Text Editing & Spell Checking

Spurred by a recent post on the General Discussion Board. I figured I'd post up some of how text editing works in Arm 2. So without further ado, let's show the basics of text editing and spell checking with an excerpt from the engine.

Enter a new description.
Type .h on a new line for help.  Terminate with '~' or .q on a new line.
[---|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----]
> The qiuck red fxo jumpde over teh lazy brwn dog.

> .h
Available commands:
Info:
     .commands       .help
System:
     .clear          .format         .reset          .write
     .spellcheck     .view
Ooc:
     .commands       .exit           .help           .syntax

> .spellcheck
Spellcheck starting...

MISSPELT WORD: qiuck
Choose from the following suggestions:
     1: quick
     i: Ignore          I: Ignore All
     r: Replace         R: Replace All
     a: Abort

> 1

MISSPELT WORD: fxo
Choose from the following suggestions:
     1: fox
     i: Ignore          I: Ignore All
     r: Replace         R: Replace All
     a: Abort

> 1

MISSPELT WORD: jumpde
Choose from the following suggestions:
     1: jumped
     i: Ignore          I: Ignore All
     r: Replace         R: Replace All
     a: Abort

> 1

MISSPELT WORD: teh
Choose from the following suggestions:
     1: tea             2: the             3: ten             4: TeX
     i: Ignore          I: Ignore All
     r: Replace         R: Replace All
     a: Abort

> 2

MISSPELT WORD: brwn
Choose from the following suggestions:
     1: brawn           2: brown           3: bran
     i: Ignore          I: Ignore All
     r: Replace         R: Replace All
     a: Abort

> 2
Spellcheck complete.

> .view
String so far:

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.

> ~
Leaving text editor mode.

New World Economics

None of this is set in stone yet, but I wanted to give you some idea of the concepts we're looking at.

Items:
The only truly fixed factor in determining an item's cost is its weight. For example, 2 stones' worth of any material is always worth more than 1 stone's worth.

The risk associated with gathering the resource should be reflected in its value.

In order to have ongoing demand, most finished goods and some raw materials should decay in some fashion. This would be based on material and type of item.

Some items will decay through wear and tear, like clothing and weapons. Many of these things will be repairable up to a point, however repair will have diminishing returns until eventually the item must be replaced.

Other items will decay over time, like food.

How well a crafter made an item is reflected in its value. ... a tailor of middling skill could make a high-quality simple shirt, or a low-quality fancy shirt.

Jobs:
Every settlement should have a 'job board' (this could be handled as a rumor-type system). Employers can list openings.

In general, wages will be set by the market, based on how much employers are willing to pay, and how little employees are willing to work for.

Different types of jobs will need to be handled differently. Some will be hourly pay, some contract, some based on production.

There should be a minimum/maximum wage to prevent this from getting "broken."

Risky jobs, or those requiring more skill, should pay more.

Most resource gathering will be handled through trade, by exchanging items gathered for coin. However, we'll probably need code to handle resource-gathering jobs within cities, like claypit digging.

Resource gathering within cities should pay less than doing it in the wilds, because of less risk.

(Note from Vanth on resource gathering jobs: I would actually prefer -not- to have automated, static jobs that revolve around gathering, but rather to have something like a "commodities market" in major locations where you can buy and sell these materials for a price which depends on the market conditions--supply and demand--i.e. sometimes salt brings a good price, but if everyone goes out salt gathering the price eventually falls as mass quantities of salt are stockpiled.)

There will probably also be quest-type jobs, like "go hunt down the traitor Amos." Some of these may only be available to clans (see clan economics, below)

Shops:
We prefer to see a PC-run economy, so while there will be NPC shops, they will not be able to be competitive against an intelligent PC shopkeeper. NPC shops will be able to be edged out of a specific market in these instances.

Have a "help wanted" bulletin board of some sort in a central area. Let players both post and remove their offers of employment.
-On the same BB, let players offer their services to employers, and likewise both post and remove posts.
-Let employers hire both PCs and NPCs.
-Let employers set wages, and let them choose how to pay those wages: hourly, daily, monthly, etc.
-Let employers set the "shift" hours for NPCs.
--Let NPCs get upset and quit if their shift is too long/pay too little.
---So, Amos hires NPC-Malik for 10 coins an hour for 6 hours a day. But if Amos wants his shop to be open all day long, either he has to cover the rest himself, or he needs to hire someone else to cover, because Malik won't work more than 6 hours a day unless he's getting paid 15 coins an hour.

Clan Economics:
An idea from Raesanos: Clans are merely groups of people who perform tasks. These tasks would be roughly classifiable as quests, hunts, forages, etc. The same thing independents do, but with unique opportunities and the enjoyment of working as a group. Here, quests would not only be automated (salt-buyer NPC) but also RPTs. Basically, the T'zai Byn of the current game operates under this model. Unique automated quests could exist, such as a clan who is paid to guard the automated caravans that travel the world. Net result: clans operate in the same economic world as everyone else.

No more bottomless clan cooks or magickally refilling water tuns.

Trade and Caravans:
allow for trade agreements between towns/regions
-have a master room/page where imms can easily adjust the goods and quantities traded through these agreements
--perhaps these agreements spawn caravans when it's time for goods to be delivered.

The basic tenets of Sanvean's proposed caravan system:
* Profitable travel between civilized points should require time and risk.
* An automated system that allows players to travel between cities at a reasonable cost of
time/money should be readily available.
* Prices in an area should reflect that area's scarcities and abundances or resources as well
as the overall world environment.
* This process should not create significant extra work for the builders.
The PC experience:
PCs can go to an inn and sign up for a scripted caravan that is going to the two closest
locations, paying an amount of coins that makes travel non-trivial (100-200 coins?). They
can buy space for additional cargo on the caravan. It is possible for caravans to be filled and
PCs have to wait. Two thirds of the caravan's occupants are virtual. Caravans leave every three
game hours (currently one RL hour, I believe).
The staff experience:
Staff can adjust caravans, postponing, editing, etc through a web interface. This allows them
to respond to player events as necessary as well as providing a mechanism for adjusting the
system as necessary.

Caravans will be raidable.

Some things that happened at the beach house

Had a meeting with the game on a big screen, and everyone sitting around it with their laptops, and people who weren't at the beach house joining us from home. Did this as a planning session for a major event. We materialized the staff of pontification with the drumstick of pontification.

Sat on the roof at night and chatted over the ocean sounds.

Too much Rock Band.

Had an upper staff meeting to talk about game administration stuff.

Drank a loooot of beer. A local place had an oatmeal stout that was so addictive that I almost robbed the place with a bottle opener and installed my face directly to the tap.

Did some Arm2 building on my laptop while it wasn't my turn for Mario Kart.

Got to meet a bunch of the great people who came for the first time last year or this year, which I always really enjoy, and getting to know people personally really makes working with them a lot more fun.

Hung out at the beach and pool. It was great.

Answerless Game World Questions

Sometimes there seems to be an interesting expectation among some of our players. These players expect every question about the game world to have a single, definitive answer. This may be a good sign: it means our game world is well-defined enough that it feels like there is an answer to every such question. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t.

There may be more too it, though. Let’s take an example question: “Would my character refuse to wear this cloak that is the color of their enemy clan?”

My answer would be “Well, that is up to you. We certainly don’t have a rule that says you must or must not, so it depends on if your character hates their enemies so much they wouldn’t even wear the same colors as them.”

Some people don’t like getting answers like that. Mostly because it doesn’t answer their question, but I think it goes a little deeper. Some people feel that unless they do what we would have done, they are doing it wrong. It is not surprising that people have this expectation: surely they have been told before that they are doing something wrong, when they thought it was a matter of opinion. That is part of the process of learning a new game and is very common even for fantastic players.

If a player is unsatisfied by this answer, a good response would be that if there was a rule about what to do in every situation, role playing would cease to exist, and you would only ever be a drone doing what the rules tell you. A lot of rules have to be guidelines rather than directions to allow for people to act as individuals in a society. Sometimes people are still unsatisfied by this answer, maybe because they still disagree, maybe because I didn’t explain it well enough, but I generally leave it at that.

There is another thing that might happen when this question is asked. Some staff member might pause, think about it, then give an answer. It might end there, but often responses like this turn into undocumented policy. If they say “Oh no, they would never do that” then the player might tell other players, and eventually the game has an unspoken rule that you never wear the colors of your enemies. The staff member may have felt this was true, but often the staff member is just giving an opinion or advice and didn’t mean to imply this should always be the case.

The trick is, in my opinion, to never tell a player to do something when it isn’t clearly documented that they must do it. Staff word is as good as documentation, as it should be. If you are giving an opinion or advice, clearly frame it as such. Saying “You don’t have to do this, but a good idea might be…” should be enough. Some people will inevitably misinterpret that, but at least you can easily explain why the misinterpretation was wrong if you said it like this to begin with.

When telling a player something that isn’t documented as true, but you think it should be, tell them that you are documenting it right then and there, then do it.

Another goal is, of course, to set the expectation that players won’t get an answer to every question. The only way to do this is to consistently not answer questions that don’t have answers, and make it clear why this happens. Sometimes that can be tough, especially as you want to use your imagination, put yourself in their shoes, and come up with some ideas, but ultimately that is the best thing for the game.

Rae on ArmageddonMUD Videocast Episode 1

I recorded a videocast where I talk about ArmageddonMUD. Sanvean of Armageddon has been doing these for awhile and I decided to give it a shot. In this episode (assuming I’m going to do more) I talk about setting up new staff members for the game and an interesting character I played years ago.

