[MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics [was Affecting the World]

[Koster]

On Monday, December 01, 1997 10:45 AM, Jon A. 
Lambert[SMTP:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com] wrote:
> On 26 Nov 97 at 16:22, Mike Sellers wrote:

> > I think maybe I've posted on this before; I've definitely spoken 
in various
> > places on the importance of player government.  This allows for 
people to
> > play a variety of sub-games if they choose, or to ignore the whole 
thing
> > almost entirely if they want.  It also provides a great, non-wiz 
way to
> > address various IC greviances, and allows you to put stealing, 
PKing, etc.,
> > in your game without making others effectively defenseless from 
them (or
> > defenseless without deus-ex-machine solutions, such as we see in 
UO).
>
> I recall these posts in October, "Mud Governance".  My interest is 
less in
> the area of "governing" players or in providing means for players to 
solve
> grievances, although this is a pleasant and not unforeseen 
side-effect.
> I also have no desire to implement a universal mud government or a 
even
> governments designed with the player characters' happiness or 
freedom in
> mind.

Just as a quick aside, many of the solutions adopted in UO (which are 
undeniably externally imposed solutions) were imposed purely because 
of scale. What we found was that when dealing with a mass market 
audience you have:

- more jerks than you can handle
- more jerks than mass market people are willing to handle in their 
play space
- a playerbase that assumes the game will settle their grievances, 
rather than themselves
- the same tiny proportion as usual of people willing to enforce 
societal mores.

Or put in another way, a group of players who doesn't want to take the 
time to govern itself, doesn't want to take the time to police itself, 
and tends to want to exploit the above lacks of motivation. :(

And even if people DID want to police themselves, lack of a global 
namespace (thank heavens for that term!), difficulty of long range 
communications, and sheer amount of other people make the task 
basically impossible for the wannabe cop.

I don't know how many of you have had your muds invaded by 14 year 
olds talking gangster rap who find great delight in "capping yo' 
beeatch ass wi' my gat, ho!" but I know LegendMUD has seen an increase 
in it, and judging from UO and other games, it's an Internet wide 
phenomenon propelled by the current popular teen trends, and made 
worse by the typical newbie unawareness of the emotional and social 
implications of their actions in the virtual context.

Which makes me wistfully think of small muds whereby much of this 
problem can be handled by administrative proselytization, some harsh 
human-administered rules, and little else.

So I have an answer to that question of a while ago, "How DO you 
govern a mud with thousands of players?" Well, you try not to, but in 
the end the answer is "painfully, with great difficulty, and a lot of 
imperfect code crutches."

-Raph