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

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 27 Jul 1998 18:25:14 -0500 
Koster, Raph<rkoster at origin.ea.com> wrote:

> On Legend we had a vampire who lived in a church in Victorian
> London.  The entry to the church was locked. The entry to the church
> was hidden.  The door to the church automatically closed regularly,
> so that if it was left open, you wouldn't have good odds of
> stumbling across it.

> When you stepped thru the door, the vampire cackled, slammed it and
> locked it shut behind you, flew at you, poisoned you, weakened you,
> clumsied you, blinded you, and basically kicked your ass.

> A favorite sport was leading newbies from the inn to the door and
> saying, "Go on through, I'm right behind you!"

> Reprehensible? Sure. Valid? Erm... well, you could be roleplaying a
> callous, clever, cynical con man. Lord knows that plenty of players
> used this argument. Desirable in your game? That'd depend on the
> expectations of the game. On Legend, we warned and eventually banned
> people for it.  On UO, we tell them it's their lookout and not to be
> so trusting. If it happened to me on any Pern MUSH, I'd freak. It
> comes down to how much policing you want to do, and how much you
> dislike the behavior, and how much you value the ability to play con
> men, villains, etc.

The base question:

  How responsible do you hold individuals players for:

    a) ensuring that other players have fun (in acceptable manners)?

    b) ensuring that they don't hurt other player's (acceptable) fun?

The first question distinguishes between the social and the asocial,
the second between the social and the anti-social (where "social" is
defined as "condusive to acceptable group fun").

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...