Game items

[Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>]

Re: drugs and simulation games.

At the meeting last Saturday, we played the second incarnation of the
remailing simulation game.  In a nutshell, the game is intended to
teach people about how to protect their privacy by using encryption to
prevent against monitoring and by using remailing to protect their
identities.  Since the game is also in part an economic simulation, I
tried to pick game objects which someone had some interest in keeping
quiet.  I picked drugs, of unspecified name, as a prominent game item.
This, by wide acclamation, is a mistake.  Since the primary reason to
pick this was a paucity of imagination, I now ask for help from the
list.

We want to develop a list of game items, physical objects, which will
be the goods of transaction.  I would like to pick objects that have
been illegal in the past, but which are not anymore.  They should not
be primarily information, such as copies of _Ulysses_.  They should
not now be restricted.  Nor should they be weapons, such as crossbows
or samurai swords.  They should, however, be objects that are known to
have generated some emotional reactions in the past.

There are two suggestions that meet these criteria: contraceptives and
printing presses (or xerox machines).  I would like to find more.
Please make your suggestions.

Another possibility is to use items which have been the subject of
state-enforced monopolies in the past, such as pepper or nutmeg.

Be creative.  We'd like to get a good list of twenty or so items.

Eric