[MUD-Dev] Fair/Unfair? Scenarios (fwd)

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Lucas Moten (Krozy) wrote:

>    > On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Mik Clarke wrote:
>    >> Inescapable areas are just bad design - the player should be
>    >> either dead or able to escape (or maybe be rescued by
>    >> someone with less than divine powers).  Getting trapped is a
>    >> real pain if you don't have a recall ability - if the mud also
>    >> doesn't do death from starvation/thirst then the only way to
>    >> return the character to play is through direct divine intervention
>    >> - which spoils the sense of belief in the world.  Role playing
>    >> someone trapped forever in a small dark cave is fun for about
>    >> 5 seconds...
> 
>    On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
>    > Unless you are in a permadeath game, getting trapped in a death
>    > trap does not entail not surviving. It's simply a setback (either
>    > minor or major), and players quickly realize this.
> 
> But is an unescapable setback "fair"? - In some sense, we can quickly
> justify this non-fairness by the way the real world works - life in itself
> isn't fair.  On the other hand, players are there for their enjoyment.  They
> expect adequate reasoning for a catastrophic event other then "hey - sh*t
> happens". To make an unescapable setback fair, warnings should be in place.

I am firmly in the fair-is-not-the-end-all-be-all-of-muds camp. Is it
"fair" to be killed by another player when you don't want to be? No. But
in my opinion, tough, AND good. I firmly believe that a little unfairness
is good to the game as a whole. Some individual users will suffer, but you
must break some eggs to make an omlette. I'm all about making things seem
serious and weighty, and a sugar-sweet world where bad things never happen
to good people isn't something I could take seriously as a player.


--matt




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