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

[Ling]

On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:
> On Sat 06 Dec, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > On Thursday, December 04, 1997 3:53 AM,
> > Ling[SMTP:K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk] wrote: 

[Lots of good Marian comments snipped here and below]

> > > - Yes but it is a persona being arrested.  Anyway, there are plenty  of
> > >   other muds to go piss on.
> > Not even another mud; just make a new character in the existing one.
> 
> This is one thing that any mud that wants to keep its players in line
> must address. Either through requiring characters to be registred. Or
> by providing some in-character means of controlling the creation of a
> new character. There was mention of games that allow child birth as a
> means of immortality.  That could easily be expanded to provide a way
> to control creation? i.e. unless you find other players who are will-
> ing to birth a child for you, you can not re-enter the game. And as a
> member of a house your actions reflect on all other members,  so they
> will be careful who to accept into their midst.

This seems to be like a one-off solution.  It only applies to that mud and
in any case, with a system such as that, I thought fewer jerks would
appear.  I do see your point.  I also would have thought that the jerks
generally do not care about the mud, nor their status (asides from the
infamous reputation) and so, as long as they do their damage, don't care
what happens afterwards.  Especially if it is a vendetta.

> > > - So get muds to form an informal mud alliance where someone  black-
> > > listed on one mud will find life difficult on other muds.
> 
> A good idea, but probably impossible to enforce. Not to mention the
> risk of abuse by imms on the allied muds.

Didn't think of that.  In that case, a rating system could be implemented
so it's not a binary:  You're banned, that's it.  Either way, a registered
mudder oughta have a history of what, why, when, where (how?).  This way,
individual muds can decide upon accepting players.

> > This raises some of the issues I was getting at with scale and 
> > communication. Let us assume as premises a lack of a global namespace, 
> > and that large scale makes for increased difficulty of communication. 
> > In the case of the "other muds" scenario that you describe, a lack of 
> > a global namespace is of course implied.

Can someone spell out what 'global namespace' means?  Another mud-dev
junkie term?

[Big example of newbies being killed by being summoned to a pk area and
the ensuring arguments afterwards snipped]

> The big question pertaining the topic of this discussion now is:  Who
> was 'right' or 'wrong' in this situation.  Some players were punished
> for breaking the rules in their attempt to enforce a social code that
> most players could not entirely agree upon.  Most everybody agreed it
> was wrong to attack and kill newbies but they could not agree whether
> the act of summon-killing other players itself was right or wrong.
> This is a big problem if you rely on players to police themselves...

I'd personally run a system whereby I have absolute power (utterly unfair,
not very democratic but I don't think democracy works, especially on a
mud).  I would judge things upon intent, the spirit of justice rather than
the written letter.  I completely despise the current generation of kids
who like to read the small print in the contracts and takes things to the
letter, twisting things to their purpose.  But in a realistic situation, I
would probably not know what really did happen coz being an admin means I
have been isolated from the virtual streets.  So to make things Vaguely
fair, I'd need a log from someone. 

In short, those players summoning the newbies would get decked coz the mud
as a whole suffered (newbies put off, therefore potential players leave,
worse than virtual killing in a hobby mud).

> > > - This might work, difficulty in implementing due to the way people 
> > > can change their id so easily.
> 
> Which is why site bans exist.

A site ban is a last resort defensive strategy.  As KaVir said, a mud will
lose potential players which is all important for the majority of muds.
Everything orientates around the player (also the major cause of hassle,
therefore players should be banned.  I sound just like Judge Death. :)

> Muds are essentially a single playground no matter how much hometowns
> and areas there are.  Unless travelling between areas takes realistic
> amounts of time  but that is something few players are willing to ac-
> cept on a game.

I do agree on this point.  Most muds I've been to, it takes 2 minutes to
traverse the entire mud (using a client or whatnot).  Unless it took
something appreciable, like 30 minutes between cities, preferably more,
all the cities in the mud are in the same location as far as I'm
concerned.

> Some people truly do not understand that their actions may upset others.
> Some know but do not care, or worse, that is what they are trying to
> achieve in the first place.  You can enlighten the stupid and threaten
> the faint hearted with dire punishment but you can not stop this
> problem. Some kind of psychological test to see if a new player has
> developed beyond the mental age of 4 might help, but it is kind of hard
> to enforce this ;) 

I'm trying to imagine compulsory psychology tests upon account creation...

> > Tossing in other things that factor into this: there's a general lack 
> > of major support structures for victims, in the virtual setting 
> > (family, friends, Salvation Army, what have you); and it's very easy 
> > for a traumatized victim to just "check out" of your virtual 
> > environment and thus not deal with the trauma.

[more things snipped regarding psychological damage, something I've never
experienced first hand and so am in no position to comment]

> It should worry any implementer of a mud that the action of one deranged
> mind can drive out other players who contribute far more to the game. In
> this respect I strongly disagree with Bartle that 'killers' have a place
> in a balanced mud.

I would have disagreed with you here but you put in the word 'balanced'.
:P  Apart from out and out pk muds like Tron and Genocide, I have yet to
see a balanced mud with a pk system (Important!  Associate this way
round!).

[stuff snipped about killers and maths]

> Marian,  who is afraid this thread is going to degenerate into a pro-
> or con-pk discussion again.

I hope not.  I'm a bit sick of pk discussions, they're everywhere, on
every mud which has a pk system of some kind and on the usenet (no doubt).

I personally like to have the players compete with each other quite
directly.  So I like having a free for all pk system if possible.  These
days, I've seem to have diverged from the usual one player = one persona.
Instead, I've doodled designs where the player controls some other entity
(nation/colony/ship/vehicle/hive/team/virus/photon/electron/star)
where hurting the competition is the aim.  No one views this as a personal
attack but that's coz of the setting of the mud.  Everyone knows it's a
game, not a talker/mud/social environment.

The following is meant to be for inspiration:
I just read about a computer game that looked quite fun!  There are two
bases on the screen and the players control a little spaceship each.  The
ships don't fire as such, instead, they are supposed to collect little
coloured pills.  After collecting the right number/colour, the respective
base starts shooting at the other base.  Collisions with between players
just slow them down.  This sounds weird but it's fun and quite frantic!

  |    Ling Lo, freshwater fish (cod variant)
_O_O_  EEE, Loughborough University, England          Another 'Screemer!