in the original city RPG crime was supposed to form a sort of feedback loop with the police force, causing the economy to rotate around a specific pattern of events
1: criminals forget up some guy and steal his money (but produce no real money in return)
2: cops capture them, producing money (from nowhere) while the criminal gets to keep their cash
3: the cops spend their money on guns to better capture criminals
4: the guy who sells guns gets money stolen from them from criminals
(i was completely unaware of this when i worked with iban because i was a 13-year-old dunce and didn't know what the forget i was doin)
when people make cityRPGs people don't seem to catch the idea that if you remove crime, you have to add something else
what you should do is make business have a much bigger sphere of influence, and have people be able to generate income RoB-style by owning lots and selling goods to people who need it (food, material, NOT GUNS) and have guns maybe be some form of cottage industry that can only come around when sufficient materials are present, and the person who wants to make the gun has sufficient money for tools and construction
actually what would be really cool was if the building system was constrained to the point that you could only place _entire groups_ of prefabricated items (like duplications) so in order to create a house you'd need to buy- and thus find someone who sells- the specific kinds of blocks you want so you can build the thing you're trying to build, and those different prefabs have to be made of specific kinds of material
thus allowing for the economy to be a bit more robust and also giving players things to do with material besides make guns
the issue (with these elements all in play) becomes making crime interesting enough to keep people doing crimes
Poll