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

[Brandon J. Rickman]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, 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.

I have been avoiding this topic [for months] because there seems to be
little prospect of progress for what is now the pro-tailor/anti-fighter
camp.  Well, time to throw my hat in the ring (as opposed to throwing down
my glove, a decidedly aggressive gesture).  There are too many wanna-be
computer science majors raised on "traditional" role-playing games trying
to develop muds, leading to an overwhelming emphasis on aggression and
combat as _fundamental_ elements for muds.  When games are geared so that
it is easy and profitable to be a fighter there should be no surprise when
that particular activity is dominant.  Even though there is no need to
defend the "fun of being a fighter", fighter activity is constantly being
defended in this thread with no explicit justification.  Solutions that
make the game less fun [for fighters] or make the game less realistic [for
fighters] are rejected out of hand. 

Let us do away with market research for the moment.  Someone will
invariably comment that it is all the little boys with cash in hand who
drive the computer game market.  While that is a valid commercial reason
for violent games it doesn't particularly satisfy cultural or social
demands.

I will propose some priorities for how to develop a combat-unfriendly mud
environment:

1) Minimize the ability of players to critically disable (i.e. maim,
cripple, or kill) other players.

2) Maximize the difficulty for player actions that directly harm other
players.

3) Eliminate the rewards for pro-active violence against all creatures.

Comments:

These are numbered priorities; 1 is more important than 2 and 2 is more
important than 3. 

1 is not a pure anti-PK rule, but rather the critical injury of one player
by another should be an extremely rare case.  This may mean:

- Preventing a critical blow by some kind of external intervention (the
attacker is disabled by acute stomach cramps).
- Limiting one-on-one interactions (if a fighter is in a player's shop,
have an NPC customer conveniently stop by.)
- delude the attacker by declaring the victim dead when they have only
fainted with minor injuries.

This isn't intended to prevent sophisticated methods of player killing
(Damion Schubert posted an interesting list the other day) but to make it
a difficult and very risky challenge.

The second priority is basically to take the fun out of player combat.
Make quality weapons hard to obtain and keep.  Make the skill curve very
steep.  More important is to limit the basic ability of players to attack
other players.

In the Chill character creation system there are two related disabilities,
Won't Harm (+6) and Won't Kill (+3).  When you take them you get extra
points to spend on stats/skills, and usually you can buy them off after a
session or two (someone with Won't Harm might move to Won't Kill after
being attacked by various horrible monsters).  If this system were in
place for all new characters then the newbie urge to "go out and kill
something" is frustrated.  Player aggression must be justified through the
player's experience in the mud.

Thus to create a new fighter character, the player must knowingly put
himself in a dangerous and unpleasant environment, provoking attacks on
himself to gain resolve for violence.  The new fighter is then frustrated
in obtaining skills and equipment for his chosen occupation.

Start fighters at a pre-adolescent age.  The character must wait until
they are physically mature enough to lift a sword.  None of this "I grew
up on the streets, I know how to fight" stuff, the character hasn't grown
up anywhere yet.

The last priority is to prevent the weirdness of encouraging players to go
about decimating rabbits/sheep/mold while discouraging them from
attacking each other.  To slaughter an animal - to prepare it as food - is
fine.  Defensive wilderness skills are fine.  "I'm gonna go out and kill
everything that moves" skills are not.

A player hacking at a deer with a sword is not going to get a usable hide.
The purse of the innocent but now dead goblin was torn during the attack
and all the gold fell through a hole in the ground.

More comments:

Anyone who to tries really really hard to be a fighter can eventually
develop into a very skilled and dangerous player.  One hopes that the time
and effort required will also make him a sophisticated player as well.

If all it takes to be a fighter is knowing the right commands and a small
loan from the fighting collective then I don't think there is much chance
of encouraging any variety of non-combat activity.

The easiest route to learning how to fight may well be by becoming a
tailor.  If a tailor suffers from attacks and extortion he would quickly
gain the resolve to fight back if he chose.  (But then there is more
potential for drama, for unexpected twists and character development.)

Priority conflicts:

I say these are priorities because just about any implementation of the
above would conflict with the most popular de facto priority: the purity
of the simulation.  Online human nature doesn't seem to recognize (or
care about) this purity; when a player is told "the letter 'k' by itself
may be used as a shortcut for the 'kill' command" any concern for
simulation is shadowed by the combat-oriented character of the game.
That is not to say that a combat mud is the unavoidable product of a pure
simulation, there are too few uncompromised simulations to know what form
they could eventually take.  Regardless, simulation gives a nice argument
for the purity of combat, indirectly emphasizing combat and role of
fighters in a game.  To de-emphasize combat, what better way than to break
the expectations of those who by default choose fighter roles?

Well that is probably enough for this little manifesto.  

- Brandon Rickman - ashes at zennet.com -
While I have never previously found a need for a .sig, this
may be considered one for the purposes of this list