon class, number of rooms, etc. This way, a Lord can build stuff
in a way they are familiar with, and not have to get into the
intricacies of LPC; but if they do become a Wizard, then thay have a
whole array of premate templates for the areas that they wish to
develop.

Lords gain LP for being connected, for having players use their areas,
etc. Also, to encourage the feudal system, Lords can compete against
each other, and `hire' players to steal other Lord's stuff. The only
way to create parties of players is by getting a Lord to sponsor you,
and the Lord gets a portion of the XP as LPs.

If a Lord feels they want to get more out of the game, then they can
become a Wizard, or if they wish, they can `hire' a Wizard to enhance
their area. We wanted to give a barrier between the hack-and-slash
player mentality, and the creative, constructive mentality required to
be a Wizard. 

All this has been partially implemented, and there are a lot more
details, but we believe this is a reasonable way of getting around a
lot of the problems that the Wizard system creates.

Jules
--
jules@kauri.vuw.ac.nz  | `Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully
jules@comp.vuw.ac.nz   | human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has 
J.Anderson@49_Norway_st| learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in
      .Wellington.NZ   | the house.'                         - Lazarus Long.