[MUD-Dev] Player control of NPCs

[Travis Casey]

Mordengaard wrote:
 
> I'm considering implementing a system whereby players with
> sufficient rank/position can be put in charge of NPCs or groups of
> NPCs, giving them orders either via direct commands (says, tells,
> that kind of thing) or through other NPCs (runners, buglers etc).
> This would allow me to have sheriffs who can set up the patrols of
> his deputies and watchmen, generals with control over whole armies
> of men, necromancers with hordes of undead, etc.  Does anyone,
> either through experience or imagination, have any advice for me,
> or know of any pitfalls that I should avoid?

On SWmud, players could buy and control droids.  The biggest problem
we ran into there was that our naughtier players quickly realized
that they could use the droids as proxies to insult, attack, and
harrass other players.

To combat this, we logged certain commands given to droids, and made
it clear to players that our policy was that "whatever your droid
does, you did".

One thing we explicitly didn't want was for player characters to be
able to sit in some safe place and have their droids do everything.
To prevent that, we took some pretty harsh measures:

  - Players didn't get XP for anything their droids did.

  - Players could not see through their droids.  Thus, trying to run
  a droid from a remote location was an exercise in memorization.

  - Droids had no real AI of any sort.  Thus, you couldn't tell a
  droid to "find X and kill it" -- you'd have to give it a specific
  series of commands.

So, what were droids good for?  A few things:

  - Carrying stuff.  Encumbrance made a character less able to fight
  well; having a droid bearer prevented that, and droids designed
  for carrying could carry a lot more than anyone but the strongest
  characters.

  - Repair skills.  Following the example of R2-D2, we had R2 droids
  that could do ship repairs and various other technical skills.

  - Guard duty.  There were droids who could be set in a room and
  told to block a particular exit against anyone but the droid's
  owner.

More things that droids can do have been added since, I'm sure, but
that's what they were good for originally.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
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