The bad news is obvious, right? It’s everywhere. Plague! House arrest
for everybody! Great Depression or Greatest Depression Ever?! Riots! A
president who once savagely beat a puppy to death with a golf club.
(Actually, I just made that last one up — but what is worse, that
false "fact" or a president who doesn’t mind citing such flagrantly
false facts? Feel free to make up your own "facts" about the president — he doesn’t care!)
Enough has been said about the bad news. I want to focus on the good
news. Before that can make sense, however, we need to consider the
ugly news — the news that makes no sense and is a muddled mess.
Unfortunately, that has been literally all news about the details of
this pandemic.
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a
once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century
evidence fiasco.
At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease
modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social
distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been
infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better
information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental
significance and to monitor their impact.
That was back in March. Plenty of time for everybody to start to
figure out what sensible data looks like. And yet, it never came!
Every day there would be some fatuous headlines like these:
Another grand example of terrible data is the CDC. Check out their
CDC COVID Data Tracker.
The default that comes up is "Total Cases". What is so stupid about
this? Imagine a prolific creator of false facts using this "data" to
"manage" the pandemic. First of all one can have fewer "total cases"
by
simply
nerfing testing. But a really accomplished false fact artiste would
say something like, "COVID-19 cures most natural causes of death! Just
look at how the population is thriving under the therapeutic influence
of this wonderful virus. Which was my idea by the way." Go on, look at
that "data" in the CDC chart and tell me how that claim can be
refuted. It can’t.
That’s the ugly news. I feel like I have been watching an endless game
of Numberwang.
But I have seen a glimmer of hope! Let’s turn now to the good news.
Back in March, some rando on the internet — who also happens to be a
faculty member of the University of Cambridge’s Risk and Evidence
Communications unit — wrote a sensible article about
How
much normal risk does Covid represent?
The answer, summarized, was that your risk of dying pretty much
doubled.
The way I would explain that is to imagine playing Russian roulette
with a six-shooter that had two bullets instead of one. If your gun
had 800 chambers (equivalent odds for a normal person in their 30s),
going from 1 bullet to 2 wouldn’t be quite so problematic. Note that
everybody’s gun gets smaller as they age.
My real point there was that article way back in March was the last
example of good data considered sensibly that I have seen during this
entire mess — until today.
I feel too financially insecure to afford The Economist, but I do get
their email newsletter and sometimes their content is not paywalled.
Today they tipped me off to this unusually clear and cogent resource.
Stare at this and soak it in and you’ll understand what is wrong with
all other sources.
The first thing to notice is they’ve cut through the bullshit of
bullshit testing. The last time I saw such a muddled testing situation
was either standardized academic testing or maybe even IQ. Testing
sensibly for Covid pathologies and dangers is even worse than normal
CYA medical diagnostics. This data from The Economist understands that
and moves on to what can be sensibly inferred about the situation.
If we stop and ask ourselves what we care about, number one on the
list is not getting killed. So The Economist asks the simple question,
are we getting killed more than normal? Don’t worry about why. It
could be people dying of asbestosis because masks are hard to acquire
for construction work. Doesn’t matter. Step one is to answer the
question - is there a problem? And The Economist’s methodology is so
simple that it’s actually plausible. They simply look at how many
people used to die and how many people are dying now and see how/if
that has changed.
That’s so simple, but really it is a relief to me that someone is
looking at this in a way that is not deeply flawed to the point of
being meaningless. They even have a
nice
Github repo with all their data and scripts if you’d like to quibble
with their methodological details. (For example, I would make minor
adjustments based on
natural
changes of population, but really, not strictly necessary to
appreciate these numbers as better than anything we’ve seen thus far.)
It is "good" news in the sense that it is of good quality. It is also
good in the sense that it looks pretty good. I am not terrified by
this data.
At first I misunderstood the "Absolute" setting on the graphs to mean
they were like the fatuous CDC data. But really this data is much
more useful. It is not showing absolute deaths - which no one really
cares about. It is highlighting the validity of testing statistics.