Is there anyone else in the MUD community doing these? I’d love to see videos like this about other games!

It is split up into 3 YouTube videos and is about 22 minutes long:

Part 1/3
Part 2/3
Part 3/3

And there is a discussion of the videocast going on here:

Armageddon community discussion on the videocast

Easy Supply and Demand [3]

A realistic economy is a goal of many MUDs. Many of the benefits of a realistic economy can be created with very little work.

Here is a simple supply and demand system. Every time a player buys an item, increase its cost. Every time a player sells an item, decrease its cost.

Voila. Supply and demand. The system works well to make high-demand items expensive and extremely common items cheap. There are just a few tweaks that would keep things working.

Tweak the settings for how much the cost is effected by each purchase or sale. You can’t assign the “right” values deterministically. It depends on your playerbase’s size and behavior, and will change over time.

Consider having the prices normalize gradually over time. That way a surge of unusual activity will be offset sooner, and items that are bought but not sold (such as consumables) will not simply increase in price forever.

Consider a minimum and maximum price. EG, do not allow an item’s cost to change to 50% less or more than its original cost. This is a good approximation of other factors not considered in the system and helps catch flukes before they cause a problem.

To expand on the system a little, keep a multiplier for object types and materials, if you have them. Start at 1. Each time a player buys or sells an item, increase or decrease the multiplier (by a small fraction). Have the multiplier effect all objects of that type or material. Now, if silver longswords are in demand, the price of silver broadswords will increase as well.

To expand on the system even more, keep these set of values separate for each city, region, or whatever granularity is appropriate for your game. Then travelling to a region where an item is more rare will yield a better payoff.

Adverbial Commands

Here's a sneak peak at something we're doing for Arm 2:

Currently commands are implemented to perform a specific action or skill in the game. Sometimes other uses or additional complexity that would provide more functionality need to be added to the commands. New commands are created, or command line switches added to access the added complexity. This pollutes the name space with single-use commands, or adds difficult to remember syntax, when the added behavior could be abstracted out to work in multiple other commands using a more natural approach.

Adverbial commands are commands that alter the functionality of existing commands. Most of the existing commands are 'verbs', directing user's characters what to do. Adverbial commands work like adverbial phrases in English, allowing the user to describe how they are doing an action, and providing coded benefits for doing so.

A collection of adverbs would be put together based on multiple criterion: How many commands they make sense with, the amount of complexity reduction they will provide, and the clarity and ease of use they hold for the player base. Each individual command would define what adverbs it supports. Using the adverbs provide coded modifiers or affects to the execution or results of the command for that single execution. Further commands which set the person into a 'mode' of behaving could still be done.

The intention of this is not to remove one-word commands that make sense (such as whisper and sneak), but rather allow a greater flexibility in describing your actions, as well as providing coded benefits to a wider variety of commands without having to come up with a command name that exactly fits the intention of the command.

Example Adverbial Commands

Some examples of adverbial commands and how some commands might respond to them follows.

quietly -- Used in speech related commands, lowering the volume of the speech. Lowering the volume of speech affects how well it could be heard in loud areas, listening skill checks, and if it carries to other rooms. Existing commands such as 'whisper' can be set up as an alias to 'quietly tell'. This could also be used in movement, such as "quietly go east (moving through the shadows)", allowing for a one room sneak. Other possibilities: Opening a door, picking up an item, starting an attack or drawing a weapon.

loudly -- Inverse of quietly, raises the volume of speech related commands. One might need to use this to be heard over others, or in a loud bar. Someone might catch only part of your say, or just an emote that your speaking but it's too loud unless you use this. This could be optionally used as a way to shout rather then the shout command. Other possibilities: Loudly moving to make your presense known, loudly attacking perhaps drawing attention (or other combat effects), or loudly chanting at a critical point in a ritual.

repeatedly -- Keep trying to do something until you succeed (or you determine it's impossible for your skill). It increases the delay proportionately and gives you a highest possible random result on your skill check. This wouldn't be used on skills where failure can result in a bad outcome. Possible uses include: Picking a lock, and searching a room.

in <language> -- Shortcut to allow you to change your language for one speech command. Example: in pig-latin say hello. This might be used in casting, or other communications such as psionics, or writing.

quickly -- Decreases the delay for the skill, but reduces your chance of success. Normally a master in a skill can ignore menial tasks involving the skill. If time is of the essence, they can try and do it quickly, and it increases the difficulty of the task. Possibilities include: drawing a weapon, attacking, shooting, kicking, disarming, getting an object, stealing, casting a spell, climbing, moving instead of run, mounting, or foraging.

slowly -- Increases the delay for the skill, but increases your chance of success. This should only be possible in a non-stressful situation, but the idea is you take your time doing it to reduce the difficulty of the task. Pretty much the inverse of quickly, this can be applied to many of the same commands. Possibilites include: moving, poisoning, casting a spell, stealing, climbing, crafting, picking a lock, stealing an item, foraging or shooting.

ineptly, poorly, adeptly, expertly -- Purposefully degrade your ability in a skill for one performance of it. Removes any chance of skill gain from failure, but can be used as a role play tool. Depending on your actual ability in the skill, you may not be able to use higher levels. You can't use this to increase your skill beyond your current ability. Other possibilities include: Taking a payoff to ineptly guard your boss one time, to downplay one's combat skills, or basically charade. Should give viewers an opposed check to see if they notice the deception.

exclusively -- Specify that you are looking for a specific result, like with forage. Example: exclusively forage for a golden skull.

Syntax

The general syntax for adverbial commands is:

Syntax: <adverb> <command> (pre-how emote) [post-how emote] <body>

Some Adverbial Commands might take arguments themselves (for instance 'in' takes the language to speak in), and would require slightly altered syntaxes.

Output

Each command will decide if it makes sense to show the adverbs used in the output for the command. For instance, 'quietly say' might echo 'You quietly say...' Alternatively, some might not be shown unless some condition is met, such as noticing someone trying to fake poor skill. Others may never show in the output for the command.

Implementation

An 'AdverbialCommand' will be created which will take the name of the adverb to set on the command. Commands that want to intercept an adverb will add a public boolean instance property (getter/setter) for it. When an AdveribialCommand is told to run, it will re-interpret the remaining arguments as a new command. Assuming it gets a new command back, it will use introspection to set the adverb as being used. It will then schedule the new command to run and exit. The new command will have to decide what the result is of the adverb on the command.

If the command does not have a public property for the adverb, the default behavior will be to give an error message 'You may not , try using command-emotes (see help command emotes)'.

So, if a Command wants to handle the 'slowly' adverb, it will add a 'private boolean slowly;' and an appropriate getter and setter for it. The slowly adverbial command will check to see if the command has a boolean setter for the 'slowly' property, and set it to true. When the command is run, it will determine what 'slowly' means for it.

Strict/Permissive Error Handling

There should be a user setting which allows the user to not get told if the command doesn't support a specific adverb, give a warning, but go ahead and do the command anyways.

Multiple Adverbial Commands

Multiple adverbial commands could be combined (for instance, 'in pig-latin quietly say hello'), depending on how this is implemented. If so the system would need to watch for opposing adverbs (quietly vs. loudly, quickly vs. slowly). One solution to this is to have each adverb maintain a list of 'unacceptable' other adverbs that it'll turn off if found.

Hiring for MUDs

I’ve noticed that for the last person we hired for Armageddon and for the last person we hired at work, the process was nearly identical. In both cases it was for a developer position. Our process is to say that we are hiring, receive applications with a certain type of information, choose some people to come in for interviews, have interviews that ask the same questions, then send a few offers.

What are the differences, though? That is the part that I find interesting.

Supply and Demand

In the software world, startups and new, exciting companies usually get a lot of attention from job-seekers. There is the chance to learn new and exciting technologies, having a fully stocked soda fridge and expresso machine, and of course the possibility of stock options making you a quick fortune.

In the MUD world, new MUDs are the ones that have to try their damnedest to bring on new staff. MUD forums are always full of posts about the need for coders or builders for a fresh MUD. Why is this?

First, new MUDs have a low success rate. As a hobby, it is very possible that not enough volunteers will be rounded up. Even if the game gets off the ground, its very hard to reach the critical mass where you have enough players for the playerbase to not just disappear during a lull. For MUD administration talent, its a risky move to invest in such a MUD, and many talented folks are more interested in starting their own project.

Most MUDs that are already established hire from within. Players of a MUD are usually very interested in joining the staff of their favorite MUD, so the game staff can remain sufficient even with a fairly high churn.

What can we learn from this? If you are starting a new MUD, be ready to hire through networking rather than forum posts. However, you should take some lessons from the software industry. Make your MUD an appealing place to work. For coders, advertise what cool new technologies you employ. For builders, make sure you have some unique features that are of interest. The competition is fierce, so make sure you answer the question: “Why is it more fun to work on this MUD?”

For established MUDs: Be picky. You probably have a boatload of players who want to help out. Look at the entire pool of potential staff and take the time to really get to know people and their qualifications. We used to hire by invitation, but hiring by an application process has let us consider highly qualified potential staff that had been flying under our radar in the past.

Celebrity Founders

Every heard of Pownce? It is a Twitter like site. Why do I know about it? Only because one of the original founders was known for his involvement in Digg. The world of software entrepreneurship has celebrities. Companies started by such a person get a lot of attention, both by users and by potential employees.

This doesn’t seem to happen with MUDs. New MUDs are likely to come from an average Joe, or an established group making a new MUD that does not need to establish a new staff.

