[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor vs. Psychopaths

[Adam Wiggins]

On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Hal Black wrote:
> 1. Allow the psychopaths to be psychopaths.  Let the player play an ork or a
> goblin chieftain.  This certainly helps with the identification problem.
> Also, it helps the game a lot in that law-abiding citizens can have more
> intelligent evil enemies to fight (heh, maybe more intelligent... Let's just
> say more variety in enemies... 8').

As usual, I'll take exception to the term 'psycopath', but since I can't
think of a better one right off hand, I'll leave it be.

Anyhow, I wanted to point out that a similar (although not identical) tack
was taken on some of the older whitie vs. darkie muds.  The one I had the
most direct experience with was Mortal Conquest.  In the first couple of
weeks of the muds existence, the darkies were quite hidden.  Many players
didn't even know they existed.  There were two darkie races, and they were
buried in the list of fourty-something player races.  Playing a darkie was
extremelly difficult; the towns had far fewer resources, there were
darkie-agro mobs wandering all over the map (especially the dreaded
Rangers), darkies had access to fewer skills and spells, etc.  But any
player that wanted to be able to PK with impunity chose darkie.  Typically
there were 6 to 20 darkies online at any given time, compared with 50 to
100 whities.  Whities usually travelled in groups of twenty or more
outside the town walls.  Darkies, wishing to do that which they do best
(cause havoc), could assault a huge group like this with an organized
group of six or eight, take out a couple of the whities, grab the loot,
and be off before the whities managed to organize themselves.  Of course,
it was very risky - if the group was ready for you, a full on slaughter of
the darkie group was not uncommon.

Many players were heard to comment that the mud had the 'most vicious AI
ever'.  (Note that players were not flagged as such to players of the
opposing side; they just saw "A lumbering troll", "A squat orc", etc)

Tons of fun.  Most whities lived their lives in relative safety (thanks to
their huge numbers).  Being a darkie was difficult and frustrating - it
felt much like the whole word was against you, and it was.  But for this
reason the darkie 'society' evolved to be a much more coherent and
friendly group with one another, whereas the whities were always more
disjointed and less in touch with one another.  Needless to say, I spent
almost all my time as a darkie.

I guess my point being that if you're trying to protect against
'psycopaths', meaning people that just want to cause as much pain to
others as possible, this doesn't help.  If you really want to maximize
the pain you inflict in a scenario like this, you'll choose to be a whitie
(which is much easier anyways) and then just manipulate things more
subtley to cause your fellows woe.

But if you are more concerned about those that enjoy playing in a
dangerous world and who look for the most intense challange availible on a
given mud, this works *extremely* well.

Adam