The difference in Covid-19 attributed deaths and real deaths is
directly measuring the effectiveness of the testing programs. They are
frankly not as abysmal as I thought — though I live in NY where, like
NJ, Spain, Holland, Italy, and non-WEIRD nations, it is pretty
abysmal.
It’s interesting to note the negative rates after the spike. The
article cautions that some of this more recent data may just reflect
reporting lag. My intuition is that many victims were probably close
to death anyway and there were less people to die in June if they had
their exit schedule moved up to May.
Reports
of a "second wave" seem pretty overblown. Again, could be reporting
lag, but this data isn’t terrifying me. It’s looking like people got
sick, like they do when something is going around. All the vulnerable
and unlucky people got it, and it doesn’t really have much more room
to cause trouble. That could be a very wrong guess, but this data,
real actual data that is not meaningless, is in no way contradicting
that assessment.
I’m actually pretty impressed that a lot of states really are not
seeing anything like what New York and New Jersey saw. Look at
Wisconsin or Idaho or Missouri.
I would actually say that the danger for them is
greater. It’s greater because to my thinking they have not had the
full force of the pandemic come and hit their vulnerable populations
yet.
One could make the case that this shows that protective measures,
lockdowns, and hygiene theater are working. I’m not sure if there is
enough data for that by, say, comparing Sweden with Switzerland. But
this kind of data could tell us exactly what works. It’s not testing
as I had previously imagined. Testing is almost as elusive as a
vaccine; let’s just rule sensible tests out and focus on real and
obvious effects.
What really works is simply tracking deaths promptly and accurately
like any 21st century society should be doing anyway. With sensibly
tracked deaths, accurate studies to gauge the efficacy of various
measures are actually plausible, even using "natural" experiments with
different sides of the state line doing different things. It would be
really helpful to see these plots with the same plots superimposed
from other flu seasons and outbreaks.
As one of the early adopters of Covid-19 I can tell you that if you
get it, it’s no picnic. (I am feeling a bit better than last month,
thanks.) But this data is not only good in the sense of not being
stupid; it’s good because it doesn’t show an impending apocalypse.
It’s exactly data like this that we need.
Although bad haircuts are a widespread side effect of the current
pandemic, it is not hard to recognize this guy even with a mask on.
That of course is a guy who is famous for three things (besides his
hair). The third is being prime minister of the UK and the second is
being a famous Brexit wanker. But his most famous fame is being one of
the most notorious victims of COVID-19. Whatever your feelings about
him, I think we can all agree that Boris Johnson was hospitalized in
mid-April because of a severe case of COVID-19. So here’s what I want
to know.
Besides privacy/anonymity, masks can have two functional objectives.
The first one, the normal and obvious one, is to keep bad stuff away
from you, like when you’re sanding fiberglass. Interestingly, in
pandemic times, this is not why masks are encouraged. For airborne
disease control the idea of masks is a second objective, keeping
the wearer from expelling and spreading infectious particles.
Are we worried that The Right Honourable Mr Johnson is a threat to our
health? Are we worried that he will spread some infectious agent that
will inflame the pandemic? Do we think that two months after suffering
the most unambiguous case of COVID-19 possible that he is still an
infectious threat?
Or, is Mr. Johnson looking to the first function of protective masks
and trying to keep himself from getting infected again with C19?
Either way, I would suggest that if this strategic thinking is valid,
we are into some serious zombie apocalypse scenario.
Of course I bring this famous case up to highlight one of the most
obscure cases of COVID-19 — mine.
It turns out that I’m not too fond of wearing masks even when sanding
fiberglass (though I do my best to do so). But having to wear a mask
in the limited public outings I’ve had in the last 4 months has been
especially tiresome. Why? Because it impedes breathing. Not a problem
for a high volume athletic oxygen furnace like me, right? Not so much
these days.