Why is this? First, there seems to be a stigma surrounding leaving your MUD to go make a new one. You would be seen as abandoning your friends there. In the business world, people coming and going is simply a way of life and (usually) no offense is taken. This is infinitely worse if you try to recruit some of your talented friends to get the new project going. Talent poaching is highly frowned upon in the MUD world, even on a small scale. Lastly, people have a strong sense of loyalty to their MUDs. Even if the previous problems didn’t exist, few people want to embark on such a project.

Further, the MUD world doesn’t seem to have celebrities in the community as a whole. MUD administrators are often seen as celebrities in their own game, but players from other games will likely never of heard of them.

One way I’d like to mitigate this is to promote a more far-reaching MUD community. More networking and awareness of what is going on in other MUDs would help anyone who is trying to hire.

I don’t think I’d want to promote higher staff churn. I think the comradery and loyalty that MUD staffs have is a good thing, overall.

When you are hiring for a MUD, make sure to ask what a person’s accomplishments are, in and out of the MUD community. They probably don’t have 4 or 5 MUDs under their belt, but what they say should be interesting.

Expectations

The last difference between real-job hiring and MUD hiring that I’ll discuss is expectations. On both sides of the table.

MUDs are usually a volunteer effort. A staff member’s value is related to how many hours they choose to volunteer. Its obvious that someone who can devote 20 hours a week to a MUD is a great potential helping hand. Someone who has no time to help, no matter how qualified, is probably not going to get hired.

If someone gets hired onto a MUD, then produces less work than is expected of them, this is usually not a big loss. They can linger on as an occasional helper. If they produce no work whatsoever, or completely disappear, they can be taken off the staff list quietly with no incident.

In the world of business there is no such notion. A hire who is not as effective as needed is a major problem. They’re still around every day and drain resources without giving back.

This difference leads to less sense of risk and lower expectations in MUD hiring.

This is a good thing. Staff can be hired with a risk that they won’t work out. Some of these people might turn out great, and if not, the loss is not unbearable. Hires that are an active problem can be dealt with quickly. Be ready to take risks (if there is some reason to think the person may turn out very good) and pay attention to newer staff to see how the risk is paying off.

On the other side of the table, MUD players often expect that working on a MUD will be far more fun than a real job would be. Well, this is probably true, but occasionally there are unenjoyable parts of the job. Any reasonable interviewee for a paid job is ready for this, but far fewer MUD players are. Set expectations early. If someone gets scared by the thought of building an item that someone else designed for them, or talking to a player who has been misbehaving, they probably aren’t a good resource overall.

That’s all for today. As always I’ll leave an open question on the table. What is your best and/or worst hiring experience? From the perspective of either a employer or interviewee. Doesn’t need to be MUD related, but if it isn’t, how might the situation have been different if it was a MUD hiring?

Dear Domino, Issue II

Dear Domino,

Will you please give a basic rundown of the commonly known worldwide animals and plants, at least so far as they're decided upon thus far? Failing that, can you tell us which flora and fauna will likely make the transition to 2.arm from 1.arm, and give us a couple new highlights?

Tisiphone

Domino says:

This is a project that Vanth and I started to tear through a few months ago, but we put it on hold until the areas themselves are built. I'd estimate it as about 50% done, and I'm looking forward to a time when I can pick it back up.

Almost all of the herbs and plants that currently exist will be making the transition to Armageddon 2.0, with some alterations to the names and properties of some of them so that we can do away with any IP infringements. Most if not all of them will be fleshed out in regards to possible uses and the folklore surrounding them, and it's likely that they won't act the same way they did in Armageddon 1.0. There are literally hundreds of herb and plant items, and many more will be added as we make sure that each herb has a plant, and vice versa. I would also like to ensure that every plant has a way for PCs to reproduce it, whether by taking a cutting of it, planting seeds, or for the more exotic varieties, something else entirely. Purely "decorative" plant objects should be a thing of the past.

Since literacy will be far more common in Armageddon 2.0, I'm hoping to create IC documentation for players to pursue ingame. The most commonly well-known plants will probably be listed in the OOC documentation, but I want to include some extras for those who want to study the subject ICly, while leaving plenty of room for experimentation and further learning. Imagine reading some bit of folklore about a rare herb that only grows in the high mountains and is sacred to the fuzzy-wuzzies, then sending out an expedition to discover it and experiment with its properties, eventually finding out through trial and error that it's the only known cure to the deadly kankblotch plague - then writing your findings in a book and selling it, forever immortalized as the one who made the discovery. That kind of thing is what I want to make possible.

The same goes for animals, to a large extent. Just as the herbs, all of them have their own separate wiki page with a list of fields to fill out, detailing their habits and habitat. The most common ones will get a blurb in the OOC documentation, and the more detailed folklore and habits should be discoverable IC. I'm not alone in wanting to ensure that each animal type has a place in the overall food chain, and that the food chains for each areas make sense and can be observed and reported by PCs in the game.

More of the animals in 2.0 had to be dropped due to IP conflicts, but there is a slew of new ones, including a few rare creatures that existed in Armageddon 1.0's database but weren't brought into common play for one reason or another. Mounts in particular I'm really looking forward to fleshing out, as we have a host of new types, each of which will be ideal for certain situations and poor choices for others. There will be no "super-mount" like the kank was (may they rest in peace), but there will probably be a couple "average" mounts that can handle most terrain types and situations - just not as well as another more specialized mount might.

Three-Space [4]

Approximating three-dimensional space is an interesting challenge in a text-based game. It is very easy to create a simple, sufficient model. Complications run the risk of confusing players and piling on the work for builders. I’m going to look at a few approaches, their advantages and disadvantages, and talk about an idea that I haven’t seen used.

The standard MUD approach is to use weight as its only measure of not only weight, but also size. The capacity of a container is judged by how much weight it can contain, and a character’s encumbrance is simply their total carry-weight versus a maximum, generally derived from their various attributes.

This works well in general, and is conveniently simple, but there are a few cases that throw this system off.

First, object shape is not taken into account. In my experience long, skinny objects cause the most weirdness, as the game mechanics don’t see any reason to protest putting a spear in a belt pouch.

Second, objects that vary wildly in density can cause confusion. If a player has a bag that can carry an entire wardrobe of silk they may be suddenly confused when a 7 pound sword cannot fit inside.

I have seen a few attempts to solve the size problem. The simplest is a single “size” field, separate from weight, that is then used instead of weight when determining the amount of space taken up in a location or container. This works well enough as it represents density, but it does not help our spear scenario.

In some cases further size fields are added. In the next step we start to approximate each object as a geometric shape. With two fields, width and length, you effectively consider every object a cylinder. This works well: it is able to represent those troublesome spears, and a cylinder with equal length and width is sufficient for less exotically shaped objects.

The other approach I’ve seen is including a height, width, and length: a cube. In terms of MUDs, the difference between this and the cylinder representation is not extremely great. Generally the most important checks on size involve fitting objects through openings such a door or a chest’s lid. Since such an opening is two dimensional, the smallest dimension does not play into the calculation.

I haven’t seen an attempt to create any more complex representation of size and shape. Allowing an object to be one of various geometric shapes would be maddening for a builder, much less do any calculations with, and the advantages of this level of simulation are unclear.

I’d like to propose a different approach to shape and density. I assume this is not a truly novel idea, but in my experience I haven’t seen it done in a MUD. If you know of a MUD that does this I would be fascinated, so please leave a comment about it!

Lets assume (as I always do) that we want to minimize builder effort and have extremely consistent objects in our game. We will have size and weight, as they are both useful pieces of data, and we are going to use width and height for size, as this is a sufficient representation of shape for our purposes.

The implied field is density. Say we have an object that is 12 inches high, 6 inches wide, and weighs 3 pounds. Approximating its shape as a cylinder, the object’s density is about .0088 pounds per cubic inch. Every object will have a density, based on the builder-supplied height, width, and weight.

An inconsistency has arisen, be it a subtle one. Lets say two builders create iron swords. They approximate the dimensions and weight as best they can, and each value seems appropriate. However, the density for each object is different due to the natural deviation you would expect in such an approximation. In reality, iron, as a substance, has a given density that does not vary so much.

We can remove this inconsistency and reduce builder effort at the same time. Assuming objects have a material type (most MUDs I’ve seen do) we can attach a density rating to each material type. A quick look on Google shows me that the actual density of iron is around 0.284 pounds per cubic inch, so lets use that.

Now, we can figure out everything we need to know simply by asking the builder the height, width, and material of an item. The weight can be determined automatically.

Lets say I create a sword of height 3 feet, width 1 inch, and material iron. A little math on the game’s part tells us that such an item should weigh eight pounds. This is about what a three foot sword weighs in real life!

36 * π * .5^2 * .284 = ~8

This approach sounds good to me, and I’d love to see it used in the future. I’ll leave an open question though: What MUD features might require a more complex representation of size, and how would it be done?

What's in a name?

Thinking up names is Serious Business.

Domino: I need help thinking up names for the Adevari settlement.

Domino: because corada sounds like a beer.

Adhira: She needs a non-beer related name.

Morgenes: ok, how about: gihness

Adhira: Mor-gihness?

Domino: Grylsch.

Morgenes: or: buhdlyt

Vanth: Pahbzt

Shalooonsh: Grylsch...

Morgenes: yes please

Xygax: Lesgihness, Morbass, Blactan

Vanth: High Nakin.

Domino: Xyngling.

Adhira: Ohhh Xyngling!

Morgenes: emgeedee

Vanth: D'Osekis.

Xygax: Never order a black&tan in front of an Irishman, also, if you'll pardon the seeming non-sequitur.

Domino: You guys are hopeless.

Adhira: Call it Hope!

