[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers

[Scatter]

Marian Griffith wrote:
>In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Wed 19 Aug, Scatter wrote:
>> Marian's Tailor Problem seems to me to be a case of "how do we enable
>> Buffy to prevent Bubba ruining her fun without ruining Bubba's fun when
>> both players are enacting different but valid facets of the game?"
>I actually was more concerned with  how to prevent the fighter spoiling
>the fun of the tailor without forcing the tailor to become a fighter in
>the process.

Granted, but equally why should a tailor be able to spoil the fighter's
fun? If both things are in the game, then both things should be fun for
the players (else their presence at all becomes pointless).

>> For the case in point, Buffy enjoys role-playing a tailor in a medieval
>> setting. Bubba enjoys role-playing a strong fighter in a medieval setting.
>> I'm assuming both Bubba and Buffy are valued players (i.e. you don't
>> particularly want either of them quit) and that you don't want to
>> drop either facet of the game (tailoring or fighting).
>Belief it or not,  but the medieval times were only as dangerous as the
>average mud in the fantasy of the players. People died early from a lot
>of causes, but rarely from combat.  

Real medieval cities were very likely less dangerous than those facsimiles
that exist in muds because they had laws and other mechanisms to protect
their citizens, because death was final and because there were very real
reasons for people to need the citizens of the cities. These are the kind 
of things I suggested should be implemented in muds to bring them closer
to the protection a tailor might have had in reality.

>> There are certain stipulations in that medieval setting though. By
>> chosing to play a mud with a medieval setting, Buffy has chosen to
>> allow medieval-type things to happen to her. Presumably if she wanted
>> to play in a safe environment, she wouldn't be playing a mud that
>> didn't provide one in the first place.
[snip]
>This is were I strongly disagree and why I asked the question that is
>now referred to as 'Marian's tailor problem'. The fact that I chose a
>medieval setting for a mud  has nothing whatshowever to do with  if I
>want a safe or dangerous environment. 

The fact you chose a mud that didn't provide a completely safe 
environment tells me that you didn't want a completely safe 
environment, and all my discussion and suggestions hinge upon
this. There are muds out there that provide safe non-combat 
medieval settings so if you wanted to be 100% safe, you'd have 
chosen one of those.

>I am not talking about roleplay (acting) games  but at a ultima like 
>game where I can chose not to be a fighter.

Assuming you are not a medieval tailor in real life, any game you
play where you can assume the role of a medieval tailor is a roleplay
game - no? There are many different levels of roleplay ranging from
100% consensual where nothing happens to you unless you agree to it -
as in some mushes and the like, ranging down to the "imposed world 
mechanics" type as implemented in most dikus, LPs etc. I would guess 
Ultima to fall into the latter catagory - you play a role as 
restricted by the way their world works.

[snip]
>> There's now a question of motivation -
>> there may nothing wrong with this if it is valid, in-theme, in-character
>> roleplay - for example if Buffy had previously done something to insult
>> Bubba or one of his friends or followers and Bubba was exacting revenge.
>I think being killed is rather a extreme reaction to a result. 

So do I. However, if I insulted a high level mafia member I wouldn't be
surprised to find killers after me. Similarly if I insulted the head of
the local Free Mason's lodge I wouldn't be surprised if my little shop
started to be mysteriously squeezed out of business.

[snip]
>> I think the core of the tailor problem is in the valid, in-character
>> motivations, because these require game-world mechanisms and can't
>> be dismissed so easily.
>The IC motivations already are suspect  if the attacker forces -his-
>playing on somebody else who may not be interested in it. -He- feels
>that he is roleplaying properly  but the tailor still feels her game
>is ruined.  

I agree with what you are saying here. The question is how to reduce
the risk to the tailor without making the fighter's playing invalid.
If you've added code to your game to allow players to take up other
professions than combat, then you need to add code to ensure that they
can take up those professions without needing combat. I don't think
it's a good answer to stick in artificial restrainsts like "you are
a fighter so you may not attack anyone who isn't a fighter". Instead
you need mechanisms like those I suggested to make it un-rewarding
to attack non-combatative players.

