> Now, the real "joy" of this is should cities become something which
> can be created or destroyed, these values could be randomly set up at
> formation and each time the status of the city changes (a village
> become a town, a town becomes a city, a city degenerates into a ruin
> (only cities or towns should become ruins), etc.). Each location
> would wind up with a "flavor" with the overall chance of finding
> something with an EXPLORE dependant on what type of place you are
> looking in (swamps might have a 20% find chance, ruins 25%, cities 5%,
> plains 10%, etc.).
The one potential problem here is that once a ruin or swamp is discovered
with a high chance of EXPLORE encounters, everyone inclined towards the
adventuring lifestyle will run over and park on the ruin/swamp and explore
for the rest of their natural lives. I'd like to suggest that EXPLORE
encounters become Yet Another of those depletable resources, so that
every time someone has an EXPLORE encounter and "defeats" the encounter,
the chance of the next person encountering something goes down.
On the other hand if someone has an EXPLORE encounter and "loses" to
the encounter, the chance for the next person should go up. The EXPLORE
encounter chance would go up as time passes by; if EXPLORE maxes out in
some sense, then probably no one is exploring at all so the game perhaps
could generate a few NPC monsters to harrass the countryside (like the
Orc infestation way up yonder). This way if a place is heavily explored,
then it eventually becomes peaceful and nothing is left to find (so the
adventurers move on), but if a place is totally ignored, it eventually
becomes a breeding ground for evil nasties. (This gives local warlords
or do-gooding adventurers a reason to run regular patrols.)
Also, I don't think it should necessarily be the case that the exploration
rate in cities should be lower than that for wilderness. Cities and towns
should just have different types of encounters. (Bar brawls, dens of
thieves, press gangs, muggers, etc.) In a reasonably lawful city, there
will be town guards and such EXPLOREing (i.e., patrolling the city) and
keeping the place safe, but in a lawless city with no town guard,
it could be just as dangerous as exploring the wilderness.