Xygax: Hefvisen

Adhira: Then it can be like a soap opera town.

Domino: that's actually the best idea I've heard so far. but doesn't really fit their history.

Vanth: make it a 2-word name, like Gol Krathu or Vrun Driath.

Adhira: I like the 2-word name idea.

Shalooonsh: Grylsch-Schlaggah

Adhira: Mor Gihness

Morgenes: Moor Gihness

Domino: Looon, you're my only hope. I need two-word names.

Shalooonsh: Serious about the Grylsch-Schlaggah... or Omi-Yullara

Morgenes: Beh Eer

Xygax: Yager.

Shalooonsh: Gol-Thryzdu

Shalooonsh: (if the thryzyn have anything to do with it)

Adhira: Vrun Hope.

Adhira: It's an elven settlement,

Adhira: Maybe your delves!

Adhira: Vrun Elan.

Vanth: Dar Hopa

Shalooonsh: DOH... Adevari, right! Ha!

Morgenes: Darth Chad

Shalooonsh: okay, let me grind something out, gimme a minute, in scene here

Adhira: Or just Elan.

Adhira: That's classy - it has Elan.

Vanth: Hopa Vari.

Shalooonsh: Abi'situn could work (Dusk of the Land)

Domino: We're probably going to do away or mostly away with the (edited out), though.

Vanth: Elan Vari.

Xygax: Beerbelly

Domino: I want something that sorta translates into "we're tough motherfuckers, and we've survived the worst, and this place is our rock to cling to."

Domino: So, uh, fit that into two words.

Morgenes: kehgger

Adhira: Jager Meister

Vanth: Deh Waryurz.

Morgenes: Kanking Heroes

Morgenes: Serenity

Vanth: Deh Ayteem.

Morgenes: Mehk Guyer

Tiernan: The Chad is Rad

Domino: Someone duct tape Morgenes.

Shalooonsh: Jee eye Joh

Vanth: Bee Esgee

Domino: Dude. Then I can have an NPC named Jinx.

Tiernan: Koh Brawr

Morgenes: Bee Esgee Ray Zoor

Morgenes: oh, I know, call it Chuck

Domino: Elan sounds like a possibility.

Morgenes: oooh, or Bob

Morgenes: Planet Bob

Vanth: Bayoh Bob.

Tiernan: What are we making up names for again?

Morgenes: Degobah

Vanth: the Adevari settlement.

Tiernan: Like NPC names or what?

Domino: It's in the northwest tablelands.

Domino: nah, the settlement itself.

Domino: The original name sounds like a beer.

Vanth: the settlement name itself, it was Coruna, then Corada, but they both sound too much like Corona.

Domino: Corona. I mean, Corada.

Morgenes: Coruscant

Tiernan: Whatever you do, avoid apostrophes

Morgenes: Adevaria

Tiernan: Nothing worse that trying to talk about M'Rhgf'hgashs'hgashd'-smith

Vanth: that sounds like an Iron Realms game.

Domino: Planned to avoid em, yeah. Thinking of going with a two-word name though.

Tiernan: Helm's Deep

Tiernan: Oh wait, LotR

Domino: Everyone will shorten it to one name anyway.

Vanth: Ade Lehmon.

Morgenes: use a name generator, there's plenty out htere

Domino: Are there any "allundean" words that translate to "refuge"

Shalooonsh: yes

Domino: yeah, and they all suck, but it's a possibility

Vanth: there's an allundean lexicon?

Tiernan: Milliways

Shalooonsh: not a whole lexicon, but I believe refuge/safety are covered in the Sun Runner docs, if not I'll configure something

Morgenes: http://nine.frenchboys.net/country.php

Domino: whoa, morgenes rocks.

Domino: Definitely staying away from 'B' names

Morgenes: Utul Marsunas

Morgenes: Iteos Ursor

Tiernan: Nydia

Relleu: that was a weird point in the conversation for me to log in... nine frenchboys.net... definitely staying away from B names!

Tiernan: I googled "latin refuge" and got this hit:

Tiernan: Nydia : NIH-de-yuh : latin "refuge"

Domino: Neat.

Adhira: Wai Tangi

Tiernan: The Chronicles of Nydia

Domino: Good point

Domino: But that would be kinda fun, roll up a scribe

Relleu: I knew a Nidia in school, and I had a Nithia as a student

Domino: Write 'the chronicles of Nydia' and stick it in a library.

Vanth: Ombaal is the (info edited out).

Domino: That's a neat one.

Vanth: and Sejah is (edited out).

Vanth: alternate spelling of Ombaal in same docs is Oombaal

Shalooonsh: in game it's typically Oombaal

Domino: Actually, access to the d-elf tribal documents would be a huge help in writing the Adevari docs, because I want to pull in flavor from all of them, as well as from some of the human tribes, to make up one comprehensive whole.

Domino: A huge mish-mash of previous arm culture, shaken and stirred.

More than MUDs [3]

I ended up reading this fine blog due to a link from a commenter on this site, and from there started exploring various other types of “Interactive Fiction” (IF), that being a general term for the type of games that includes MUDs.

Its interesting just how isolated the MUD community is. Really, I have had almost no experience with the other types of IF.

For example, I didn’t even know what a roguelike is until I started playing Legerdemain, which was a fantasticly novel experience for me. To a MUDder, this is a graphical, single-player MUD. Graphical only in that there is a colorful ascii representation of your world, and MUD-like only in the similiar set of text-based commands. The biggest draw was the way exploration works, and I only stopped playing when the difficulty started wearing me down. I doubt this will be my last run-in with roguelikes.

Of course, the type of IF that everyone is familiar with is games like Zork (basically a single-player, turn-based MUD), which I did enjoy greatly at some time long past. What’s interesting is that there is still a community for this and new games that are released. And I, someone who has dedicated years of my free time to games that are effectively the same thing, have played none of them.

Assuming I’m not simply daft and that the separation of these communities extends beyond my own personal ignorance, my first response to it is that this is a problem. I want to see communities for lovers of all forms of interactive fiction. If there are any, I want to see what they’re like and why I haven’t heard of them. If there are not, I want to take a shot at creating one.

Getting my feet wet in the roguelike world seems like a good start. I’m thinking about writing my experience on this site, but I don’t have a good feel for if my readers would be interested in hearing about it, since its not MUD-related. But I do think you should be interested! Are you?

Tyleki Changes

Based on the feedback from everyone we've made some changes to Tyleki, from how it was when we first announced it.

We've gotten rid of the mindbenders, they're simply outlawed from Tyleki and discovery of one will either result in its death (if the person dealing with it is confident their militia can take it down and that the person actually is a mindbender) or exile (if they're uncertain they can take it on or if they're uncertain it truly is a mindbender). They aren't trusted or accepted by normal people in Tyleki, although a good way to get rid of a competitor, if you can afford it, is to bribe a ruling family member and then accuse the person of being a mindbender.

However with mindbenders gone, we were left with trying to work out a way for the Tyleki ruling families to keep magickers under control. We had considered uniting the three militias into one force, as they'd be more effective that way, however the three separate militias seemed fairly popular. Instead we decided to have a special herb used in a tea that when drunk, limits the ability of a magicker to use their magick (doesn't negate it completely, but does make it more difficult). This herb will be foragable from where it grows, but specific details have yet to be worked out. The tea also has the side-effect of being extremely addictive and also causes changes in the person's physical appearance (which changes are yet to be determined) so that magickers have a harder time hiding.

Also there won't be widespread acceptance of magickers. Instead it will be up to players to decide their opinions on magickers, although most Tylekans would probably consider them to be dangerous to a degree with non-drugged magickers extremely dangerous.

This will help lower the tensions between the ruling families and ordinary citizens a bit as they won't appear to have super weapons pointed at each other.

Unrelated to the above, people were confused with this paragraph:
While only the Council can make laws, they cannot enforce the law and are instead reliant on the founding family guards to do this. In earlier times, the Council had more control over Tyleki. With the recent tension between the ruling families and the townspeople, the families have taken back much of the control from the actual Council.
In a ruling family there are two ways to gain power: become the family's leader or become the family's council representative. The power the Council representatives have within their family differs from family to family, but at their most powerful they have greater control then the family's leader.

The reason for this dual-power is because of a law was passed early in Tyleki history by the Council, that forbids the family leader from also being the Council's representative. This is fertile ground for tension between the leader and representative of a family. Sometimes the two have a power struggle for many years, other times one has dominated the other. In some family's this is more likely then in other family's, because of how the council represntative is chosen within a particular family.

A lot of other questions, comments and concerns were raised on Tyleki, however I'm not sure if this addresses them or not, so please ask again any questions you still have.

Oh and Ovirne from a previous post is a war hero ;)

Top 10 ideas that probably won't make it in...

Just wanted to show you guys some examples of ideas we've kicked around but are ultimately not going to be in the game and why.

