[MUD-Dev] New Topic: Butthead features

[Martin Keegan]

On Wed, 13 Aug 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

[wooah, backlog]

> In <199708050723.CAA13294 at dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com>, on 08/05/97 
>    at 08:06 AM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> said:
> 
> >I'd be interested on your thoughts on legal systems.  
> 
>   The jurors would be told that the system will teleport them to a
> court room at a pre-defined time (30 RL mins later) in the future to
> stand judgement.
> 
>   The juror list is openly published at the same time.
> 
>   The accused is informed that he is accused and when the trial will
> be.
> 
>   Jurors may sell or transfer their juror position to any other
> society member, including the accused, prior to the trial.
> 
>   Death or non-attendance of all jurors prior to a trial defaults to a
> not-guilty verdict.
> 
>   The case of all the jurors being the accused defaults to a
> non-guilty verdict.
> 
>   Non-attending jurors are tagged with the crime of non-attendance,
> and may or may not be called to stand trial for that crime.
> 
>   The courtroom consists of a room containing four areas:
> 
>     1) A exitless pen which contains the accused, suitably immobilised
> (ie he has no control over his character other than speech).
> 
>     2) An open pen marked "Guilty".  
> 
>     3) An open pen marked "Innocent".
> 
>     4) A free space surrounding the guilty/innocent pens.
> 
>   The guilty and innocent pens each contain a single button marked,
> "Verdict".
> 
>   The courtroom has no entrances and no exits.  There is no possiblity
> to view an in-progress court case unless one of the jurors brings in a
> remote camera object.
> 
>   Shortly before the trial commences all jurors are so warned.

It might interest you that on a certain mud I shan't bother naming, there
was a very similar court system.

When someone's sin quota reached 1000, they were instantly transported to
The Courtroom. All available (non-idle, non-questing, non-seer,
non-exempt) players were also transported there, and formed the jury.

The jury was informed of the defendant's most recent crime, and would be
given ten seconds to consider it, then presented with the choice to vote
'guilty' or 'not guilty'. The votes were tallied up, and the defendant was
found

'NOT guilty'
'SLIGHTLY guilty' (hung jury - defendant's sin halved)
'guilty'

There was also a 'very guilty' classification inside guilty, which
involved being forcibly morphed into a toad or a cockroach, or imprisoned
(and the key confiscated if you had it), or fined a quest. You also tended
to lose an unreasonable amount of points and gold.


INTERESTING BIT:

Much more interesting from a design perspective was the effect The
Courtroom had on the game - a room into which players were frequently
transported presented all sorts of security problems. It had to be made a
no-fight, no-steal, no-summon zone, when the sheer number of players being
taken there off guard made it the crime capital of the whole game.

Since jury service provided free teleportation, it was used to subvert
quest security. If a player needed to complete a quest but was in a region
from which there was no available exit, he (and it was largely males who
tried this) could log on a second character, commit loads of sin (which
was easy - you just needed to say "abermud" ten times and you were sent to
court), and hand over the vital objects he was carrying to his number two
whilst the trial was in progress, before they were whisked back to their
previous locations.

Of course, I only decided this was a problem AFTER I'd finished those
quests :)

Mk