[MUD-Dev] Integrating PK

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 30 Jun 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

> In <3.0.2.32.19970625011644.00b5f054 at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 06/25/97 
>    at 08:44 AM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:
> 
> >Better roleplay my eye, which on of us, truely in the situation,
> >would actually kill someone else becasue they said soemthing nasty to
> >us (or did soem other non-life threatening annoying act)?  None of us
> >who are reasonably sane....
> 
> This would seem to depend on the world definition.  Given a world or a
> culture where life is pathetically cheap, then yes, I would expect it. 
> It seems presumptuous to automatically extend current social
> structures to the definition of RP.

Plus it depends on a few other things - for instance the pressure (peer?)
of honour, and such. I think it fully possible for a duel (of some sort,
to the death), to break out over honour (etc) in a suitable environment.

Or in a similar vein, a fight (not necessarily lethal) over an insult, and
so forth - the lack of non-lethal conflict options on many muds where they
might be appropriate would seem to add to the tendancy to "unwarranted
PK".

"I didn't deserve to die for that!"
"I couldn't just leave you.. what else could I do?"
 
Etc.

The added option of being able to "duff" someone up a bit might well
change the skew.

> Consider the very simple example of Heinleinian Puppet Masters (a
> model BTW for my body stealing).  For those that don't know these are
> small slug-like blobs that attach to humans and effectively possess
> them -- the human then acts as a carrier and is merely a mobile host
> for the blob, doind whatever it tells it.
> 
>   Would such a blob telling its host body to kill the host body of
> another blob, or even another body not possessed by a blob *really* be
> so improbable?  After there is an effectively endless supply of host
> bodies, and host bodies are very easily and cheaply gotten...

Heh. You're just very cruel, or psychotic, or both. ;)

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"He can't stop us, we're on a mission from Glod!" - Soul Music (Pratchett)