1) Approach: When we were working out how rooms would work in 2.0, we considered having to approach people and things in order to interact with them. We decided that adding even more roundtime/lag would have more 'ick factor' than 'wow factor'.
2) Pirate Class: Blasted landlubbers made this idea walk the plank.
3) Wood mage: Djarjak has the idea of "A new mage type that manipulates plants and wood in the way that others manipulate stone or water. (the lost element) " but at this point we're focusing primarily on the elements found in 1.0.
4) The Quicksand Sea: This was to be the basis for the pirate class (Arr!). Shalooonsh and I were going to place it smack dab in the middle of the world so you had to cross it to get anywhere *evil grin*. Perhaps we made a tactical error in calling it "The Sucking Sea"
5) Messenger System: aka the Pony Express, NPCs and PCs would take jobs delivering messages between cities. The presence of psionics and the departure of its proposer, Ashyom, left this idea in the dust.
6) The Gelid Chasm: Eniriah proposed an arctic area composed only of rock and ice. While it was very creative, the consensus was it wasn't quite right for Zalanthas.
7) Broken Mountain: Naiona proposed an underground cavern area with a race of mutants descended from interbreeding of humans and elves. This proposal suffered from endless "Brokeback Mountain" jokes. Another 'cavern' settlement, Kalamoor, was approved instead.
8) Marsh Dwarves: Tlaloc proposed a new race based on the bald DS dwarf, but without a focus.
9) No Middle Class: Naiona proposed a system where almost everyone would be dirt poor with no chance of advancement, and "wealth in tiny amounts - with the average PC [having] little chance of ever achieving it". This was eventually scrapped in favor of a player-driven economy.
10) Magick city: There were a couple of different proposals for cities that were not only accepting of magick, but entirely populated and ruled by magickers. At this time, nothing like this is planned for implementation.

RMBT Open Sourced

RMBT, the graphical web-based program for MUD world editing that we developed for the Armageddon Reborn project, is now open source. You can download it at http://lemonlimesoftware.com/

I'm hoping to see other MUDs out there using it someday! It was a lot of fun to develop but there is still lots of improvement, so it'd be great if it became a community effort.

RMBT is now open source

I feel cheesy having my first news post be news about something I myself did, but I guess I have nothing to gain from this, so I’ll forgive me.

RMBT, a graphical web-based MUD building tool developed for ArmageddonMUD, is now free software.

The RMBT project lives at lemon lime software.

Interested in seeing what the community response is.

RMBT Demo

I realized I totally forgot to post this video demo of RMBT. So, check it out.

MUDs and OSS [2]

Over the years I’ve written a lot of MUD related code. So far, all of it has been unreleased code used by one MUD for one purpose. As work for the engine of a MUD I work on has gone open source, I’ve been thinking about what other projects can be given back to the community.

MUD software being free to use is nothing new. One of the most well-known MUD engines, DikuMUD, is free software. Technically it is not Open Source Software (OSS) because it is not free to use for any purpose. DikuMUD cannot be used for commercial purposes. The definition of OSS is described here.

I haven’t heard much about MUD-related code other than engine code being shared, though. A SMAUG world editor for Windows by Nick Gammon has a true OSS license, and I’d like to see more tools like this one. This is the kind of thing can help established MUDs as well as new ones.

I have a tool that is analogous to Nick’s called RMBT. It is a web-based tool for world editing that can be configured to use different MUD engines that are backed by MySQL. This I think will be my first foray into the world of releasing MUD tools as OSS.

My first consideration has been licensing. I’m no lawyer, but I do know enough about OSS licensing that I thought it’d be an easy decision. I was wrong.

The first issue is this: Do I want my code to be copyleft? Copyleft code means that modified versions must have the same license as the original. This makes sure that all changes to the code are given back to the community, even if they aren’t made by the original author.

It sounds like a good deal to me. But there is a problem with code that is used as part of a larger program. Specifically, I want to make sure people who make MUDs with RMBT don’t suddenly have to release their MUD’s code to the community due to my license.

At first, I considered the LGPL which doesn’t have the restriction that when its used as part of a larger program, the whole program must be released. This seemed fine at first. However, this does allow other people to interface directly with RMBT code rather than just using the same database, integrating more closely with RMBT and possibly using RMBT code for display logic in their game. This isn’t really in the spirit of what I intend.

Eventually the question came of if sharing a database (the only interaction between RMBT and the MUD it builds for) even counts for this restriction. I have seen no clear answer to this question, though my research so far suggests that no, it does not. Thus, the ubiquitous GPL is probably appropriate.

The concern that I’m currently working on is creating a releasable version of the code. Right now RMBT has no “default” configuration, so I need to make one that doesn’t contain details on the schemata of the MUD that it is currently being used with. The license, once finalized, needs to be attached to each RMBT source file. Lastly, the whole code needs a once-over to remove esoteric comments and embarrassing mistakes.

Its been a learning experience, but I’m pretty close to releasing my first open-source MUD software. It’ll be really interesting to see if anything comes of it. There is a good chance that other people might want to use it if they hear about it. I have a feeling that hearing about people that find it helpful will make the whole thing worthwhile.

Game Engine: Changes to Gone

Seeing some discussion on the GDB about the Gone command, I decided to post some documentation on what we currently have implemented in the game engine for the gone command. Note that when we started designing the game engine, we have aimed to make it easily configurable and modifiable on the fly. That said, some of what is posted about in 'Code' posts about the Game Engine may never be used by Armageddon Reborn, but I include it here to show you the process we've gone through.

The gone command itself remains largely unchanged. It is an out of character command that lets you notify others in the room with you that you are no longer actively playing the game. The syntax, remains the same:

[Everybody oooh and ahh that there's a consistent 'syntax' command...you're welcome]

Here's an example of using the gone command:

The following is an excerpt from an internal doc (modified for the audience) on the features the game engine provides to support the gone command.

Gone Warning [engine default true]

If you're marked gone, a message is sent to anyone who refers to you in a command.  For instance, if Amos (the brown-haired man) is gone, and you want to give him some coins, you would see:

Notice the command still happened, you'll just get a warning letting you know that they're gone.

Gone shows in rooms [engine default true]

[GONE] is placed in front of gone character's long descriptions.  A user settable option to show this or not is something that likely will be added.

Example:

Idle Gone Timeout [engine default 5 minutes]

A timeout can be set to automatically mark you gone if you're idle for longer than a specified # of seconds.  The message is 'You are gone idling.'  This likely will also get a user option to disable it.

Idle Timeout [engine default 1 hour]

If you're idle for more than the specified time your link is automatically dropped, leaving you link-dead.

Link-dead Timeout [engine default 30 minutes]

If you're link-dead for more than the specified time, you are automatically extracted from the game.

Note that if we chose to use the link-dead timeout, it will allow a ranger-quit for non-rangers with the cost of having to leave yourself exposed for the delay specified.

In closing, please remember that this is just what the engine currently supports, more features could be added, and some, if not all of these might not be used at all.

Attributes

Sorry for the lack of content for the last month, serious real life hardship has caused MUDding to fall by the wayside. For now, here is a discussion on the topic of character attributes in RPGs that someone showed me:

Character Attributes in Role-Playing Games

Also, here is a description of the character attributes system in the PC game Arcanum, which I think is downright inspired:

Arcanum Character Generation

Hoping to get back into the pattern of producing regular articles as life gets back to normal. Also hoping to find people who are interested in writing. There have been some great guest authors and I’d love to have more.

The RMBT truly is a great tool

Enough praise cannot be given to the RMBT. Last night I was able to write the base description for 15 rooms in one go. I then had to tweak each room separately so it made sense given that room's particular surroundings. But before it would have been much more difficult to write those 13 rooms without any errors.

I also wanted to change a word or two in the rooms after I'd finished as walking through it (which is only possible thanks to our terrific coders) I realized I wasn't conveying quite what I meant to. I was able to edit 13 of the rooms at once and only had to change the other 2 separately, because of the powerful tool that is the RMBT.

While I'm here, here's one of the rooms I created for Tyleki's main road:

Ovirne's Way [N E S W]
Trudging along this busy road are a variety of people including linen clad merchants and skeletal beggars. Interspersed in the constant roar are the cracks of whips as wagons slowly rumble pass. On either side of the chaotic press are tall granite lamps each encasing a large green glow crystal at the top.

The street continues to the east and west. To the north is a red sandstone store while a narrow alleyway leads south.

Creating a Sustainable Economy

I'm working with Naox and Dakurus to come up with an overall design for the new game's economy.

It's a big job, there's no doubt about that. Economy is a big subject, encompassing things like currency, caravans, shops, crafting, and jobs.

Since we want to shift from NPC-driven economy (like GMH shops) to player-driven economy, it'll require a lot of careful planning and coding to make sure that it's fun to play, low to no maintenance for staff, and keeps the gameworld realistic (I won't say balanced, that's not really the same thing).

The process I've decided on looks like this:

1) Brainstorming - done
2) Organizing ideas - this is basically taking all the ideas we can find that have already been proposed, whether on the GDB, IDB, or staff Wiki, and putting all of them in one place in some sort of organized fashion. I'm shamelessly using Naox as slave labor for a lot of this. - in progress
3) Discuss ideas within the team. I think Dakurus will be invaluable for this part, as he's always quick to spot the holes in any idea. - to do
4) Make the decisions on what's in and what's out. This will probably be a fairly involved process involving talks with the coders about whether my grand evil schemes are workable - to do
5) Document the system for feedback from staff as a whole, and for approval by the OLs. - to do

What's On Our Plates

Most of my 2.arm energy right now is being directed towards contributing to the compilation of a “master list” of ideas for the general economic workings of Armageddon Reborn. I have been tackling the GDB, scouring it for posts related in any way to the economy and sticking them up on the master list on the staff wiki. So far there are upwards of 200 ideas to be taken into consideration for the final vision of the system.

Anyhow, here are a couple more blurbs on the Basani, written by Onimantu. The first is a general synopsis, while the second is a description of the Basani relationship to food.

