[MUD-Dev] New Topic: Butthead features

[Martin Keegan]

On Mon, 18 Aug 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

> >>My explicit hope would be that the justice system would degrade to a
> >>case of verdict by biggest bully or last character left alive, with
> >>both cases encouraging the accused to define that condition.
> 
> >Thsi is demcoracy ALA Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury".
> 
> Wonderful!  I had suspected I was the only G&S fan aboard.

I am the very model of a holomorphic elephant ...
 
> >Funyn as hell but im not so sure its a workable system to build a
> >society on.
> 
> As I recall, which isn't terribly well having never been called or
> served, Island's justice system was an equivalent farce.  It didn't
> work.  It wasn't intended to work.  It was meant as an object of

More exactly, it was only intended to work if you wanted it to - which of
course

> amusement and equivalence.  Among other things it provided a vehicle
> for the minor actors to attempt to pull down a major (and
> occassionally do it).

Tell me about it :) Archwizards could 'prosecute' characters, which
increased their sin so much that they were instantly sent to court,
charged with whatever offence the arch desired. In addition, there was an
object whose consumption during a trial rendered one immune from
conviction. This object was used so much that it was eventually changed
into a suicide pill.

There was a notion of a limit to how far the court system could be abused.
When someone decided to hide the absolution object inside about ten other
objects and managed to get a six-nil guilty verdict on 'abuse of power'
against a senior player, it sparked off some of the most bitter
in-fighting the game ever saw.

> as incidental supports.  Your stated difference in the manner in which
> an RP'er would handle bugs as vs a GOP'er illuminates this well -- the
> old DIKU gold coins bug would probably for an ideal example in point
> (DIKUE used to let you drop any number of coins as long as you had
> some coins, and then pick up the number you dropped):
> 
>   > i
>   You have 50 coins.
>   > drop 10000 coins
>   Okay.
>   > get coins
>   You get 10000 coins.

Islanders would have been more fascinated with the bug itself than its
abuse.

Mk