[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Matt Chatterley]

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On 30-Jun-98 Richard Woolcock wrote:
> Koster, Raph wrote:
>> 
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Dan Shiovitz [SMTP:dbs at cs.wisc.edu]
>> > Sent: Monday, June 29, 1998 12:32 PM
>> > To:   'mud-dev at kanga.nu'
>> > Subject:      [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun
>> >
>> > On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:

[Snipple]

>> Players could outfox the guards fairly easily (the pathfind isn't THAT
>> smart), never mind teleportation and other similar problems. And they
>> slay in one blow because given more blows, the player can indeed
>> teleport away. If your crooks can teleport away, they will do so every
>> single time, making the "safety" of towns a mockery and undermining
>> confidence in the administration.
> 
> Why not enable the guards to prevent teleporting?  This could be through 
> something as simple as throwing a net over the target, although my mud
> uses various spells such as Web, Jail of Water, Arms of the Abyss, etc
> to hold people in place.
> 
> You could even make the entire town anti-magic, although I imagine this 
> would result in a lot of complaints ;)

Yup to all the above. Of course players possess inate advantages over the
guards - the players have far more resources available. The solution? If an NPC
can't match a PC for cunning, deviousness, manipulation of circumstances, then
replace the NPC *with* a PC.

This has a lot of problems (and benefits) associated with it, of course (given
an 'action game' setting, rather than purely Roleplay), but also brings in some
very nice socially dynamic elements to play about with.

- ---
        -Matt Chatterley
        http://user.itl.net/~neddy/
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.." -John Lennon (Imagine)

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