Synopsis:
The Basani are a group of humanoids who originated beyond the Known World many ages before the Cataclysm. They were separated from their tribe while they were exploring a system of caves. The Great Sundering, as it is called by Basani historians, locked them away in near-darkness for ages. Over time their bodies changed, adapting them to dark environments. The sense of loss and separation they felt in being cut off from their tribe also created a change in their psyche, driving the Basani to be avid historians. They approach survival with deadly seriousness as, due to their small population size, each life is tremendously important as it represents food that could be farmed, structures built, weapons or crafts made and so forth. A Basani's worth is measured by their contribution to their society, a driving factor in the average Basani's daily life. Creation is also cherished by the Basani. Basani associate creation, whether it be of art or goods, with the same natural creative impulse that sparks Basani life and fills the Little and Great Families of Kalamoor. In creation, Basani see a primary act that reflects the survival of their race, the home that they have built, and the rich culture that they have imagined into being. Family orientation, the creation of all things artistic and practical, contribution to the Basani society, and historical awareness form the bulk of what is referred to as "The Basani Experience". This experience means that the Basani are reserved around strangers and no outsider may ever truly come to know the Basani as they know one another.

Foods and Eating:
Basani foods are quite spicy and flavorful. Canakmara, the cavern that houses the town of Kalamoor, is home to a number of strange plants and fungi. Meat is not often found in Kalamoor, even though the town has access to reasonable hunting in Kalashasa. Overtime, being limited to eating mostly vegetables and fruit left the Basani preferring them and most Basani cuisine is centered around the plants and fungi native to the cavern, with meat used to accentuate the dishes rather than as the focus. The Basani typically eat when they feel the need. There is no real structure to this: though family meals may be scheduled, the Basani day often takes them away from one another during times of eating. When eating together as a family, the oldest are served first, then the youngest. Eating does not begin until the entire family has served itself food. Casual eating is just that, casual. Because of Kalamoor’s source of water, the Basani have grown accustomed to elaborate drinks ranging from a variety of teas to fruit-alcohols like brandy. It isn’t uncommon to see a Basani guide equipped with a skin full of spicy tea instead of water.

Cooking for the Basani is a strange affair to outsiders. When the Great Sundering first occurred, the Basani had no reliable methods of making fire in the caverns. In order to cook they used the steam vents in the cavern floor. Despite the ability to sustain fire now, they use materials that burn slow and low – open flame in the darkness of the cavern would temporarily disturb the sensitive vision of the cook. The Basani employ a method involving a fired clay pan filled with water over a covered fire pit. The steam is then used to cook meats and plants. When soup is made, the pot itself becomes the receptacle.

Final docs in progress

Been turning all the brainstorming I've done for my settlement and race into the final public documentation that will be on the new site. I'd love to share them at some point but now is not the time! My head as been swelling with ideas for this race even when I'm not actually trying to come up with ideas. One thing I've put a lot of thought into is their legends and how they tie into reality.

Also been working with Betaal and Relleu on designing the finalized class / skill system. We'll definitely post that here when we're done. Some of the major challenges, in my mind, are:

1) How to keep some classes rarer than others without karma. We have some great ideas on this to work with.
2) How to make skill-gaining more fun. Making skill a side-effect of enjoyable play and not something that its beneficial to practice in seclusion.

Basal Settlement Q&A

I have been working on one of the new settlements for Armageddon 2 since February. The name of the settlement is Basal and, in an effort to keep the information flowing, I would like to make myself available for questions. I won't be able to comment on concepts that have not yet been fully completed or revealed, largely dealing with the code: combat, class systems, magick, and probably everything you really want to know.

However, I hope that there is some general interest in the settlements being developed and am interested to hear your questions, concerns, and suggestions.

This was the blog I posted back in February:

Armageddon Reborn Blog wrote:
As others have done, I wanted to give everyone a small taste of one of the new settlements in Armageddon 2.

Nestled against the base of an enormous rock spire exists a mud walled settlement whose people strive daily to improve their social rank through the accumulation of wealth. Not only a matter of great pride, social rank often determines where one may live, what resources are available to them, and even how they must act in accordance to their complicated and rigid culture.

Many occupations are available to a citizen from gathering and processing raw clay to farming a rice like product called 'chorza' to working delicate crafts of stone and ceramics for trade and barter in neighboring settlements. While many of these professions involve hard physical labor, the upper tiers of the social structure spend time organizing expeditions, trade caravans, and even careful raids in an attempt to increase their family holdings. The political scene is dangerous and unforgiving, with each family constantly scrabbling for position and looking to increase their holdings.

Located directly east of the settlement is a dusty expanse of land known as the Mud Flats, upon which many citizens lower social rank spend their days hunting and gathering shul water from the wells that periodically rise to the surface from deep within the earth.

I took your questions and have included the answers below.

1. So really it is a very capitalistic society? Rising above the others with wealth?

To a degree. It's important to understand that the "wealth" referenced in the snippet above is comprised only of Basal currency, called the Basu. The Basu is water backed, only distributed to Basal citizens through trade, and represents the citizen's, or family's, ownership of the settlement's water supply. The more Basu you or your family hold, the more water you own, and the higher status you hold. "Wealthy" men and women are considered those who have enough water to support themselves and others. It is possible for someone born into the very lowest of families to earn or achieve any position in the social tier -- though the upper two tiers will be extremely challenging to reach.

2. What is the main export of the town?

The main exports of Basal is probably worked/raw stone, worked ceramics, chorza wine, raw and worked semi-precious stones, and some smaller amounts of fungus.

3. Any traditions or strange facts that make it appealing that you can tell us?

Bassa culture pays specific attention to height. This can be the height of someone's home, the height of a table at which they sit, or the height at which they stand opposite another. Here are a couple examples of how that cultural trait could play in day-to-day exchanges:

Insults

Bowing is considered a shameful and subservient action. When one bows, they are physically lowering themselves beneath their station. Most Bassa would consider it akin to grovelling. To be asked to bow to someone is extremely offensive, even when the person asking is of higher social rank. All Bassa are proud, and respect one another's place in the social tier. Asking someone to bow to you is the same as making a man fall to his knees and beg in common terms. This has sometimes caused issues with other cultures who exchange bows as a sign of respect, leading to the common phrase, "Bassa do not bow."

Picking items up off the ground. Bassa are acutely aware of any action that lowers their bodies. One of their more common social ploys is to place items, chairs, or objects in places that require their opposite to lower themselves. Throwing an object on the ground for someone to pick up is about as blatent a slap in the face as they can muster without completely offending someone's honor. Many Bassa employ lower tier family members as aides or servants, so that the lower ranking person may pick such an object up in their stead.

Compliments

Bassa culture also allows for compliments to be made to one another through physical actions. Here are a couple examples.

Raising something over your head. Lifting an object over one's head is a significant gesture amongst the Bassa people as a sign of respect and admiration. It could be a particularly well crafted piece of stone, the plans to a well designed home, a newborn, a cup in conjunction with a toast or word of praise.

Speaking to someone of lower social rank at eye level. Most of the time, social rank is accomplished by the tiers upon which individuals live. They are standing physically taller than others. There is very little flat land in Basal, almost all structures located in the common area stand on a graded slope moving high to low, left to right. When a person of higher social rank purposefully speaks to lower ranking Bassa citizen at eye level, it is a compliment. It may signify that they find the person's words insightful, or appreciate their content.

Whomever rises/lowers themselves will also make a statement. In most cases, the person of higher rank would ask the lower to take a step forward and stand equal with them. This is a case of an individual rising above his station and is normally the situation for praise. If a higher ranking member steps down to the lower's level, it usually implies that that they are admitting they were wrong and apologizing -- demonstrating that their action was beneath them.

4. Are the Mud Flats actually muddy ground? Why would mud be present there when water is so scarce around the rest of the world.

The Mud Flats are called such for two reasons. First is that the area is subject to harsh winds out of the east that race across landscape, mostly in the evening. This has eroded much of the eastern section of the area surrounding Basal and produced a somewhat desolate and flat environment. Second is that the mud flats infrequently produce small and shallow puddles of dirty water, called 'shul' water. While the name may indicate the entire expanse is muddy, soggy, or wet -- the truth is that the area is extremely hot and dry with the rare and fleeting puddles creating the mud. Many lower class citizens of Basal hunt the flats on a daily basis in an effort to locate and gather shul water to sell and/or drink.

5. Did you find a way to enforce flowing PC market for clay and ceramics?

The game's economy is still a system undergoing refinement independant of my project. Until that system is completed, we won't know for sure how the PC market will be enforced. However, PC's will be capable of gathering or paying someone to gather their own clay deposits for crafting if that arrangement proves economical. It is planned to have code that will allow players to rent stores/storekeepers for their businesses. And there will be several resources and tools alike that are available only to PC's of a certain social level. Thus, not everyone will be able to make everything regardless of station. This applies to many of the town's resources (e.g. stone, semi precious stones, processed chorza, etc...).

6. Is it going to be another variation for sids_out_of_nowhere_skill that works only through NPC shops again?

This will likely depend upon decisions made regarding the game's economy system, which is still being finalized and isn't something I can answer. However, my intention is to build a living economic system with the addition of scripts and the flow of resources through the settlement. This system should be represented by PC's and NPC's alike, some of which will have scripts to physically demonstrate the flow of supply and demand through the community.

7. Do the "Major Families", the highest, wealthiest ones, form some sort of governing body that determines when a new person/family is allowed access to certain resources(for example: copper or say, rare foods from another settlement/medicines/etc.)? Or is it that, just because of your obscene wealth you can now afford these expensive materials/pleasures, and therefor now be counted as part of the social elite? In short, how is the government of this place set up?

