Everyone,

Courtesy note: Is it rude to post after your own post? I feel a little uncomfortable doing it, but I had more to say on this subject and this seemed like the place...

If the emphasis of a game is not to be on combat, then of course there must be other things to do. For me, this means a well-developed craft system, including rare and difficult to obtain materials. Thus even non-fighters will have a reason to do some exploring and legwork, to gather the ingredients they need - or they might hire others to do the legwork for them. In fact, material wholesalers could set up a tidy business paying bounties on various materials and then selling large quantities of those materials to crafters.

Another thing to do would be politics: attempt to gain power through wealth and influence, or through popularity among the have-nots. Political office should bring actual power over government: the ability to recruit officials, start public works, and possibly corrupt law enforcement: setting bounties on the heads of your enemies!

You could also attend or set up entertainments: concerts, clubs, taverns, bowling alleys... Of course these things would be tricky to implement. Either they would have to be preprogrammed, or the game engine could be flexible enough that it could be twisted to simulate sports and the like... or the client could have an open-source interface, and users could program and distribute their own mini-game plugins. At any rate, I see great potential in an online world where you can go to the arcade with your friends from across the continent.

If magic or supernatural powers are to be included, then perhaps the ability to research the nature of magic would be nice... there''s another thread going on now about how to implement customizable magic. I seem to recall an anecdote about Ultima Online and a group of wizards who dedicated their time to finding every spell in the game - and they did it, so the designers had to come up with more spells for them to research!

Just tossing out some more ideas...

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".