[MUD-Dev] Capture of players. (was: Fair/Unfair? Scenarios)

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 9 Dec 1999 23:13:11 -0000 
Chris Lloyd <crl199 at soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> The thing is that being a slave to another character could rapidly
> become boring for the servant. 

I of course have (had) body stealing as a basic premise in my world, 
with a player able to steal the bodies of other players and NPC's
and add them to his own stable (and yes, end up controlling several
bodies simultaneously).  This was actually done as a simple
variation on supporting swarm bodies initially. 

However, and getting back back to the point, one stole bodies thru a
contest of wills (and occassionally magic), with the winner gaining
(or retaining) control of the body.  The interesting bit was that
this assumption of control need not be compleat.  It was a scale
with quite a few gradations.  

A player could steal a body, but would not necessarily not entirely
evisc the previous owner.  The previous owner would then be a rider,
able to see/hear/etc everything the body did, but generally unable
to affect to body in any manner.  In one way such partial ownerships
were a safety factor for players, as it was a perma-death system
with death concomittent upon losing all control of all bodies by
body death or being fully evicted by a body stealer.  In another way 
being a partial owner was a bitch:  Spammed by useless IO and unable 
to do much.

But there were caveats: Partial owners had an advantage, which
varied over time in wresting control of that body back, or in
stealling any other body owned by the character who had stolen
theirs.  Fiddle around too much however, and a partial ownership
would fade out to nothing (morale).

Additionally the game was setup to make partial ownership
advantageous in certain circumstances.  For instance I worked out a
few areas which were really only workable by one body working its
way in (more than one would get slaughtered) carrying multiple
partial owners who would then busily steal bodies once inside to
advance from there.

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
 


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