There are five social tiers in Basal. From wealthiest to poorest (and subsequently highest to lowest), they are the Upper Ridge, Lower Ridge, Upper Shelf, Lower Shelf, and the Shallows. The Upper Ridge contains the three wealthiest families. The Lower Ridge contains the next six wealthiest. The government is based upon the rulings of a council, and the council is comprised of one member (normally the patriarch or matriarch of the family) from each of the nine families. These positions, and the number of families that dwell within the Upper and Lower Ridge, are fixed meaning that if a new family rises through the social ranks with their eye on the prize -- one of the existing families must descend or fall.

The council elects and oversees the training of two governmental positions: Watchers and Waterlords. Watchers, or Well Watchers, are the protectors of the settlement and are a fixture upon the mud walls surrounding the community as they pace and watch for any sign of danger, foreign or domestic. Waterlords are the keepers of financial and family records within Basal as well as the social watchdogs that ensure the status quo is maintained between the social ranks. Both of these positions are planned to be comprised almost exclusively of mundane characters.

In conjunction with my first question, "complicated and rigid culture". Could a little bit more be explained?

The social ranks are based upon an individual, or family's, Basu count. Family (and I may change this word) does not represent thet same notion most of us think of when hearing the word. Basal "Families" are generally contractual arrangements between individuals, and not a collection of blood relatives. While some of the wealthier families can afford to include all of their blood relatives under the same family name, it can become expensive and dangerous for mid level citizens to take on anyone that may not be a productive and contributing member. This may lead to planned births, estranged family members, blood relatives separated by levels of wealth and social stature, and many other complicated situations.

8. How do they interact with their neighbors? Are they known as isolationists? Do they greet all newcomers with open arms and dagger-in-fist?

The Bassa people are not isolationists. They trade frequently with Daja and some families even have semi-permanent shops/warehouses there for purposes of sustained trade and political ambition. Basal tolerates almost any traveler or trader, though some people are watched more closely than others and there is even a significant Cendi population working for one of the wealthier families. Magickers of any kind are not well liked and treated with extreme suspicion. It is not impossible for them to exist as a functional member of the settlement as long as they obey and adhere to the community's laws. Of course, one of the laws is that they cannot use their magick within the settlement walls, so that can often become a difficult relationship.

That said, the Bassa people are extremely cutthroat and mercenary about their dealings. It is not uncommon for them to form disguised raiding parties and attack or plunder travelers or remote peoples for goods that will bring them a higher place on the social ladder. This normally happens well away from the settlement itself, as too much of the wealthy family's trade depends on stable and productive trade.

9. How are the different races seen within the city?

Most of the playable races are tolerated within the settlement.

> Humans are the best received because of the obvious physiological similarities, though cultures can sometimes clash.
> Cendi are respected for their size and strength, but viewed more as an asset than an equal.
> Basani are treated with disdain and mockery for choosing to live beneath the earth. Basal will not purchase water sold by Basani merchants.

I will delay comments for the remaining races and peoples until closer to the world release.

10. What is the general atmosphere of the Shallows? Is it a lot like today's Labyrinth? How is it similar or different to the Upper and Lower Shelf?

The general atmosphere of the Shallows is crowded, muddy, poor, and base. The Watchers were long since pulled out of the neighborhoods due to near constant skirmishes with the locals. Instead, the neighborhoods largely govern themselves with families and gangs. My intention is to implement code that will take someone's social station and citizenship into account if attacked in the Shallows. For example, if a Shallows level citizen is attacked by a foreigner or someone from an upper tier, some of the Shallows neighborhood NPC's might come to the defense of their fellow Shallows member. If two Shallows citizens get into a fight between themselves, the Shallows citizens would be likely to let them have at it and sort it out themselves.

Unlike the Labyrinth, which I've always felt is very barren and deserted, the Shallows will feature an intense sense of community. You will hopefully sense the crowded nature of the streets, the stifling heat of too many people in too small a space, the almost constant company of watching eyes and listening ears, and both the good and bad products of living in a community of men, women, and children. And for the folks that really want to play the dirty part, I'm happy to say that beneath the shallows exist a network of disgusting tunnels and sinkholes that should help you discover your inner gutter rat.

Here are a few differences between the Lower Shelf and Shallows:

> Shallows quit safe rooms are predominantly communal living areas due to the extreme overcrowding. Mud Shelters, Ramshackle Tent Camps, etc... The Lower Shelf will introduce the first mud huts that can be rented by a single individual.

> Shallows operates on a self governing system without Watchers while the Lower Shelf will have Watchers patrolling some of the main areas and keeping the peace.

> Shallows has very little in the way of crafting goods or resources to purchase from stores. Storekeepers will only sell certain tools, goods, or raw materials to PC's of a certain social rank. The Lower Shelf will allow players to enter the Chorza Fields and farm, train to fight in a communal facility that features private barracks for rent to accommodate budding mercenary groups, and purchase a wider variety of trade goods and tools.

11. What is the pronunciation of Basal?

I pronounce the words as follows, with the emphasized syllables in bold:

Basal - Bah-sahl (like basalt without the t)
Bassa - Bas-uh.
Basu - Bas-oo

That doesn't mean you have to pronounce it like that, but that's what I say. Wink

12. How is pick-pocketing and assasination seen within Basal?

Both occupations would likely see a fair amount of play within Basal. The community is a bit more tight knit, but because of the almost businesslike attitude toward families, it's not uncommon for people to attempt to sabotage or assassinate rival families. Pick-pockets are common, especially in the central market. However, this brings us to an important point that had not yet been mentioned -- punishments.

When a Bassa citizen or family has reached the necessary Basu count to elevate themselves to the next social rank, they will appear before the Waterlords and make such a request. The Waterlords will check their account and then mark them accordingly. What does this have to do with pick-pockets and assassins? Well, one of the most common punishments a Waterlord will issue for breaking the law is a fine. And while that fine might seem lenient, it can have dramatic and disastrous results when it moves one family from a particular social level to the next.

They must forfeit where they live, any goods or benefits that are deemed above them, and move down to the next social tier. If you've burned some bridges, this could be rather inconvenient, embarrassing, or even dangerous. This is often why families will hire, rather than adopt, lower tier employees, servants, and less public workers in case they are caught. Because of the nature of these fines, it is often important that if a family chooses to move against another -- they must ensure success or be well prepared for failure.

13. I assume they're human?

The Bassa people are human and have no restrictions or limitations regarding their physical appearance. Due to the cultural importance placed upon height, most natural born citizens of Basal are above average in height and weight. Common physical characteristics include earth toned skin and hair (i.e. ebony, hazel, brown), angular features (i.e. narrow brows, high cheekbones, slender nose), and oval shaped eyes. Decorative tattooes and piercings are common throughout the settlement and even some more extreme methods of physical manipulation that affect one's posture or height surface from time to time. Hair styles vary between the social tiers with the poorer citizens tending to wear their hair down, often unkempt and loose about the shoulder, while more prominent citizens wear their hair up, often bound in dyed leather, bone, or stone ornaments/decorations.

14. So it might be common to see items like neck rings?

Yes, though this type of adornment would probably be the province of the wealthier families who are less concerned with moving up (because they are already so high) and more concerned with appearing taller than their peers. Such extreme measures would also only be taken by those who could afford whatever physical challenge may go along with it.

15. Question: What do they do for fun and recreation?

Many citizens gamble and watch scheduled fights or competitions, socialize at the main tavern drinking, play music (mostly percussion) together, story telling, taking up hobbies (i.e. stoneworking, clayworking, jewelry, etc...), engage in friendly competition with their peers; accuracy with the sling is a popular game amongst youngsters and even adults, so is a version of "king of the hill" with bare handed wrestling and an earthen mound.

I also want to leave some aspects up to the players to invent, as undoubtedly they will help breathe life into the settlements and help explore what recreational activities make sense and 'work' within the environment.

16. What is the starting point for Bassa citizen PCs, social-wise?

I haven't made a decision yet on what options will be available, but I am leaning toward PC's being able to choose one of two starting locations in Basal. Picking the first would place them at the lowest social tier, and picking the second would start them at the second social tier. This [em]would[/em] mean that those players choosing the higher social tier would begin with a bit more financial opportunities via their Basu count, but I don't want players to always feel as if they must grind through the first social tier with every new character. However, I want players to have a choice to begin at the very bottom if they are interested in that role and the RP.

17. Also, is there a way for an outlander to become Bassa citizen? How, if there is.

Not at this time, but that doesn't mean that I'm completely against the idea. It would probably be extremely rare as most non-Bassa are considered to be lower in social rank and inferior to the Bassa. Taking one into your family would probably be subject to ridicule, but non-citizens could certainly be employed by the family as servants, guards, workers, scouts, raiders, etc...

18. Is there any other currency in Bassa other then Basu count? Is it currency at all, or just social tokens?

Yes. Basal shops will deal in two forms of currency: the Basu, and the Daja currency which should be used in many of the settlements. This will allow outlanders to conduct trade in Basal and receive a currency useful in other markets. The system will disallow someone from making or stealing a large amount of foreign currency and somehow converting that into Basu. The only way to obtain Basu in this form would be for someone to use the earned or stolen foreign money to purchase actual goods or resources and have the Bassa citizen sell them to interested merchants in Basal.

The Basu is carved from a stone unique to these caverns, mined and obtained by workers guarded by Watchers, and processed by artisans of the top two social tiers within the settlement. The artisans carefully chisel a stone circle, 1/2" in width and 2" in diameter. The stone is then carefully marked, painted, and carved into 16 even pieces (triangular like a pie). Each of these 16 pieces counts as 1 Basu.

19. If counts are currency, does spending Basu counts from one's account lower their rank immediately? I mean, let's imagine that I am a happy guy from the Upper Ridge. So, I am spending a good deal of Basu counts to purchase a wagonload of silver or, even better, a well outside the city lands. Did I just commit a social suicide?

