QUESTION: PBMs. From: Rogerio Fung <u1001353@email.sjsu.edu> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 00:00:00 +0000 I am curious: how do open ended PBM games such as Beyond the Stellar Empire which are computer moderated allow for the 'special orders' (for those who dont know, you can practically try anything - verbose orders ) where usually by the way of being computer moderated imply that there are finite limitations/types of orders? I know that this is what the human GM is for, but, alas, does he make modifications to the source of the program based on , for instance, if a player decides to rig the dilithium cristals and change the alignment of the chambers (which wouldnt be in the normal run of the program), or he will just go to the file of this particular space ship and hand alter the base speed factor or wahtever? How about when some new artifact is discovered? if the artifact alters some aspect of the ship, it might be possible to hand alter the specs of the same, but being a special order, not all of them will imply *simply* altering some spec. How can we work around this? FOr isntance, in a space game scenario where there is an important character who is being delivered to some other planet, this character will be different from the usual "passanger", and hence, has to be marked as such. Is this 'marker' be already coded in the program, or, the human GM has a sheet of paper saying "this character in ship XX is a governor, should he be killed, XX wil happen in planet ZZ and civil war will erupt". There are theoretically contless other situations, most of them surely wont be coded, so the GM has to work on them. But what is their strategy? Any BSE players can shed a light on this? (I speak about BSE since it's the only game that I know which is computer moderated and allows for 'RPGing'.) Others are free to drop in. Rogerio +++++++++++++++++++++ Rogerio Fung SA#001(ISTP) '91 Kawasaki EX500 +++++++++++++++++++++ Referenced By Up