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

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> wrote:
>At 01:18 PM 12/10/97 PST8PDT, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
>>whatever).  However, an external threat can make group identities
>>stronger, and the virtual life more intense.  A few unlawful
>>powerhungry random killers can in this sense be valuable, especially
>>to powerhungry lawful players, but only if there is room for revenge
>>from the society.
>
>Rather than revenge I would say regulation, though I suppose that might
>include revenge sometimes. ;)=20

Yeah, well, I guess what I should have said was "sustained regulation".

>I wonder though how much of our views here are related back to our
>real-world experiences and politics.  Marian appears to be from the
>Netherlands, Ola from Sweden I believe, and I'm from the Wild West -- that

Well, actually, to tell a norwegian that he is from sweden (lack of
capital letter intended) is a major insult!  We got our independence
back in 1905, (although we got our own laws in 1814). :) (but the
shitheads kept some of our land, we'll get it back later... :)

Anyways, in Europe the Netherlands is probably considered as _the_
country with more individual freedom!  Dunno about Netherlands, but
Norway has a socialist profile (public healthcare, very few private
schools (which I think is bad), free universities, small differences
in saleries, too much everybody-is-alike-thinking, but there are good
sides to this too).

>is to say, the west coast of the US.  I disagree with Marian's statement
>above because it sounds to me too much like top-down, centralized
>Socialist-style government, rather than the more individualistic,
>free-wheeling, sometimes too chaotic US (especially west of the Rockies)
>government.

Wait a minute, California is passing lots of non-free-wheeling laws!
My impression is that the west coast is run by animal rights
movements, just wait and see what they'll do to your animal slaughter
MUDs!!  (they'll probably accept PKing though)

>In other words, I value _most_ PKers because of the spice they
>bring to the game, the extra dimensions they can provide for others (giving
>them something to talk about and act on), and even just their
>individualism.

Well, I only value PKers that kill upon (roleplayed) provocation (and
of course, only in muds based on fighting :). If there isn't too many
PKers, then people will learn to stay away from them. I think it is
important to support players that doesn't want to participate in
stupid powergames, to allow them to have their journeys without being
backstabbed.  The right to avoid being killed implies freedom...

One possible approach is to allow players to either wear armour OR to
wield a weapon, but not both at the same time.  More drastic
approaches would be to have armour that reverse the effect of the
attack towards the attacker, armour that teleports attackers to a
boring labyrinth, armour that results in permadeath for the attacker
(only to be worn by totally nonviolent players) etc.

I wonder whether making the world a lot more dangerous as in JCLs
scheme will stimulate cooperation.

I believe that the government of a player-run zone should have the
power to deny entrance on both a character and player level. (And they
can of course cooperate with other cities, exchange lists of banned
persons. Could be kinda cool, you might get worldwide "most wanted"
posters.) The banning on a player level is obviously neccessary,
DOOMers doesn't act on a character level, but on a player level, the
character is a weapon, a "3 lives left" thing.  I don't like it much
though.  It is however comparable to the realworld's vendetta's, if
you kill someone and you get away with it, they will anihilate your
whole family.  This is actually how quite a few societies with poor
law enforcement works!

I'm also interested in the effect of adding "hold" functionality to a
mud, that is, to be able to force people. (tie them up, and push them
down a hill, put them in prison or whatever).  A mud that allows PKing
should also allow lynching (with a lasting effect, no instant reroll),
which again suggests improved group-functionality. Realtime group
fighting in a lag environment is near impossible though. With lynching
you could have rules for what the lynched *player* should be able to
do in the following two weeks of play or something similar.  That
would be more real.

I'm actually not so sure if the act of PKing by itself adds much to
the world.  Although I belive that the threat does.  Or rather, the
knowledge that a group of people choose not to kill eachother, but
choose to cooperate (and choose to exclude those that doesn't
cooperate).

I have personally nothing against destructive activities in an
abstract environment, although I am worried about the net effect of
training people to accept watching or particpating in the murder of
realistic renderings of humanlike figures.  I don't like Hollywood.

Ola