>She has neither the skill nor the motivation  to prevent
>this kind of things from happening and frankly I strongly believe it
>is not -her- job to prevent it anyway.

I agree. 

[snip]
>> What in-character, in-setting methods can be put in place
>> that will allow Buffy respite from such attacks without requiring her
>> to become a tougher fighter than Bubba?
>>
>> (I don't consider the options of simply blocking player-killing and
>> player-stealing because they are out-of-character, artificial methods
>> which block valid roleplay situations.
>
>Actually I would not since they obviously work. Leaving only the inten-
>tional harassment to be dealt with.

They obviously work, but they change the nature of your world completely.
They divide your world into "real people" and "fake people" and thus
encourage players to consider most of your worlds population to be
unimportant and irrelevant and weakens the suspension of disbelief
involved in being a part of the world. As in "I can steal from this
person easily, but with this person some mysterious force makes it
impossible..."

Adding non-combat roles to play should not require that you remove the
combat roles, IMO.

>> Besides, as I mentioned above,
>> Buffy has specificly chosen to play her tailor on a mud that
>> allows this sort of thing rather than on a "safe" mud.)
>I honestly do not see this as a justification for attacking anybody.

It's not a justification for attacking a tailor. "Because I can" is not
a good enough reason for PK and I would count it as OOC. On the other
hand I do feel that if Buffy wanted to be 100% proof against PK then
she wouldn't be playing a PK mud in the first place.

>> So, what mechanisms could/should be implemented to enable Buffy to
>> protect herself from attack?
>>
>> Buffy could hire a guard to protect her shop. Of course this would
>> require that the shop make enough money to pay the guard, and that
>> the guard is tough enough to be a deterrent for Bubba. Depending on
>> setting details, she may be able to hire a mage to protect her
>> shop and property with various spells.
>
>I think this is something the game should do automatically.  Being a
>tailor is fun  but running an actual business  just so you can run a
>shop may not be that much fun, especially if this is drudge work you
>have to do because there is no other way to protect you from others.
>I do admit however that this is a weak argument.

I guess this is an implementation & balance issue. If the shops have
been implemented in a way that requires you to purchase or pay rent
on the property, purchase your materials and sell your product then
I don't see any real problem with having to pay a guard if you want
one. The payment could be made sufficiently low as to be a token
payment if needed. If shops are implemented so that you can set them
up and run them yourself at no real cost then Bubba's raid is not
really going to be much bother - it might be annoying but it's not
actually costing you anything (except any penalties resulting from
death of course).

>> Or indeed she may be able to
>> draw on player friends to do these tasks for her, for free. This
>> could be a problem when she's just starting out and doesn't know
>> anybody and/or can't afford much.
>The problem is aggravated by the fact that the would be attacker has
>very little to lose in a fight but the tailor will lose a lot.

There are two ways to tackle this - make the fighter have more to
lose and make the tailor lose less. Laws, clans, contracted assassins,
guards all help to make the fighter lose more. Safes, locks, seperate
warehouses for materials all help to make the tailor lose less. Put
together, these help to make an attack upon the tailor much less
worthwhile. They don't make an attack impossible in some big OOC
artifical way like a PK block, they instead make it unlikely through
making in un-rewarding. By making it unrewarding you significantly
reduce the chances of an IC attack. 

>> In-theme law can be used to discourage such attacks on good citizens
>> of the city. Bubba might have a valid roleplay grudge against Buffy
>> but he's also much less likely to carry out an attack in a place where
>> guards are likely to respond quickly to disturbances and punishments
>> for crimes are strong enough to deter.
>Which still means less to Bubba than it means to his victims.

Why should public execution of Bubba mean less to him than Buffy's death?

>A new fighter character is easier to create than building up a social net-
>work that is needed to play a tailor.

