[MUD-Dev] Life

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 09:36 AM 6/1/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>
>This is the kind of statement I'm seeing a lot.  Maybe I'm just reading
>it the wrong way, but it seems to me that all the RP supporters on this
>list seem to think that anyone who would ever want to play a powermud
>are automatically saddistic, power-hungry losers who desire nothing
>more than to be the direct cause of as much misery to as many people

No, lets get some ternminology down to help us through thsi
misunderstanding...

I am going to suggest the following terms, we use them at work to be clear:

PvP: Player versus Player play. A consensual thing in which the social
contract is you WILL try to kil leach other out.

Pkilling: A nasty, sadistic, bullying form of play all too popular in a
minority grou pwher the goal is to annoy, abuse amnd thus feel power over
other players on the same mental/emotionmal level of a pack leader tearing
into the younger males in teh group.  This is called "jumping" in some
systems.

Now, given thsoe terms, Pkilling in RP settings is what we are tlakitgn
about and sayign is a problem.  HOWEVER PvP envrionemnts tend to attract
mroe Pkillers because the defined game is closer to their own and easier to
hide behind. Simialrly it becomes often difficult for an admin in an open,
unstructured world to be able to tell the difference since Pkillers will
lie and clainm they are PvPing while PvPers who lose will often lie and
claim to be victims of PKilling.

Pkilling is EXTREMELY destructive in an environemnt that is trying to
foster roleplay because it makes peopel upset and drrives them away.  Thsoe
whoi stay are forced to deal with the little kiddies ratehr then do what
theyc came there for (which is part of the infantile draw of Pkilling, an
attempt to get attention.).  Noone who comes to your system to relax wants
to put up with this juvenile crap.

PvP is problematic as a focus IMO because it puts the emphasis on power as
you will be called on to use it.  Pretty quickly EVERYONE has to become a
pwoer gamer or be the victims of the pwoergamers.  Roleplayers find this
frustrating for very good reason.  It is also what leads your game to "fold
in on itself" with the maximally pwoerful cominbation of
classes/skills/objects whatever being quickly identified and everyone then
playing the same thing (the CLaM from NWN as an example.)

Thus, my opinons are as follows:
(1) Pkilling just shouldn't be allowed.
(2) PvP while potentailly a fine game MUST be limited to games where that
is the point and kept limited in a Roleplay envrionment.


Okay, NOW argue with me now that you knwo my real position :)

JK