Re: What's wrong with Olympia today (long)

From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Tue, 19 May 1992 01:08:16 +0000

In article <1992May18.223618.13301@tellab5.tellabs.com> dennis@tellabs.com (Dennis Faherty) writes:

>How about this? Each town pays taxes to who ever is the governor of the
>town. The governor (or sheriff, lord, duke, count, etc) then can use the
>money to raise town guards and enforce the laws. He can also abscond
>with it, too!

Sure. Only there's no reason why this person should be a player
character. If you make them all PC's, then what happens is that a
certain (small) number of players will get these valuable positions,
probably profit immensely from them compared to normal ways of earning
money, and other players will be shut out. New players will have to go
far away to find an empty town to rule, etc.  I've seen this stagnate
several games.

I'd might propose a 2-tier system instead. Certain places are highly
populated and have a computer-controlled town guard, as I mentioned
above. Any place that doesn't could have a player declare "I am going
to tax area X at Y%", and this taxation starts, say, 2 months later.
The player has to keep a unit in that area. If people don't like this
taxation thing, they have to kill that unit. If 2 people want to tax
the same area, the game won't stop them, but they might want to stop
each other.

However, I don't think taxation by players is such a good idea,
because it's hard to keep such a scheme from becoming a "rich get
richer, poor get poorer" situation -- the two-dozen biggest players
collude to snarf up the big avilable properties, suck the lifeblood
out of them, and fight with each other while most players are reduced
to peons. The best way to kill a game is to create a situation where
the new players have little hope of catching up with the old players.
Is there any way that a taxation scheme wouldn't make this problem
worse? I think not.

>This proposal opens several avenues for players to role play.

More role play is fine. But I think the best route to that is to have
players form their own organizations, with someone proclaiming himself
king over an area and promising to enforce laws against killing,
terrorization, persuation, etc. within those borders. This can be done
today, and the king could ask for contributions today -- no need to
add things to the game which could be used to reap lots of wealth.

> Players currently turn to attacking innocent people
>because a) they are bored (the politcal solution above would solve this)
>or b) they need money. If players can make a reasonable living doing
>legitimate things, they will only resort to violence when it becomes
>necessary to change the polical picture.

(c) because it's much more profitable than reasonable economic
activity. As it is now, one newbie killing another careless newbie can
double his wealth in 1 turn. 100% profit. A wealthy player might
manage to kill 5 or 10 newbies, for quite a large % of his wealth.
What "legitimate things" could possibly produce this kind of profit
without warping the game? Nothing. Hell, the game right now produces
profits which are already way too large. I can earn more letting my
sailors sit in port and WORK than I can running a ferry service with
my ship. That's an economy?

>If you do this, IMHO the game will become deeper than it is.

Let's not destroy it on the road to "saving" it.

References

Olympia - Future Implimentation Propositions
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Sat, 16 May 1992 02:32:15 +0000
What's wrong with Olympia today (long)
dennis@tellabs.com (Dennis Faherty)
Mon, 18 May 1992 22:36:18 +0000

Referenced By

Olympia - Future Implimentation Propositions
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Sat, 16 May 1992 02:32:15 +0000
What's wrong with Olympia today (long)
dennis@tellabs.com (Dennis Faherty)
Mon, 18 May 1992 22:36:18 +0000