I agree with this, in principle. But:
1) Short of making Olympia into PBM-MUD, it can't be achieved 100%.
2) Players actually can manage to eek fun out of GM designed systems.
3) Insofar as players compete with each other, the GM supplied
backdrop can be quite entertaining. I supply the silly monster
lairs, artifacts, spells, etc. The players fight over them.
> [Pesbrand combat] vs. "Dr. Pain arrives in Pesbrand with 500 peasants."
Enormous stack listings actually bug me. The idea here is to try to
get by with fewer units that are more interesting. Right now there are
just too many units. Often factions have too many for their owners to
effectively keep track of.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com> N2QAV