[MUD-Dev] players who "take away from the game"

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 9 Nov 1999 16:26:11 -0800 (PST) 
Matthew Mihaly <diablo at best.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Nov 1999 18:08:13 -0800 Daniel James <dan at thecan.org>
>> wrote:

>> Precisely.  And even when they fail at that task, they give a
>> target, a scapegoat, and a common enemy for your players.  The
>> trick here of course is ensuring that that emnity does not
>> generalise from the "problem player" to the game admins.

> Well, when the admins do nothing to stomp on the sort of problem
> player we are talking about (ie ooc jerks) then the emnity WILL
> end up on the admins, as they are shirking their duty to the
> world. If you run an rpg, people who are obnoxious out of role
> simply have no place.

Unless the players are individually responsible for such militancy?

> Basically, the problem I see with formally instituting detection
> methods is that very very few crimes can be automatically
> detected. For instance, let's say the law is: No murdering of
> innocents. How is the system to define innocents?  Or what if the
> law is that one may not attack a fellow citizen unless that
> citizen has insulted your honour first. I don't see how a system
> can be coded to automatically detect such things. The rulers of
> most of our guilds and cities have written up codes, but just like
> in real life, events are never black and white. That's why human
> judges exist.

Yup.  This is why you institute human report and instigation methods 
as well. All of this also gives me yet another opportunity to roll
out my favourite justice system:

  "Crimes" would be deliberately vaguely defined.

  The system would erraticly and unpredictably cycle between
ultra-strict enforcement and ultra-relaxed enforcement of crime
detection.

  An increased percentage of guilty verdicts would tend to sway the
system towards stricter enforcement.

  Users can report crimes to the system.  

  Depending on the above, not all reports would be acted upon.

  The system would internally detect crimes.  This would take place
via mobiles or other similar coded systems viewing a crime in progress
or the results of a crime.

  Again, not all would be acted upon.

  All crimes would be recorded and tagged against the assumed perp (DB
rollbacks are wonderful).

  Upon a crime handling being started, the assumed perpetrator would
be charged with all the unresolved and unhandled crimes against his
name.

  Crime handling would be specific to various societies. 

  Societies would be user defined, but system administered (membership
primarily).  

  Upon a criminal handling commencing, a random selection of the
currently logged in members of the society in question would be tagged
as jurors.  

  The jurors would be told that the system will teleport them to a
court room at a pre-defined time (30 RL mins later) in the future to
stand judgement.

  The juror list is openly published at the same time.

  The accused is informed that he is accused and when the trial will
be.

  Jurors may sell or transfer their juror position to any other
society member, including the accused, prior to the trial.

  Death or non-attendance of all jurors prior to a trial defaults to a
not-guilty verdict.

  The case of all the jurors being the accused defaults to a
non-guilty verdict.

  Non-attending jurors are tagged with the crime of non-attendance,
and may or may not be called to stand trial for that crime.

  The courtroom consists of a room containing four areas:

    1) A exitless pen which contains the accused, suitably immobilised
(ie he has no control over his character other than speech).

    2) An open pen marked "Guilty".  

    3) An open pen marked "Innocent".

    4) A free space surrounding the guilty/innocent pens.

  The guilty and innocent pens each contain a single button marked,
"Verdict".

  The courtroom has no entrances and no exits.  There is no possiblity
to view an in-progress court case unless one of the jurors brings in a
remote camera object.

  Shortly before the trial commences all jurors are so warned.

  Upon the trial commencement all jurors are teleported to the open
free area of the courtroom, and the accused is immobilised and put in
the pen.

  Jurors are teleported with everything they happen to be carrying at
that time.

  There are no controls and no supervision of what happens in the
courtroom.  

  Crimes in the courtroom are not recorded.
    
  The verdict is determined by all surviving jurors gathering in a
single pen, guilty or innocent, and the verdict button being pushed.

  If the verdict is innocent, the accused is freed, and the jurors
returned to the locations they were summoned from.  Any dead/injured
jurors remain dead/injured etc.  EQ is left where it was at the
instant the button was pushed.

  Any EQ left in the courtroom is given to the accused.

  If the verdict is guilty the innocent pen dissappears, and the
guilty pen is renamed "penalised".  The accused's EQ is made
available to the jurors to do with as they wish (ie everything he is
carrying or in a location he controls).  If one of the crimes is
deemed suitably serious, the accused's stats are made available to
the jurors for editing as they wish (some range limits).

  Guilty processing terminates when all surviving jurors enter the
penalising pen and the button is pressed.

  Any EQ left in the courtroom when the button is pressed and all
jurors teleported back is given to the accused.

It should be amusing at the least, wonderfully chaotic at best, and
intensely unfair and primitive at its ideal scene.

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


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