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I am not sure how many people around here are familiar with the concept of "builders" in MUDs. The general idea is that, after some players have been playing a MUD for a while, they have won the trust and respect of the MUD admin, and the admin gives them "builder rights". Once the player becomes a builder, they can use built-in commands to create new areas, new monsters, write quests (oftentimes within pre-set limits to avoid abuse), etc. They will often keep playing the game, but can work on expanding the game when the inspiration hits them. In this way, many MUDs grew to absolutely massive sizes, since some of the more popular MUDs had dozens of limited builders running around, and there was almost always someone creating something new. It also helped in establishing peer-leaders of a community, as being a builder is often seen as a badge of honor only worn by dedicated, respectable members of the game.

What does everyone think about something like this for PBBGs? This is fairly different in practice and theory from the kind of building done in games such as Halls' and others. In those games, the building is a mechanic of the game and part of it. A builder adds to the game outside of the scope of gameplay and effectively becomes a B-list member of the dev staff. If a specific PBBG got popular and had a large playerbase, recruiting several builders could quickly increase the size of the world quickly without unneeded stress and strain on the main dev team, who can then stay focused on core programming and mechanic design tasks. There are down sides, of course. If you want to allow people to create quests (which includes setting rewards), create items, classes, spells and other items of importance, you will need to have set limits, perhaps in the form of a budget only allowing so many rare or player-sought aspects to each creation. You would also have to enforce the game's theme and tone, or some builders could start making things that are jokes or adding things outside of your universe (like a cell phone in a fantasy game).

So what do you think?

It's a good idea but it wouldn't work with all genres. And to be fair it isn't really my cup of tea. This would probably work best in a game that was set in outer space. Make people work up to ruling a planet. Then allow them to altar the conditions, quests and whatever else your imagination could think of.

I think it's best for when the main dev team has pretty much finished coding the game. Hearding these B teamers, while enjoyable when you've got not much else to do, would probably drive you nuts while your trying to get your head around some code some B team guy is trying to get you to sign off on some huge and weird module he's made.

That said, if you intend to actually by and large finish your PBBG at some point (programming wise, not content wise), then at that point it seems a really good idea.

This is how the entire NWN persistent world scene functioned/functions. Builders - who work in an offline toolset - and GMs are usually recruited from the playerbase. This can work well. Amia and Aerlith have both run for years and years this way. Some worlds are being maintained by a completely different community generation than the ones who built it in the first place. Outside the NWN scene, this is also how Planeshift operates. When it works, it can make the world self perpetuating.

Naturally, having a live team that also wears the player hat can be dangerous to the health of the world. A player/live-team member can build in his own exploits and engage in general nepotism in a world damaging way that you'd never see with a firewalled team.

I love the idea but it has to be closely guarded. We did this in the first Forsaken Sanctum web game and it went really well. Everyone had a blast running their own shops as there were no NPCs whatsoever. So the players set the prices and crafted all the items in the game. I set limits on what they could do but not what they would charge. Supply and demand kept everything fair. They even went as far as creating guilds and the shops quickly became part of the guilds and factions. Each guild had their own shop.

I am looking into blending the standard PBBG and MUD and wanting to do this exact thing.