No, spending Basu after you have been elevated to a new social rank will not automatically lower your rank. The primary two methods by which citizens are demoted in social rank are:

> When they are punished and fined by a Waterlord, who will use that opportunity to review their total Basu count.

> When a citizen of equal or greater social standing accuses them of "living a shallow life". This statement means that the citizen in question believes the accused does not have the financial backing required to hold his/her social status. This accusation is made to a Waterlord, who then reviews the accused citizen's Basu count. If the Basu count is found to be lacking, then the accused is moved to the appropriate social tier. If the Basu count is found to be correct, then the accuser faces possible fines and may, in turn, be moved to a lower social tier. This political dance is especially dangerous at higher social levels, where families enter into "trusts" with one another, pooling and combining resources during moments of weakness in return for oaths of political allegience or favors.

20. But what if I am said merchant in Basal, international high-profile trader. Will I have to worry that everytime I go to Daja to sell ceramics, I also need to bring back something from Daja to sell in Basal? Otherwise, if I bring back the large sum of Daja currency, in order to convert it into money that matter I will loose either time or money or both while trying to convert currency through goods on local market.

I expect Bassa merchant characters who have reached the point where they are trading processed goods in a foreign market to have a need for both forms of currency. One aspect of their trade will be to constantly acquire goods and services rare to Basal that will reward them much more than any currency conversion. Much of this is theoretical, so I have no problems considering changes to the system that make sense, but if such a currency exchange was allowed (Daja to Basu), the rate would likely result in a profit loss anyways.

The issue with taking foreign currency is that you run the risk of outside interests affecting the ranking system. The Bassa people cannot precisely control the creation, distribution, and backing of foreign currency like they can with the Basu. Operating under a system where the Bassa merchants are required to trade both ways (distributing Basu only when purchasing tangible goods and resources), Basal is always benefiting in a tangible and material way.

That said, the earned Daja currency can still be used to purchase resources, tools, employees, and crafted goods from Basal markets for personal use or future trade. They will just have to keep their mind open and constantly searching for goods that will reward them with Basu and increase their holdings. Nothing would stop an enterprising merchant from offering their own Basu in exchange for Daja currency if they're willing to assume the risk themselves, using that money to pay independent employees or merchants to cart raw goods from other markets into Basal.

21. And another thing about Watchers and Waterlords. Am I correct in assuming that they are elected from upper class families? What is it, to be a Wacther in comparrison to their peers? Is it privilege and advantage or duty? Do they accept bribes?

Waterlords are chosen with much greater care and foresight than Watchers. Waterlords are often chosen at a young age, voted upon and approved by the council, and trained solely amidst the Waterlords for many years before they begin working in any official capacity. Even then, they are normally paired with elder Waterlords to learn and assist. Waterlords are the only role within Basal that is free of the ranking system. They are "above the law" in the sense that no one is immune to their punishments or fines if they are found guilty of a crime.

Watchers are considered to be Upper Shelf (3rd Tier) citizens with the obvious duty to protect the settlement. They have access to the Watcher's facilities as well as to the many posts and walls moving throughout the settlement. Similar to Armageddon 1 militia, they have the ability to arrest and detain guilty parties -- but they are no more immune to punishments and fines than any other citizen. Gross negligence or abuse of power would not be commonplace, but neither would it be absent. Watchers are not above seeking higher social positions and may offer their "services" to families that tempt them with adoption into the Upper Ridge or Lower Ridge tiers.

22. Given the importance of climbing social ladders, would physical climbing also be popular? For example an annual climbing of the Spire where prisoners compete and fight to be the first to the top to earn a pardon or die trying, while commoners make bets from below and nobles observe from platforms higher up.

Yes, climbing would be popular amidst the Bassa people and climbing the spire is a wonderful idea for an annual event, perhaps related to reaching adulthood or for some kind of social recognition.

Watchers also need to be excellent climbers in order to navigate the sloped mud walls of the settlement when defending or pursuing criminals.

Taken from the Basal documentation on Watchers:

Walking atop the mud-brick walls, patrolling the dense marketplace, or standing watch over upper level entryways, they are the most common form of law amidst the population. Watchers are most commonly identified by their haruu, a long wooden pole fitted with a thick leather noose. These instruments are often used to grapple criminals from atop the mud-brick walls surrounding each of the layered tiers of Basal, looping about the wrist, shoulder, or even neck.

23. Can you explain more about adoption and promotion to higher tiers. Let's say, I am 3rd tier, and I want to adopt Mansa, for example, who is from Shallows, but is exremely gifted. My Basu count is okay for 3rd tier, but what happens with my Basu after I adopt him into my family? Do I need to have enough Basu counts to spare him so we both would have enough for minimum 3rd tier requirements? What happens if later on someone from the Ridges will decide to adop Mansa into his family? Will I get any sort of retribution?

Individual and family accounts will be judged differently. Any player will be able to create a "family" by registering with the Waterlords for a small administrational fee. Players are in fact buying a family of a certain size (3, 5, 10, 20, etc...) with banking and leadership priviledges. As long as they have the Basu count to support the size "family" they are registering, they can "adopt" the appropriate number of people without their account needing to be constantly examined. You can think of the family registration as a charter with a list of names that can be added and removed by the family patriarch/matriarch. The family leader can promote members to positions that allow them to access portions of that family's Basu if desired, recruit if desired, replace them if they die, etc...

Individuals within families still maintain a personal account in case the patriarch or matriarch disowns them. If disowned, that individual is then judged upon their own Basu count rather than the family account to which they previously belonged. Family leaders have no rights of their family member's individual Basu counts.

For example, if Josahn was a member of the Betaal family he would be able to deposit Basu into two accounts; his personal account, and the Betaal family account. If he did not have family permission (in the form of rank), he would not be able to view the balance nor withdraw from the Betaal family account. If he is later disowned by the Betaal family, his personal account now defines his place in society. This encourages some degree of loyalty and accountability for employees because if a family leader is displeased with the actions or performance of a family member, it is entirely possible for them to quickly disown them and report that action to a Waterlord.

To answer your specific question: If your character had a Basu account enough for a small family (3) in the Upper Shelf, you would be able to adopt up to (2) additional family members who would share your family name and station. So, if you adopted Mansa in the Dopple family and someone later recruits him into one of the Ridge families, you would not be out any Basu other than what you might have given him as a family member for his individual account. If you gave him special access to the family account and he deceived you, took the money and disowned the family -- that's part of the game.

It would be my hope to create banking priviledges that allowed access to [em]portions[/em] of the family accounts (e.g. 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%).

24. What's up with the family in the common sense of the word, is there bond between mates other than mutual pleasure? Do marriages exist at all? Who looks after children?

Family and community is very strong amidst the lower tiers, because it is easier for families to stay together. Young adults often watch the children and the entire group is usually supervised by one or two adults while the rest work, hunt, or scavenge in the day. In the evenings, many families spend it together cooking and telling stories. Family remains important to the Bassa, but the stress of financial ruin can sometimes bleed into their personal lives and the Bassa who desires wealth and social recognition more than a family and mate may find themselves estranged.

There are bonds between mates above mutual pleasure. Trusts are formed at every level. The pooling of money and resources are often started by the true family unit. If you trust someone enough to procreate with them (assuming that was your intent), then that lays a foundation for a good working relationship with a mutual concern -- the child. While families may begin to take on members that are not offspring or blood relatives, many of them are started that way. There are no marriages as we view them: lush ceremonies, exchanged vows, etc... Bassa are more interested in forming lasting 'trusts' - a financial contract that combines multiple assets into a shared account. In this way, Bassa couples often ask each other to literally "put their money where their mouth is" when it comes to love.

25. Does not look like these roles are going to be available to regular PCs through development. Does it mean special apps or PCs will continue to work under gentle and caring whip of NPC superiors?

There are two things to address here. First, I’d like players to have an opportunity to experience the culture, learn the surroundings, and move through the space awhile before attempting to play a character that can so easily and quickly affect the other players. Second, the Waterlords are not charged with protecting the settlement or policing the streets, they are mediators. They have the authority to levy fines and, in extreme cases, order the Watchers to make arrests, but they do not hold the power of life and death over the citizens, only social life and death. (I say this not because I think you are misinterpreting anything, but to highlight the differences as people may be making mental links between them and templars.)

It is not my intention to create a layer of NPC authority that cannot be changed or accessed. If there are players who have come to understand the nature of Basal well enough and want to special app for a Waterlord, I have no qualms with that. There are actually some rather fun and interesting quirks about the Waterlords that players will discover as they explore the settlement – and it was my intention from the beginning for them to be a viable PC role. Just not at the beginning.

26. Distant subdue? Is it going to be coded for real use?

If I have my way, yes. I honestly have no idea what is possible at this point, however, and while the concept will remain, the practice may shift to something a bit different.

27. The Waterlords sound mostly NPC but will the Watchers have a PC population in them? If so does one need to first become a upper shelf citizen or does being selected as a watcher raise one's status?

The Waterlords will be mostly NPC in the way templars were mostly NPC – one or two of them is generally quite enough to adequately represent the role in the space. The Watcher role will be a much more accessible and frequent PC role. Being selected or recruited to be a Watcher increases one’s status to the 3rd Tier as a part of the organization. The position can just as quickly be removed by one’s superiors, so if the individual (or his family) does not meet the Basu count to remain a citizen at that level, he/she can find their position much changed. This makes Watchers fairly good workers and obedient, but it doesn’t mean their superiors are straight arrow boy scouts that require them to be the pinnacle of righteous justice.

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