Well this depends upon the game in question. However, I would expect that
the time needed to build up a powerful fighter character would be greater
than that needed to pick up tailoring skills. This only really counts if
death is permenant though.

>> In a medieval setting, the
>> penalty for murder is likely to be execution - the possible penalties
>> involved in death could potentially be more detrimental to a fighter
>> than to a tailor (e.g. stat reductions are common).
>Seeing that the fighter can easily create an entirely new character

Not if the game requires him to spend many hours training it to bring
it up to scratch.

>but that Buffy must play on with her own character  (that still could die a
>lot because of all these attacks on her shop)  this may easily be worse
>for the victims than for the attackers.

Are all these attacks coming from different people? If all from Bubba then
such repeated attacks would be considered by me to be OOC harrassment and
dealt with as such. I don't believe there would be many attacks by different
players if murder lead to execution. No player wants to sacrifice their
life just to kill off a tailor. A dragon maybe, but a tailor? If murder
in a city has severe consequences, then players will avoid murdering people
in cities. If Bubba is repeatedly killing Buffy with successive new
characters, again it becomes OOC harrasment. Bubba should then be banned
from the game and blocked from creating new characters.

[snip banishment from the city and revenge methods like clans
 and contracted assassins]
>I agree that the only real solution can be found through social mech-
>anmisms. And I also think that something must be done to give these a
>chance to form  in the online community.  In a free for all situation
>there is no real hope fo a society forming.

I think if you are providing a city and providing mechanisms for
trade, crafts and professions then you need to provide these social
mechanisms as far as possible. That means code support and NPC aids
to them.

I think you'd need a huge population which relied on non-combat trades 
to keep it alive to hope for mechanisms to evolve by themselves. At the
very least there must be a need for the profession under attack which
cannot be filled in other ways.

As an example, a mud I play on occasionally has a mechanism which allows
limited "hostile" interaction between players (e.g. stealing, teleporting
etc) but prevents outright combat. Some player thieves began stealing
regularly from player healers, knowing that if they were in the process
of casting healing spells they were unable to respond to the theft until
the spell was complete - by which time the thief was long gone and hidden.
The healers were outraged and decided they would retaliate by refusing
to heal thieves. It didn't work for them because there was one healer 
who was friendly with the thieves and happily sold them healing services.

For it to have worked there would have had to be some way to force that
one healer to stop healing thieves - for example a mechanism whereby
the healer could be cast out of the priesthood for disobeying
directives of the high priests (thus removing her healing abilities).
Without this, the social mechanisms just can't work.

>> There is a compromise here in how much this restricts Bubba's enjoyment
>> of being a thug and killing who he pleases.
>Since his play has the tendency to  annoy a number of players entirely
>out of proportion to his enjoyment I tend to think not much concern is
>needed for this kind of players.

This depends entirely on how (well) he (role)plays his thug. On the
one hand I believe that if the mud provides being a thug as a valid
role, then enjoyment of that role should be protected just as much
as enjoyment of any other provided role, like being a tailor. If he's
using "being a thug" as an excuse for repeatedly annoying people then
IMO he's not really roleplaying and I'd consider it OOC harrassment.

However, the role of being a thug should be implemented fully enough
that the drawbacks of being a thug are also present - e.g. annoying
other thugs and getting killed, getting arrested and punished,
being generally reviled in civilised areas and not trusted, having
others carrying out revenge attacks upon you and so on.

>> I think that as long as your game and setting allow a certain style
>> of play, and there is an element of realism in that style of play
>> then you need to make sure that the setting is realised in sufficient
>> detail that the style of play in question is rewarding. That means
>> providing appropriate social measures to protect certain play styles
>> from being overly spoiled by other play styles but at the same time
>> it means making sure that those other play styles are still enjoyable
>> even with those measures in place.
>
>Which still leaves the question: How do you arrange this?

I'm not sure what you are asking. You arrange this by designing
appropriate measures as part of the process of designing a new 
style of play. Working out what measures are needed and which 
are successful may be a case of trial and error for a while as 
the new style of play is introduced.

--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\