[MUD-Dev] Re: evil - good realism

[Brandon A Downey]

Vladimir Prelovac wrote:

> I've got this question. Suppose I make a perfect, realistic mud, and have
> dark and light races conflicting over the ages. Player can choose to play
> either one, and the final goal  of the game is that your race finnaly
> rules the land.  Ok, trouble:

Just for the record, these sorts of conflicts always remind me of that old
Star Trek episode, where there were two races, both black on one side, white
on the other, with the only difference being which side was which. At the
time, it was a mockery of racism - but in a roleplaying setting, it always
rang a little hollow with me. Good is not the absence of light, that sort of
thing.

>
>
> Most of the items in the game that evil folks wear and use are marked
> !GOOD (for those not familiar, it means that good aligned people cant wear
> or use that item). And the other way around. For reality's sake, I would
> certainly prohibit good people killing good people, and evil killing evil,
> forcing the war between good and evil. Thats nice. But most of the things
> good players would then get would have !GOOD flag on it! And the other way
> around. How ironic!
>

I think the presumption here (and a number of people have pointed this out) is
that most fantasy universes, even high magic ones, do not have every other
item being an epic item of good or evil. I might also point out that this
doesn't prevent a lot of places from doing it anyway.

> Ok, suppose I can say there will be !GOOD and !EVIL flags on things. But
> its not realistic that evil necron would use templar's great sword
> (although players would, because the sword is so great), or  elf wearing
> orc leather jerkin of power.
>

It's odd that you're willing to stop good players from killing other good
players (some sort of nod to roleplaying, but not really the way to do it,
imho), but you are considered about the utility of items. If the mud was just
roleplaying, your paladins should probably just take heart in having slaying
foul necromancers, rather than plundering their material goods - but then
again, why do you have the playerkilling? Is it just to give a tangible sense
of your player's roles being carried to their logical conlusions, or is it
also, as you imply, a means of redistribtuing in-game wealth?

Someone mentioned sacrificing these items to the gods - why not make that a
formal in-game gold. High-powered good/evil mobs would give out quests for the
most powerful good/evil items in the game, giving a sense of both in-character
and out-of-character reasons for wanting to nail your opponent.

One thing that always troubled me as a player was the preponderance of
good-only objects on good-aligned monsters. How should a good player go about
trying to get these things? A solution I like is a 'request' system, where
every so often, a player can request an item off of a good monster ("I truely
need your sword, sir knight") - with limitations on how often you can do it,
and the power level of the monsters/items in questions (Sure, you can ask that
little boy for his sling shot, but what about Merlin for his wand?). You could
take a system like this, and couple it with built in bounties on the items
evil people carry.

/begin_ramble

Then again, what if you have items that become more (in)famous, the more often
they are used to do great thing? That's sort of a side note, but it's an odd
sort of twist on items that decay with use - if they're used to do legendary
things, maybe they tend to get blessed by the gods, or are perceived to be
more powerful, and do more things.

/end_ramble


Brandon