Here's a case where world fiction clashes with gameplay expectations... A common complaint players have about NPCs is that, in certain situations, they act like some vast groupmind. If, for instance, you wack the barkeep in one room, the patrons automatically know about it in the next. But what if the NPCs are hooked up to a cybernetic network which WOULD report murders and misdeeds to others? Having everyone know about a crime would be expected. Just as there are most wanted alerts now that travel TV and cell phones, a society whose citizens have implants should also be able to get updated messages instantly. The problem is that this isn't too original in gameplay terms. For an RPG, which would you err in favor of: The story expectation that drives suspension of disbelief, or the gameplay expectation for a more complex crime/justice/communication system?

The danger of such a system lies when you do not need it. What when this vast overmind hinders the plot. You can use a crime-reporting system as long as you don't send the player on a murder investigation three minutes later.

The canonical example of this in "OH SHIT, I beat up twenty-five dragons just to find that goddamn boulder blocking my path". Here, the hero has the extraordinary power to kill dragons with the hit of a sword, but can't move a rock. (Bonus points if the character can fly).

Frankly, I don't particular care that much if there's a level of unrealistic behaviour, such as every NPC being informed of world events instantaneously. I certainly can understand it from an algorithmic design consideration point of view, as implementing a full information flow system would be overly complex.

What I do mind if is this system makes the game world unrealistic. Common problems in RPGs include NPCs who will attack you on sight if you pick up one of their items (never mind that the NPC is an unarmed peasant and you are a walking tank), or where the game hard codes an instant death penalty to someone who steals a slice of bread (Ultima 8 is the example that springs to mind for me). Or if whatever penalty applies to the PC doesn't seem to apply to the thieves, muggers and murderes NPCs in your game world (worst example I can think of is in Arcanum, where if an assassin attacks you in a bar the town guards inexplicably come after you).

So Wavinator, if you include a reason for why all your NPCs know things instantaneously, then I'll be happy. If your game was less high-tech then having wanted posters plastered over the town would also have the same effect. I'm happy to believe that every NPC is an insatiable gossip and that information of the players misdeeds spreads very quickly. Just make sure that you integrate your system into the rest of the game world so that all information flows as quickly, and it will be good.

The notion of direct mind-to-mind communication on any scale brings with it a lot of baggage, and if you're going to hive up a whole community or civilization, you need to be concerned about far more than just their investigative techniques. In fact, I doubt such a society would have criminal laws, or any distinct governmental body. Since the tech/superpower/whatever allows their minds to be in rapport, there would be no real need for any other communication, and every individual in the network would effectively serve as little more than an appendage of the communal being.

Heinlein's short story Lost Legacy has an instance in which three people have telepathically joined and are performing some task with only one of their bodies. The other two sit in chairs across the room. That's the sort of thing you might see in such a society.

What's more, it might reduce individuality, so that the population is little more than a pack of drones, controlled by the mental sum of their minds. I can only imagine how efficient such a group could be in terms of military tactics, directed research and technical operations.

On the other hand, if it's just a brain-phone that you have to consciously use, the effects would be more slight. If that's the case, just tell the player about it, and make an NPC stop and close his eyes for a moment, or have his pupils emit blue light or something when he "jacks in" to report you. It would be the functional equivalent of a guard reaching for his radio, and you'd have the same opportunity to interrupt the operation.

Okay, reading over this post, I got some very distinct mental impressions.

First and foremost, the Borg of course. We all know and love the Borg! "Resistance is futile!"

Secondly, agents in "The Matrix". Regular "people" being turned into agents for no better reason than their close proximity to the perputrator(sp?).

Finally, what about... "Minority Report" game? While we're creating hive minds that allow NPC's to instantaneously know that you've killed another NPC, why not just arrest you (or attempt to) before you even commit the crime based upon the fac that the "pre-cogs" have seen it.

Anyway, I didn't really have anything beneficial outside of that scope to offer, so I'll shut up now.

Vopisk

I'd be in favor of the game play expectation for a more complex crime/justice/communication system. I generally expect things to be explained, but I do believe that the spread of gossip could be factored into game play very well.

For example, a witness is tagged, if that witness escapes the player for more than a certain amount of time, then the gossip begins to randomly spread through the populous, increasing in occurrence over a certain amount of time. At first, only one in a hundred might know about it, but after a while, depending on the severity of the crime and the size of the total population, one in ten might know about it, and scream for guards when they see you- at the far end of the spectrum, wanted posters could begin to be put up, and expand the knowledge even more.

I don't think it'd work. Just how many criminals do you expect them to be able to recognize just like that? It's one thing to be told (whether on TV or through cybernetic implant) that a guy looking like this is a criminal. But actually *remembering* the face at the point (much later), when the player actually drops in, is tricky.

I'd still have the same problem. Only instead of it being "How does he know I killed that barkeep", it becomes "Ok, so how come everyone can recognize *me* in particular? Am I the only damn criminal they've been warned about?"

I'd have thought that if the system warns everyone of everything, then they'd have to remember hundreds, thousands of faces of criminals. And then it'd really surprise me if they can pick out the player in particular.

And as others said, it might just hinder the plot too.

Couldn't the brain-beam send images? Heck, cellphones can do that now. So you get the America's Most Wanted up-to-the-minute update, and if you see someone that kinda maybe might be that guy, you bring up the transmission from memory and compare it. If it looks close, you send a snapshot of this dude to the victim (if he's alive) and any witnesses that might be around, and they compare that image to the hi-res memory they retained of the incident. If it's a match, you're given all the relevant data and some kung-fu, and go apprehend the perp while other citizens respond from nearby. The investigation takes about three seconds, and ends in a conviction rather than a suspect. THe arrest and the news coverage happen simultaneously via real-time broadcast from every individual involved.