I’m still cycling about 100km a week but I can feel the damage. I had
mentioned reduced circulation in my
shins but that was really just the most noticeable problem. I’ve done
a lot of work to strengthen my shins and they feel ok today but still
not full strength. But as in December there has been a wave of
problems targeting many different subsystems, just much more mild.
Right now my thighs are covered in bruises, both left and right — I
have no idea why. Last week I had unnatural leg muscle pain for no
explainable reason. When I wake up in the morning my arms tingle with
paresthesia (aka limbs
"falling asleep"). I also have an ear infection, just like I did at
the end of my illness previously, but other ear now; the second ear
infection of my life. And my breathing is not at full strength. I can
become winded just climbing the stairs. When riding I can feel the
loss of capacity. I’ve been saying that it feels like I’m living at
2000m or 3000m, depending on the day — about the altitude of
HAPE, a
mountaineering sickness, which has some very similar symptoms to C19.
It’s all pretty tiring.
Is this weakness half a year later scarring of some kind? Nerve
damage? Vasculature damage? Immune system weakened? More live C19
virus attack? Reinfection? Hard to say.
That’s my current situation — there are indeed long term effects.
What can we do about it? Probably nothing for me personally, but for
humans in general there are many different strategic approaches to
defeating this disease. Let’s review my tiny opinions about each of
them.
The first is a vaccine. To which I say good fucking luck. You can have
no more than two of the following: developed soon; works; safe.
This
sensible article from a former CDC epidemiologist calls out all kinds
of problems with the hope for a magic cure any time soon.
It highlights a
phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement which…
…causes some vaccine recipients, who nevertheless become infected by
exposure to a pathogen, paradoxically to have more severe illness than
if they had not been vaccinated at all. ADE has been observed for
coronavirus vaccines in monkeys, pigs, cats, and in cultured human
cells. It was also observed in children after a trial of a respiratory
syncytial virus vaccine and after a mass campaign of a licensed dengue
virus vaccine given to 830,000 children in the Philippines, resulting
in withdrawal of the vaccine."
I just can’t help but think that the vaccine hope is a form of wishful
thinking similar to "pharma is not predatory and these magic beans will
magically cure my lifetime of poor lifestyle choices".
At this point C19 is a real pain in the ass, but so is HIV and ebola
(actually now has a
brand
new vaccine after only 44 years!) and a lot of other diseases; why
not come up with cures for them too? Because it is very hard to do and
considerable luck is required.
What about "contact tracing"? Good idea, right? I side with Bruce
Schneier
who says correctly it is "just plain dumb". And he’s not even
introducing any privacy concerns to the discussion. I like this barb
at gormless Silicon Valley tech bros for their typical banality when
solving any problem (Ans: a telephone app?). "To me, it’s just techies
doing techie things because they don’t know what else to do."
Australia’s experience is what I would expect:
How
did the Covidsafe app go from being vital to almost irrelevant?
What’s sad to me is that contact tracing is close to the right answer.
This pandemic is not really a medical problem any more. It is
an industrial
engineering problem. Unfortunately the world’s industrial engineers
are restrained in obscurity thanks to a terrible name for their
profession. It has been extremely frustrating to see the terrible ad
hoc industrial engineering popping up everywhere in response to The
Virus. Suffering the virus itself was only slightly more demoralizing
than the constant stream of fatuous reports featuring numbers of new
cases lacking base rates! But a sensible application of some serious
industrial engineering could cure this pandemic in a few weeks.
Because very few people understand this, it will not happen. (I am
delighted with the I.E. consolation prize — that this virus forced
major grocery store chains to use single feeder lines. Yay! Should
have done that decades ago!)
One problem that severely impacts the aforementioned industrial
engineering cure is testing. Testing, if quick, accurate, and
effective enough would itself essentially be a cure without fancy
industrial engineering heroics. But it’s neither fast nor accurate,
and thus not effective. People keep asking me, "Don’t you want to know
if you have it?" Well, my symptoms were enough of a red flag
positive test for me, but of course I’d love for some simplistic magic
test to tell me something useful about this disease. But I have no
faith in such things. I’ve seen all kinds of health security theater
going on and these tests seem fraught with complexity.
