[MUD-Dev] PK again (was: Character evolution)

[Nathan Yospe]

On Sat, 13 Sep 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

:You just said yourself that you don't mind dieing via accidents which involve
:other players; those were the situations I was trying to outline.  Ie,
:Bubba lays a trap in the forest in order to catch himself a dinner and
:you are accidentally hurt or killed by one of the traps.  Are you upset
:at Bubba, or not?  Upset enough just to tell him off, or upset enough to
:seek the admin to siteban him?

And when Boffo gets a grudge against Bubba and goes looking for Bubba's
traps, using a newbieish character, in order to get killed by one of them and
get Bubba sitebanned? What if Buffy lures Boffo into Bubba's trap?

:Anyhow...the original post (which was I believe from a new member who
:wasn't in on all the old PK threads) was postulating that JC's example about
:Bubba nuking a town would have no effect on the players in the town flagged
:as no-pk.  The problems with these flags immediately become apparent
:as soon as you have any sort of mildly complex and/or consistant world.
:Most no-pk muds get around this by having a simple world where the only
:way to actually hurt someone is to directly engage them in combat.

Actually, I think the original post was a joke. Wasn't there a winkie on it?

And I have killed many a non-PKer on one of those simple muds by less direct
means. Or many a PKer that was many levels higher than me. Means include:
combat grouping, then bailing just as the baddie was getting nasty; summoning
an aggie baddie (or fifty, as one P.O'ed imm did to all players online just
before deleting herself once); charming an aggie baddie; getting them to
chase you into an aggie baddie's lair; getting them to chase you into a DT
(both of these involve getting them chasing, then emoting the last exit);
getting them to enter a single exit, no recall room, with a one player only
room next door, then waiting half an hour, porting a stationary mob in with
me, and checking for the item for the next three days using scan (yes, I did
this. The player in question had an extremely valuable item, I was playing my
absolute nasty guy character, used another valuable item as bait (there's a
command to track things), then trapped them. After three days, they finally
gave up and suicided. I waited for the corpse to decay, then killed the mob, 
grabbed the item (once free it showed up on the scan) and hightailed. He
never did find out who had done him in. I left everything else for him to
recover, and alterted him to the fact with an anonymous note.); many other
ways. The moral? There's always a way around it.

:This is a valid issue, I'm not just trying to stir up the old PK war again.
:Some folks want to play a mud where it is impossible to hurt other players;
:is this possible to achieve in any sort of semi-complex or consistant
:game world?

IMNSHO, No. Absolutely not. Its only possible in a _talker_ if you get
technical, and once you get into simulated complex worlds... the only real
solution is the same as the one in the real world. Make death serious, and
hold trials for any death that is suspected of being intentional. And perhaps
have some sort of benign gods or technologies that are used to restore
victims of foul play (and those alone) to life once the fact has been
established. And anyone who has commited murder as a non-PK, or against one,
dies permanently. Of course, this leads back to corrupted legal systems. ;)

--

"You? We can't take you," said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian.
"You don't know a thing about guerilla warfare." - Reaper Man,
Nathan F. Yospe  Registered Looney                   by Terry Pratchett
yospe at hawaii.edu   http://www2.hawaii.edu/~yospe           Meow