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

[coder at ibm.net]

On 09/12/97 at 01:42 AM, Derrick Jones <gunther at online1.magnus1.com> said:
>On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Vadim Tkachenko wrote:

>> I believe that if you wouldn't know WHAT exactly has killed you, it
>> would be much easier to go with. In other words, you just can't
>> differentiate the monster/NPC from the different player, nothing
>> personal will be left.

>This is no small task.  

Actually it happens as a side effect for me.

>Especially in most designs where all of the
>players are humanoids, and the vast majority of target creatures are not.
>Players quickly learn the 'normal' NPCs in each area, and characters
>typically stand out as they wander much more than any normal mobile
>should.  Imagine a hack-N-slash mud where all the mobiles ran around
>speedwalking and killing a buch of stuff, then recalling before repeating
>the process somewhere else.  Imagine the sheer spam in town when every
>creature decides to recall.  Roleplay muds would be virtually impossible,
>unless you manage to pass the Turing test for mob AI.

Well, after a short while of play there are no more "normal" NPC
populations for me.  For one there is zero difference between an NPC body
and a player character body -- especially seeing as all player bodies
(other than the default lumpy clay ones) were once NPC bodies.  Next,
player pick up bodies and then move them about to do whatever they want,
with the result that the population is constantly stirred, with body types
(often freed from player control) now long seperated from their original
locations.

I did a short experiment a fair while back which may cast some extra light
here.  

I got a few friends together at home and set them up on the various
machines on the home LAN and set to playing.  We all went out, grabbed
various bodies, and decided to go on a killing spree (the idea was to play
with my then broken combat system).  Gaily murdering off we went, leaving
a trail of corpses behind us, dropping bodies and stealing new ones as the
current one wore out or died.  

BTW: There was one limit.  BEsides the fact that we were all in the same
room, we were not allowed to talk to each other on game issues except thru
the game -- this was in attempt to simulate real players.

However, I had a hidden agenda, and ran a second login under a different
account.  I had that account's character's bodies joined the killing party
and then during the fights instead of killing the intended victim, it
instead stole his body, and then using that as a base, in turn stole the
bodies of other members of the party.  In all the spam of the combat,
exactly who lost what bodies to whom and how was often lost, and so my
secret 5th collumnists became accepted members of the group.  

  Aside:  An interesting aspect was that the tacit definition of "what was
a killing group member" became that of "who followed and coordinated with
the actions of the group via the TELL's and SAY's".  This was due to the
fact that I have no explicit group features.

This went on for a while, with me frantically writing scripts in the
background before it turned out that my secret account owned more than 50%
of the total body count in the party.  i then had them all turn on the
rest of the party and slaughter them wholesale.  

They were more than surprised.

I got a very very confused set of players for a while -- until they
figured it out, and went and repeated the same tactic on me (unsucessfully
twice, sucessfully three times).

Yes, its DOOM-esque.  No, I don't think that really matters as character
investment is split between the bodies, the character, and the account. 
Losing a body (unless your last one for perma-death) is usually not
catastrophic, merely inconvenient (roughly equivalent to be booted on a
normal MUD).

>> Also, I think that the idea about muting the offender is excellent, the
>> only thing I'd add to it that I'd strip the offender from his/her body
>> and give them, say, a rat's one. In other words, be prepared for others
>> do treat you as you've treated them before.

>There comes a point in which the player would be better off losing
>whatever 'soul points' he has accumulated, and restarting.  Turning
>someone into a rat may simply be a dramatic way to purge them back to
>start-up abilities.
>[snip rest]

Ahh.  I merely set a set of probability field weights on them to *really*
mess up their day.  There's nothing like finding that all of a sudden
*everything* seems to be going wrong for you...  It essentially translates
into a *REALLY* effective bad luck curse.  The next addition there is to
add probability fields for critical cases, such that I can bless/curse a
body or character to succeed/fail more only on the critical calls.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...