This
resource is very expansive and hints at the diverse problems someone
taking "testing" seriously will encounter. Tack onto that living in
the medical third world and I’m not too keen to try my luck — you
only need to read the title of this article to appreciate my
misgivings:
Two
Friends in Texas Were Tested for Coronavirus. One Bill Was $199. The
Other? $6,408.
Earlier some people were thinking that the warmer weather would tamp
down the virus. That’s obviously not actually happening. People are
out more, the dumb ones at political rallies even. Even if hot weather
was helpful, it’s looking pretty strongly like air conditioning is not
great for controlling the virus. When the AC industry lobby
is
worried about that we probably all should be.
How will this pandemic end? Consider the difference between these two
scenarios:
A. The disease is running amok and no one realizes there’s a problem.
B. People are aware there is a virulent disease that is quite deadly
to a certain demographic.
It is possible that all the reduction we’re seeing is because we once
had A and now we have B. I think that has been the single biggest
factor in controlling things. My money is still on luck mysteriously
causing this to simply go away for reasons that medical research will
be too underfunded to understand. Like previous pandemics! At some
point we will run out of susceptible potential victims.
One final interesting therapeutic approach is transfusions of
antibody-rich blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors to inoculate
against the disease.
This
article claims it is promising but mired in regulatory friction. I
can’t say if that’s a sensible idea or not. But it does make me
wonder… Who knows, maybe it might be smart for uninfected people to
inhale deeply in the unmasked presence of strong antiviral producers
like Boris Johnson. And me.
In summary, progress since January 2020 has been impressive, but there
is still so much more to learn. Are T cells protective and if so which
are the key antigens and and cytokine effector programs to focus
on? Are all T cell responses beneficial, or are some contributory to
immunopathology and to be avoided? If it is indeed the case that
antibodies are transient and T cell memory is more durable (though,
how durable?), what can we learn about anomalies of T follicular
helper-B cell interactions in germinal centers? In the short to medium
term, we need to ensure that all of this T cell toolkit and knowledge
is brought to bear on robust, comparative evaluation of the different
vaccine platforms, their immunogenicity, efficacy and safety. Entering
the next part of the battle, there are many thousands of people
suffering the chronic aftermath of infection posed by chronic,
so-called long-COVID cases, characterized by diverse symptoms
including fatigue, joint pain and dyspnea. A more detailed
understanding of the T cell immunology will be valuable in deciphering
this pathogenesis.
At the start of the pandemic, a key mantra was that we needed the
game-changer of antibody data to understand who had been infected and
how many were protected. As we have learnt more about this challenging
infection, it’s time to admit that we really need the T cell data too.
I’m citing this paper as a thoughtful excellent contribution to the
topic. It is basically saying that simplistic thinking about the
immune system is wrong. And I believe that sentiment is absolutely
correct. But note the "and and" [sic] in the second sentence. My
writing isn’t grammatical perfection but I’m not published in fancy
scientific journals, i.e. peer reviewed and professionally edited. I
don’t mean to carp but rather point out that we humans are fallible
and even in the field of immunology, mistakes are made. Perhaps
especially in that field? My point is that if we get a miracle cure
it will indeed be a miracle.
UPDATE 2020-07-19
Some industrial engineering heroics finally shambling into action.
It’s been very painful for me to watch this not happen for so long.
Trump
admin allows group Covid-19 testing.
UPDATE 2020-07-28
This short article asks,
Can you get the
coronavirus twice? They seem to conclude that it is possible but
unlikely. They correctly make the logical conclusions echoing my
concerns about the topic.
If [reinfection] can occur, that could undermine the idea of "immunity
passports" for returning back to workplaces. And it would not bode
well for hopes of getting a long-lasting vaccine.
Again, to summarize - either I have nothing to worry about personally
or we’re all screwed.
