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

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Philip Loguinov -- Draymoor wrote:

> 
> From: J C Lawrence <claw at cp.net>
> 
> >  I can log on, get together with a couple mates, define ourselves
> >as the sole members of a new society which we define, go out in the
> >boonies and declare some area our new empire, write a set of laws of
> >our devising and capriciousness in respect to our society and which
> >will only be applied to interactions with members of our society,
> >define a justice process as ludicrous and impractical as we may care
> >for that society, and then enact them -- all without ever requiring
> >the presence or cooperation of an admin in any regard?
> 
> 
> Aside from the part about automatic detection, i think this is perfectly
> fine.
> Any person or group can declare themselves the sole ruler and law of any
> given region. Just as IRL, i could declare myself dictator of australia.
> Now,
> the problem here is that, while i can declare whatever i want, i nead a way
> of enforcing it (this is why i'm excluding the automation part, which i'm
> against anyway). For example, I play a druid on Achaea and as such get to
> choose a room as my "grove." Please correct me if i'm wrong Matt, but if
> i was powerfull enough, could i not declare certain laws on people who are
> in and arround that grove? As long as i could enforce it, it would be law.

You are entirely correct. Some of you may have heeard of Emperor Norton.
He was this guy in San Francisco awhile ago (maybe 80 years ago? I can't
remember). He declared himself Emperor, passed laws, etc. Of course, he
had no power to enforce these, so they meant nothing (although the press
did humour him after awhile and started publishing his decrees). And yes,
you are also correct about your grove in Achaea. You most certainly could
do just what you describe.


> I like the idea of false accusations and threats and all, but theres a
> little
> caveat with your system. Every time, every person will be found guilty
> by every person who is not friends with him. Why? because they get
> his stuff! If you reward people for saying a person guilty, it will be a
> rare
> case for anyone to be found innocent.

Right. You end up with a totally predictable system, which is just a
method for transferring stuff from the haves to the wanna-haves. I'm
pretty sure that would end up just annoying our players, though I
certainly have been wrong before about what they would and wouldn't like.


> >Yup, thus my justice system.
> 
> 
> I wouldn't exactly call it justice, just another way to screw people over.
> Neads lawyers and a judge, and no reward for any of them (oh, and not
> random jurors either). Furthermore, i would get rid of the automation,
> especially the teleport. If you want to bring people to justice, you have to
> catch them and subdue them, or if they are already proved guilty, kill them.

Right, exactly. The teleport is my basic complaint about JC's system.
--matt




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