From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!unc!bch
Newsgroups: net.games.emp
Title: Re: hullo...
Article-I.D.: unc.3711
Posted: Mon Jul 19 10:22:57 1982
Received: Sat Jul 24 01:43:28 1982


At unc we have agreed that The Deity should not be a player.  No matter
how scrupulous or careful a player may be, there is always knowledge
in being a Deity that gives you a distinct advantage over the other
players even if you don't want that advantage (i.e you are informed
of plague contraction before anyone else, you are informed of ship
sinkings and, of course, must answer prayers.)  Solutions to the
problem of having essentially no Deity except for the creation are
systemic:
	(1) Run empire in its own group, with an id which is the
	    only id in that group.  Have someone set up all the
	    empire distribution files under that id and prepare them
	    for execution with that id as the privileged user.
	    (This should be done for security reasons anyway.)

	(2) run empcre and some form of randomized nation assignment
	    program such as mkemp (distributed earlier on this list.)

	(3) Turn the id over to someone uninvolved and have them
	    change the password!

	(4) While there are still ways to breach security and gain
	    access to other countries data, at least now everyone
	    has the same chance to do so.

If your local Deity refuses to do this, well....

				Byron Howes