UPDATE 2020-08-03
Still unclear about what an industrial engineering solution looks like?
Here’s an example of the kind of thing that seems obvious to me but
which has been clumsily avoided throughout this ordeal.
We construct network measures of nursing home connectedness and
estimate that nursing homes have, on average, connections with 15
other facilities. Controlling for demographic and other factors, a
home’s staff-network connections and its centrality within the greater
network strongly predict COVID-19 cases.
This is about as gentle of an introduction to practical immunology as
it gets and clearly addresses things I’ve been wondering about.
In one sentence he hits upon the conundrum I’ve highlighted.
…concerns that people could be infected repeatedly, or even that a
vaccine — many of which work by readying neutralizing antibodies — won’t provide long-term protection.
In other words, either people can’t get reinfected (well, easily
anyway) or vaccines are not as useful as people imagine — one of the
two, pick one. While that simple analysis is simple and not completely
invalid, Yong does rightly spend the majority of the article correctly
emphasizing that when it comes to immunology,
it’s complicated.
Some precise number of days (which I know but will redact) before I
turned 18, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing. That is
because I could not quite legally gamble, yet I was in a casino in Las
Vegas. On Christmas Day. I was doing a family thing for family
connections that lived in Las Vegas. Visiting a casino on such a
strange day is just something one can do if you don’t take traditional
holidays too seriously and you happen to be in town coincidentally.
What single adjective would I use to describe the Las Vegas casinos on
Christmas Day? Answer: Chinese. That was a while back, but I doubt
things are too much different today. Think about it. Normal
Christmas-celebrating Americans wouldn’t usually think to go to Vegas
on such an incompatible major holiday. But it would be reasonable for
normal Chinese people to happily take up the slack and cheap rates.
In 2019, exactly 8 days after flying and spending the day in airports
(SAN, PHX, BUF — LAS on the way out!), I record my first written
description of the illness that dominated my life this past winter.
What day did I travel? November 28 - Thanksgiving Day. A day I chose
because the rates (and I) were cheap — Americans do not like to
travel the entirety of Thanksgiving Day. I have no idea if this is
truly relevant, but it is certainly interesting to think about.
You know how my blog posts often maddeningly change topics a few
paragraphs in? The change often looks like a radical departure, but I
do actually try to keep a thematic strand connecting them. So here we
go.
The immune response to a virus starts with infected cells producing a
suite of signalling molecules called cytokines. Some of these tell
other cells nearby to be on their guard against attack, thus stymying
the virus’s ability to replicate itself. Others tell the immune system
to come and put some stick about. Thus called to arms, the immune
system launches both a prompt all-purpose response—inflammation—and
a subsequent targeted counter-attack using antibodies and cells
specifically programmed to attack both virus particles and the cells
they have infected. Unfortunately SARS-CoV-2 seems able to interfere
with the early steps of the immune response. It can apparently
counteract the part that dampens replication in nearby cells. It may
also enhance inflammation.
…
When inflammation gets completely out of control the body enters what
is called a cytokine storm. Such storms drive the most severe
outcomes for covid-19, including multi-organ failure.
Now take a look at this birthday greeting I wrote to a friend and
former colleague who is a computational biophysics researcher and
professor of pharmacology.
2019-12-29
I’m still struggling to get to my next birthday, still under attack by
some kind of pathogen. … I’ve never had an illness like this as an
adult. My guess is that it is a flu virus but it could be bacterial. I
feel like it went from my lungs to my major meat muscles. Each day I’d
get a new thing. For example, one day my tibialis anterior was hit
with what runners call "shin splints". I’m very familiar with muscle
pain from muscle wear and tear but it’s unnerving when there is no
sensible cause. I set up a bike inside and riding that helped my leg
muscles a lot. I think the main infection is mostly defeated and
controlling secondary infections is indeed the important thing. I lost
a lot of weight so I’m trying to eat as much as possible. That’s not
easy since I have very little appetite. I’m also wondering if maybe my
body is doing some silly overreacting, something like a cytokine
storm. Of course, as you know, at that level it all becomes
overwhelmingly complex.
