[MUD-Dev] The Relationship between pkers and monster AI?

[Adam Wiggins]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> My problem with that is that generally there is no way to one-up the
> justice system. Fantasy muds generally take as their model some sort very
> fictionalized medieval or classical setting. In these time periods, there
> was never any sort of over-arching justice system that was particularly
> effective. It was easy to get away with murder, etc. I guess I don't see
> why a justice system would be at all effective in the wilderness where
> there are no witnesses, for instance.

For what it's worth, Arctic MUD (mud.arctic.org 2700) has a pretty excellent
justice system.  Basically it's like this: if you commit some sort of
PvP action in town, the authorities come after you.  You usually have
to pay a hefty fine and sit in jail for some (rather large) amount of
time.  If the crime is serious enough, they will simply execute you outright.

Note that this only applies *in town*.  Once you're out in the wilderness it's
free reign, and the justice stuff does not carry over from town to town.
(Unlike most MUDs, Arctic does not have a "central" town - there are six
major towns and as many minor ones, so staying out of one particular town
is annoying but not impossible.)

As a result, hanging out in town is pretty safe, even though it is not
necessarily 100% safe.  There's plenty to do in most of the towns, so
paranoid players can solo in town and stick with large groups when they
leave.

In addition, it's somewhat interesting to have these outlaws - people who
are wanted in several towns, and as such are forced to stick to the
outback, so to speak.  Naturally it tends to make people not trust them
very much, and rightly so.

Of course, Arctic is the perfect antithesis to all the anti-PK talk on this
thread.  They've had basically unrestricted PK/psteal/whatever there
and have managed to remain extremely popular for the six years or so
they've been running.  The justice system was only implemented about three
years ago, and I would hardly say it was sorely needed, just a nice add-on.

Adam





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