At the moment, this is true. however, the whole point of the currently
available skills system is that this status will change in the future.
Build road, Build house, Build temple, Build mine, Build Tower, Build Castle,
Build Citadel.
All of these allow new structures to be built and to proliferate. What
happens to that mine after all the ore is played out ? (I assume they do
run out of ore eventually). Sounds like a great place for something to take
up residence !
At the moment, few people have done much building, but I believe that this
will increase in the future as more people have access to the skills, the
money and the materials. And as characters die across the world, some of
them will become untenanted. Imagine what the Southern lands would have
been like after Dr Pain had passed through if people had done any building.
Deserted and abandoned buildings everywhere !
Monsters could even be dependant on the type on building they are found in.
An abandoned Temple should be a fearsome place to explore, strange
guardians would appear to hold the building until worshippers re-appeared
to rebuild it.
Also, if a large(ish) number of ruins are randomly scattered across the
landscape in an initial seeding, these will then immediately become homes
for wandering monsters/adventurers. As they will need to be found before
they can be fully explored, who knows if they aren't already there ?
Surely a random number generator can generate hidden buildings/mines etc
in different areas with a damage factor between 0%-100%. All that should be
required is a table of monsters and a list of names for the ruins. Even
names are unnecessary as the first people to find them can also name them
if they are currently unoccupied. All the rest can be generated randomly
and scattered liberally. Instant ruins, instant quests !
These should be in all regions, towns/plains/forest/desert etc. After the
initial creation and spread, they should become self supporting, some being
built up, some breaking down etc. However, for this to work, there would
need to be quite a few of them and they would only be found after a
suitable exploration. Hence having a decent hide-away would become much
more possible and many PCs and their employees could start vanishing into
hiding.
People in buildings, ruins and hide-aways should not be visible to anyone
else unless they know of the existance of the building. This also means
that people hiding in such places are less likely to catch things like the
current plague that Merlinium just spread to Drassa. And any warlords who
rampage through the countryside is less likely to massacre everyone if half
of them have secret hide-outs.
Kaspar [581]
Aka Rob McNeur
rob@ccc.govt.nz