Reviewing these emails has helped
me put together some other pieces of the puzzle. All spring long I’ve
been cold. Especially my shins. I moved a down sleeping bag to my
office to put on my shins thinking I was blocking a draft or
something. I crawled around to see if a fan from a computer on the
floor was blowing on my legs. I changed things around with my seating
arrangements thinking maybe my circulation was being constrained by my
chair making me cold (circulation problems are synonymous to me with
being cold — and, yes, I
am an expert). Then a few weeks ago the weather went from cool to
insanely hot (90F/32C) overnight. My shins were still cold.
That was an "oh shit" moment for sure. My illness has really messed
up my shins apparently. I am now aggressively rebuilding my shin
muscles. Now that I’m focusing on them it’s clear, they’re not right
at all. I’m a little nervous about other lasting damage. I’m sleeping
about 30 minutes to an hour longer each day than I did at the same
time last year (I always sleep the maximum amount my body will let
me).
But I feel mostly ok. I have a near comically healthy lifestyle — if
anyone is going to shake off problems that can be shaken off, it will
be me. The excellent Ed Yong (whose book
I reviewed) has
a
very interesting article in the Atlantic; it is the first I have seen
which has been properly sympathetic to the brutal hardships of
symptomatic survivors. The article is very scary because of this and
strong hints of long term effects. You can see why I’m taking this all
kind of seriously. And even though the
infallible
apolitical CDC has assured me — by fiat — that I did not suffer
covid 19 because they did not notice the infection, I’m going to pay
attention to covid 19 data and assume it is relevant for the
functionally identical illness I did have.
I’m proud that my
cultural heritage can
be helpful at this time. There might have been a translation error,
however, because I’m not sure if
the governor fully
appreciates the sarcasm that is mixed in with the stoic nihilism here.
Still, it put a smile on my face.
Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep em laughin as you go
Just remember the last laugh is on you
And always look on the bright side of life!
I recently had an idea for a new video game mechanic. In many game
genres, there is a common trope where the protagonist goes out into
the world and does exciting action things which often result in
surplus equipment or other valuables. You might kill a dragon which
has a valuable set of scales. Or you kill a few enemy soldiers. In
both of those cases the normal way the situation is handled is by
giving the player the chance to "loot" the scene. But how can it make
any sense to head back into town with a half dozen sets of weapons and
full suits of armor, or a complete dragon hide? Staggering back thus
encumbered might be plausible if that’s all you needed to do, but
there will be obstacles, other monsters and other things to discover.
You know, the stuff that makes the game have a plot.
Currently there are a few strategies to deal with this. One is to
severely limit what you can loot from the set of what one would
reasonably expect. Was everyone you just fought wearing socks? Yes?
Yet the game is not going to let you loot socks. It limits things to
just the salient weapons or even just some random items drawn from a
loot table.
The other main strategy — and they’re not mutually exclusive — is to
just let the player carry an absurd amount of stuff.
Related to that is discounting how much items weigh. A champion of
those strategies would be the deliberately fanciful Minecraft where
players
can carry nearly 10 billion kg! (I actually disagree with that
analysis because I don’t assume nondestructive crafting in Minecraft.
And a player can carry only 36 hats before collapsing under their
weight. But the point of the analysis is still quite correct and
illustrative.)
But what if you’re going for a game with maximal immersion and
fidelity. I can not recall ever seeing this problem addressed
realistically. How might a game do better with this problem?
I imagine an open world game like Skyrim or Borderlands or Fallout or
Witcher3 or or Red Dead Redemption or even GTA handling this problem
in the following way. Once a player encounters a situation where
collecting an absurd amount of stuff is possible, they have the option
to shuttle it to a cache, basically a hiding place. They then make a
note of that on their maps.
How this works is that back in the village among safe and helpful
NPCs, the player can then choose to sell these notes to various
salvage operators. These guys are not professional dragon slayers.
