Magic Systems of Xartum
camgusmis had some great thoughts on the xartum development messageboard.
It looks like spell casting would almost always involve the Perl programming language, whereas altering the world with Lojban is then the equivalent of prayer because it requires somebody to implement it in Perl ... or it's the equivalent of incanting familiars to do one's bidding, depending on how one feels about transcendent artificial intelligences who have breached a toposophic boundary.
It also makes me chuckle to imagine characters in the game entreating specific real-world Perl programmers by name in their prayers (or grimoires, if the Perl programmer is a BOFH). We can pretend that one of the transcended beings used to be Nat Torkington or somebody. But he is certainly no demonic familiar. He's more like a trickster god, I think.
One of the neatest things about xartum is that I might actually have a purpose toward which to put programming skills. We have the idea of creating a School For Magic located in xartum, in which those players who know Perl will teach rudimentary ways to interact with the game database to those of us who don't. Classes will be held in character, and almost entirely in Lojban.
I like the idea of game rules that are code. If someone finds a loophole, we should take a page from the story of "cheating Death" in "Lessons from Lucasfilm's Habitat" and not violate the world model. The gods should allow the mortal to keep whatever result he/she get from it, and then patch the code to prevent further exploit.
The niftiness of xartum is increasing by mathematical factors.
It looks like spell casting would almost always involve the Perl programming language, whereas altering the world with Lojban is then the equivalent of prayer because it requires somebody to implement it in Perl ... or it's the equivalent of incanting familiars to do one's bidding, depending on how one feels about transcendent artificial intelligences who have breached a toposophic boundary.
It also makes me chuckle to imagine characters in the game entreating specific real-world Perl programmers by name in their prayers (or grimoires, if the Perl programmer is a BOFH). We can pretend that one of the transcended beings used to be Nat Torkington or somebody. But he is certainly no demonic familiar. He's more like a trickster god, I think.
One of the neatest things about xartum is that I might actually have a purpose toward which to put programming skills. We have the idea of creating a School For Magic located in xartum, in which those players who know Perl will teach rudimentary ways to interact with the game database to those of us who don't. Classes will be held in character, and almost entirely in Lojban.
I like the idea of game rules that are code. If someone finds a loophole, we should take a page from the story of "cheating Death" in "Lessons from Lucasfilm's Habitat" and not violate the world model. The gods should allow the mortal to keep whatever result he/she get from it, and then patch the code to prevent further exploit.
The niftiness of xartum is increasing by mathematical factors.