[MUD-Dev] Fear of magic (was:Usability and interface)

[Derrick Jones]

On Mon, 20 Oct 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:

> On Wed 15 Oct, Michael Hohensee wrote:
> 
> > > On Tue, 14 Oct 1997 coder at ibm.net wrote:
	[this should be from me...think the author lines got mixxed...]
> > > But how do you treat a wandering mage at the gate to such a town?
> > > Give him a pill that represses his abilities?  Deny him entrance?
> 
> Put more and better mages in the town, paid by the town council to
> defend it against magical attacks. Unauthorised magics/mages would
> bring down the wrath of those town mages on their heads.

I plan on having a very tough NPC police force (martial law actually) to
watch these areas, but as the saying goes, the police are never around
when you need them...
Even if I had a plausable explaination for an omnipresent militia, I'd
also be faced with the daunting task of coding a 'realistic' and effective
capture mechanism.   Mages present an especially problimatic scenario, as
they have the option of teleporting beyond the reach of the law...

Players escaping by normal means can be tracked, followed, and hunted
down.  The only difficulty there is with the following scenario:
	>kill Boffo
	You place your hands around Boffo's neck and begin to squeeze.
	You hear a voice shout 'Hey, unhand that woman!'.
	Boffo unsuccessfully attempts to pry your fingers from her thoat.
	An armed patrolguard runs in from the West.
	>flee west
        You release Boffo and run west.
	The patrolguard shouts 'I'm gonna get you, Bubba!'.
	>quit
	connection closed by foriegn host.
The solution, of course, is to demand that my players remained connected
24-7..maybe take stats away from them for time spent in RL...(cackle).
More realistically, just force _characters_ to remain in-game even while
the players are away...It becomes difficult to balance on a PK mud, but
managible if you allow players to create scripts and defences to use in
place of human input.
Mages, (or any other character with access to spatial distortion style
magics--i.e. teleport spell), can, instead of quitting in the previous
example:
	>flee west
	You release Boffo and run west.
	The patrolguard shouts 'I'm gonna get you, Rasputin!'.
	>cast 'blink'
	Suddenly, you're standing across the street.
	The patrolguard shouts 'Rasputin!  Stand still!'.
	>cast 'teleport' home
	You stand inside your house.
	>enable defence   /* turns 'on' house defences */
	Your house is now protected.
	A portal begins to open.
	There is a flash of light as your house defences close the portal.
	You hear many footsteps approaching.
	>look outside
	You see your carefully manicured lawn.
	Many patrolguards stand here.
	A patrolguard falls into a pit-trap.
	[...many dead patrolguards later...]
	>cast 'portal' Boffo
	A portal opens before you.
	>enter portal
	You stand in the back room of a tavern.
	Boffo is sleeping here.
	>kill Boffo
	...
The problem here is twofold.  1.)  Magical travel is instanteous and
doesn't leave tracks, so its next-to-impossible to catch a mage with a
head start.  The guards have to be able to react quick enough to prevent
the mage from casting, else the mage can get away.
2.)  If player manages to get their character to its house, it has to
be designed to prevent determined PC's from entering (protect PC's from
afk PK), so a NPC won't fair all that much better.

Basically, I'd have to create a near-omniscient, near-omnipresent, and
near-omnipotent police force protecting this anti-violence zone, but such
a force would by its nature overrun and control the entire mud-world to
impose its doctrine of non-violence everywhere.  While this could be an
interesting twist to the mud's theme, its not what I'm looking for.

Gunther