They are just professional movers of stuff. If you tell them exactly
where to go and what to find — with assurances that the local
monsters are all dead! — they can then make the implausible portaging
plausible. Why bother bringing all this stuff back to town to sell,
when the shopkeeper you’re planning to sell things to could also be
handling the moving? You’re this world’s messiah — outsource a bit!
Geralt Should Hire A Sherpa
Besides making games less unrealistic, what’s cool about this mechanic
is that it can have a lot of tunable elements which could be
interesting for the player. For example, let’s say you come to town
and tell a salvager that you have buried a chest of gold that you want
to sell and reveal the general area it’s in. All of this can be done
by selecting from a menu that is essentially your notes. At this point
the salvager has to decide if he trusts you enough to go attempt to
get your stuff. You could have a system where you build trust slowly.
Maybe at first you can only hire shady itinerant movers who commonly
set out after your gold and then disappear forever, maybe stealing
your treasure or maybe failing and its still there waiting. Or maybe
the earnest recovery effort is robbed by bandits or their ship is
dashed on the rocks in a storm. These kinds of problems set up new
missions where you, the hero, can go salvage the salvage operation or
hunt down perfidious cheaters.
As you do more business, you might be able to pay, up front, someone
in a permanent location to go fetch your stuff. They have a good
reputation and will likely work to keep it. Eventually you are
trustworthy enough that these professional salvagers will simply pay
you coin for your notes and the transaction is complete — you have
gold in your pocket from some lootable adventure without the clumsy
impossible process of hauling that loot.
Khajiit Trader Says: Necessary Assets Ready To Go
You could imagine that different towns would have different
reputations. You could trick some of these merchants if they aggravate
you or you don’t mind burning your reputation there. They may charge
more commission if the trip is long or requires visiting dangerous
places. There can be a whole complex dynamic to work out optimal
routes for multiple pickups, a famously tricky
travelling
salesman problem. They might even tell you that they could loot the
cave in the elven ruins if it weren’t for the trolls that lived nearby — prompting you to go kill
three stone
trolls and add their loot to the shipping manifest. This would make it
plausible to capture entire ships or wagons or cars and leave them for
others to sensibly pick up and liquidate.
There might be interesting dynamics in how long it takes to get paid
or take possession of the item back in town, maybe timed for correct
leveling. You could have a system that allows players to basically act
as scouts for some things; for example, they might come back and sell
to a craftsman the general location of a crafting ingredient (e.g.
mine’s ore vein or rare plant grove or animal sighting, etc). Or even
"loot" entire buildings or towns by delivering to the right people the
information that it is now safe to occupy.
You could hire trustworthy movers to go to your remote base and
retrieve needed items from storage for some particular mission. A
lighter version of this would be where the player has to haul all of
the loot to major hubs which functionally act as railheads.
Maybe have different levels of caching. A poorly stashed hoard may be
found by someone else by the time your mover arrives sparking all
kinds of interesting tension. Maybe if this is a common problem the
player can improve their odds by dividing the loot and performing
multiple hiding operations. Maybe there could be a dynamic where poor
hiding results in the mover not being able to find the loot; the loot
is still there, but the mover is too annoyed to try again. Or maybe
that problem doesn’t result from poor hiding but rather careful
hiding!
By having a system like this, players can obsessively loot a place and
yet the carrying weight limit can still be set at something sane. It
opens the door for all kinds of intrigue. You can duly approve and
appreciate all the junk items you’re taking from the battlefield sets
without having them clutter your real working inventory. And if you
come across an item that’s a keeper, but you can’t take it now, it can
be handled later — by someone else!
Some may object that this makes the game too complicated, like running
a logistics business. But I’m afraid that fast travel wagon has
already rolled out of the city gates. Have a look at
this hilarious scene CD
Project Red scripted into Witcher3 to troll people who run mods to
give themselves unaccountable wealth.
Clearly players can enjoy such bookkeeping details!
