The Cats Of Marrach

A comment on Psychochild's cat game challenge resulted in this info from Chris Allen:

When we were building Castle Marrach at Skotos, we wanted to have some way for staffers to be able to wander around the castle when players were playing, without being required to interact. We've long had the ability to +possess (a staff command) items, but we also have rules against staff "snooping".

So what we did was put a random rumor into the start story (about one in 50 new players would get it) that the cats were the eyes of the Queen. We then filled the castle with a bunch of wandering cats of various types. At any point a staff could +possess one and while in the body the NPC brain would still function. This allowed a staffer to have a cat in a room with players and the cat would react normally -- most of the time, until a staffer did something that NPC cats can't do.

This resulted in a culture in Marrach were you just don't discuss private things when cats are around, NPC or not, thus staffers can't accidently "snoop" on people (plus we don't allow staffers to +possess in private rooms).

-- Psychochild’s Blog

That's just awesome. When I was an admin on a Counter-Strike server, I would often go in under an alias so that people weren't aware that an admin was logged into the game. I had hotkeys would permit my admin abilities. So if I just pressed my mouse button, I shot at you. If I CTRL-mouse button'd ... you died, end of story. And I think CTRL-X autobanned whoever I was pointing at, although I didn't use that for fear of missing...




tagged: game, gaming