I bet it would suck to have an orphanage burn down in that society. All those little trasmissions coming out of that building would drive everybody totally insane. Of course, it might not even happen, since the firemen would respond as soon as someone smelled smoke, and they'd know where every victim was, and the victims themselves would have McGruff and Smokey the Bear giving them advice on how to get out, with the benefit of every other person's information about where the dangerous and safe parts of the building were.

The more I think about this, the harder it is to implement without glaring inconsistencies. Go with brainphones. They can get jammed, or have poor signal, or otherwise screw up, and you have to wait a little while to use them, and they only transmit to one recipient at a time. That's the best way to make the system functional.

Okay, so after much thought about this, I've come up with a sorta-logical, theoretical function for moving away from the hive-mind. (Yes, something useful to offer...)

Let's say, for the sake of argument, we have Player X, Witness Y and Civilian Z.

X commits a "crime event" (theft, murder, you name it) and this is recorded by the server and remembered for later.

Usually, criminals don't stick around for too long, so X dashes out of the building of generic-ness at break-neck speed, measured by the amount of time he spends in each "room" object if we're talking MUD-based or over aX amount of distance for a visual game. This measurement could be activated by a flag on the player that is raised once he commits the "crime event".

Now, while X is within (i) feet of the "crime event" location, we measure his average speed (v). Now, any NPC's that "witness" the player-character while he is within the radius(i) record a "mental image" of the character. The amount of detail that each NPC notices is generated randomly based upon the character's speed (i), the faster they move, obviously, the less detail the mob can remember.

Now, we're getting kinda complex here, but I have to make a caveat for dynamic character descriptions here not intending to change the course of the topic, but use them as an enhancement to my opinion. My experience is within the realm of MUD design primarily, so this is often a sticking point with the writing types that adore their eloquently beautiful "works of art" for bodily descriptions. In graphical games, obviously character choice is limited by the hard-coded things, so this is less of an issue. However, there must be some method of tracking certain "identifiable" features of a character, such as height, eye color, hair color, hair "style", scars/tattoos and of course clothing (cause you know, it can't be a "criminal description" without a white t-shirt and pair of blue jeans). Whether these are server-side or used in the generation of the character themselves. Anyway enough about that...

So, we harvest these "eye-witness" accounts as time passes and the player stays within our given radius. Each witness will have a slightly different description of the player to report (which can also be influenced by such things as whether it is day or night, or the NPC's perception stat, etc...). Now, once an NPC finds the body, or finds his favorite ring missing or whatever, perhaps a random amount of time after the "crime event" granted there were no eye witnesses in the room, in which case we merely accelerate the process of events. However, once our "crime report" is filed, we take a random sampling from our "area witnesses" and compile a "suspect profile" which can be passed around in the form of gossip, news releases, wanted posters and the like.

So player X ends up being "A male elf, around 6' tall with long, brown hair". So now, whichever NPC's have heard of this suspect, which can be another random thing, having to come into the same 'area" as a wanted poster, or come in contact with an NPC that has "heard the rumor" after we randomly seed it.

Anyway, since this is turning into a very long-winded post. Now, whenever an NPC sees a character matching the "description" they have been seeded, based upon a "degradation" factor given X amount of time it has been since they heard the report or saw a wanted ad for that particular player. The NPC's wisdom/memory could play a part in how fast their "memory" degrades. Then, on the off-chance that they DO see a character that matches the description of who the "police" are looking for, based once again on another factor of the NPC, their "morality" rating, afterall, if the player is a no-good sneak thief, they are not likely to turn in anyone, on the off-chance that their description is being passed around as well.

For this reason, perhaps, if the crime happens in the right part of town, or the wrong if you will, the crime is never reported at all. And of course we can always raise or lower the amount of time before a crime is reported at all, therefore, giving the mobiles who saw the criminal more of a chance of forgetting him all together, let alone, ever tying him back to the original crime.

This makes for a criminal system with all the implications of the real-world. Innocent people can and probably will be found guilty and convicted of crimes, criminals can get away with murder, and every once in a great while, the police might actually get the right man.

Anyway, I'm running out of steam and I think I've achieved my original goal, so that's my two cents. Something to chew on.

Vopisk

Okay, I'd originally thought of this strictly in terms of "brain phone" as ICC says, but just for the sake of argument, what if you had two societies, one more the hive mind, the other more the brainphone type?

Should the expectation be that you can't commit crimes among the hive? Is this a legitimate way of diversifying societies, by changing the underlying rules?

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No matter what, I think there are enough variables here that you can tweak things without running afould of plausibility.

Factoring in the responses so far, here are some of the variables:

• How many criminals are there? If crime is rare, antisocial types will stand out more.
  
• How bad is the crime? Imagine a future society where only 2 - 3 people a year are murdered. Murderers would stand out big time.
  
• How good is cybernetic multitasking? Is there a passive processor hooked up to the visual cortex which is doing image parsing and throws some alert based on what you see?
  
• What's the capacity and bandwith of whatever the network is that is carrying this stuff?
  
• Disguise/misdirection: What if nanotech can rearrange your face, or you can hack into people and puppeteer them?
  

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So again, what if the game tweaked these factors for different environments / cities, and then added missions/items/situations that made you have to strategize around them? You could have something like this:

In the former American province of Jubilee, the motto is "only criminals need privacy because they have something to hide." So the level is said to be wired with smartdust cameras, oppressive AI, and legions of devout folk ready to rat on you. Committing any kind of crime is near impossible-- unless you worm your way into the Annointed Bureaucracy, which can buy reprieve from monitoring.

OTOH, in Chung Kuo, a part of former China, privacy is highly prized, smartdust is illegal, AI are citizens, and as a result of the extra freedom there is increased opportunities for crime in the less well-patrolled areas.