[MUD-Dev] Life

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199705280600.XAA10875 at user1.inficad.com>, on 05/27/97 
   at 11:24 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> said:

>Even if it's a little less abbrupt (you get kicked back to a game
>menu, possibly given a description of how your soul goes screaming
>into the afterlife), this is pretty annoying.
>Although we have permadeath, we also have an afterlife.  Your
>character continues to exist forever - it's just that, as a spirit,
>they won't be able to do much but chat with other spirits.  Not
>terribly useful, I suppose, but hopefully it will soften the blow a
>little bit to not have your character actually *deleted*.

An idea I'd meant to mention earlier:

  When another body kills your last body, you become attached to the
killing body as partial owner.  This would be in the exact same way as
if that body had previously been stolen from you.  It is then up to
you to either battle for ownership of your new host body, or to try
and jump ship to some other passing body (eg a mobile or other
player).  

Thus a even a winning (killing) Pk'er is at risk of losing his body. 
He may not lose it immediately, but later on when he's weakened from a
later fight (the riding character just biding his time).

This could lead to the amusing circumstance of Vlad the PK'er coming
back to the Inn for a rest, only to find that all characters bound to
him as partial owners immediately steal the bodies of all the mobiles
and players in the Inn, and then turn about and attack him.  

Note: To prevent this detailing an effective immortality, a character
which exists solely as a partial rider on a body owned by someone else
will decay fairly rapidly with time.  As such, should Vlad the PK'er
take a bit too long getting to the Inn, his partial owner characters
will be so weak as to not even able to body-steal a flea.  Similarly,
while Vlad is dawdling his way back to the Inn, ewakening characters
will likely fight for who gets any passing semi-weak mobile/player
body.

>We considered doing a very complex
>underworld where you could potentially make bargains with demons or
>call upon old favors to the gods to try to escape - or even be
>rescued by mortals that dare brave the underworld, ala Greek and
>Roman mythology.  In effect, you get a whole new game once you die.

Per George Reese, this is what Nightmare does.  There is a full
underworld.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...