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

[quzah]

[Self made attribution line]:

On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, JC Lawrence <claw at under.engr.sgi.com> wrote:


>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


[Snip a bit about Legend's vampire...]

>> 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.

Thinking about this a bit leads me to the next statement: Why would you
put this into a game if you didn't want people to sucker someone into
said room? It's perfect for that. I guess you could argue, why allow
death if you don't want someone to get suckered into dying. The banning
I am not fond of, but I can see reason for it. However, wouldn't it be
better to avoid the situation all together? The room is like adding
death traps to muds. -- I am not fond of death traps, but admit, that
traps indeed are fun. Especially if you are on the giving end.

Pirate had the lay trap ability. Upon x level of ability, you could lay
traps down that would smack anything that entered the room. It was fun
to stand atop a shaft, and drop them to the rooms below. Any wandering
about would hit them... One such shaft led into the dwarven mines, and
the daycare area. Standard newbie-ish zones. Even funner was to stand
in the bottom of the shaft hidden, while your pal dropped them into the
room from above. That way, you could actually be IN the room when some
person hit them. You never triggered them on exiting a room, so you
were safe from, since they didn't check for setting the trap off when
the trap itself entered the room, just when players/mobs entered.
(If I ever remember my password, I may have to go back and wander
around again.)


>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").

In answer to 'a': Personally as a player, I don't feel I should have
to make the game fun for the other players. When I used to mud, I went
there to have fun, but not necessarily to make sure the others around
me had fun. If they had fun also, that was a I guess good side effect,
however, if they did not, that wasn't my concern. [But that's just how
I played, and not a representation of the mud world, as I'm sure there
are a lot more friendlier players -- again, I don't mud.]

As a designer -- sounds important anyway -- I feel that as long as I
personally enjoy creating the game for the players, then I would also
try to ensure their enjoyment of the enviornment.

In answer to 'b': As a player, I tend[ed] to ignore this all together.
Unless rules were set aside saying, "Don't slaughter people." Then I
wouldn't go out of my way to ensure their safety. -- I'm antisocial,
and seldom group. However, if I was actually in a group, then I would
do, to the best of my character's ability, not forsaking my own safety,
try to ensure their safety as well.

As a designer, again, as long as I thing the game is fun to develop,
I would encourage players to not slaughter eachother. Also, I would
hope that the players who wanted to socialize and group or whatever
would actively do so. Also, I would do my best to ensure that those
like myself who don't overly like grouping would be able to play the
game and not feel they had to group to be able to do something. I
hated playing where you had to group or everything was too powerful
for you to go anywhere.

At any rate, there's a long ramble on sort of related-ness.
-Q-