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ATITD creator Andrew Tepperson notes that many events and Tests take on a life of their own: “I’m always surprised at how politics plays off content that was never intended to be political. For instance, a fairly recent development has been ‘Obelisk Queues.’ The Test of the Obelisk has been around in various forms since Tale 1 — it’s one of the original Tests. And while it’s gotten more sophisticated over the years, it still amounts to ‘Build a bigger Obelisk than anyone else, and have it remain the biggest for a certain amount of time.’
“Now suppose it’s near the start of the Tale, and competition is brisk. You might expect a frantic race to build a really big obelisk — one that could not be topped for the requisite amount of time. But that’s not always what we see: players put social pressure on each other not to build such a big obelisk — they negotiate to be the one ‘allowed’ to build one foot higher than the last, and then everyone else waits.
“Of course, the strategy isn’t foolproof: sometimes a player will ignore the ‘rules’ and build one much bigger anyway, so there’s always a tension to the politics, but when I first designed the Test, I never imagined a political component at all.” The Test of the Obelisk remains in the fifth Telling, as part of the Architecture discipline.
Read the full article at the link below.“Now suppose it’s near the start of the Tale, and competition is brisk. You might expect a frantic race to build a really big obelisk — one that could not be topped for the requisite amount of time. But that’s not always what we see: players put social pressure on each other not to build such a big obelisk — they negotiate to be the one ‘allowed’ to build one foot higher than the last, and then everyone else waits.
“Of course, the strategy isn’t foolproof: sometimes a player will ignore the ‘rules’ and build one much bigger anyway, so there’s always a tension to the politics, but when I first designed the Test, I never imagined a political component at all.” The Test of the Obelisk remains in the fifth Telling, as part of the Architecture discipline.
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