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

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Greg Miller wrote:

> Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> > There is no BENEFIT to roleplay except that it is FUN. And when nobody 
> 
> And here we have a key problem. Getting back to the subject of player
> punishment, a role-play based solution only works if either [1] people
> are cooperating and you never had a problem to begin with or [2] you
> fall back to a brute force "behave or I delete you" system. Roleplay has
> no benefits normally for people who don't enjoy it, and few seem to
> enjoy it.

Then make some benefits. In Achaea, we encourage, but don't mandate
roleplaying, except on public forums (aside from the meets board). We have
a system of rolepoints. If shout out of role things, or post out of role
things on the news board, a God is likely to become annoyed and deduct
rolepoints from you. As your rolepoints go down, you lose more xp from
dying, and gain less from quests, killing, or doing anything else. You get
rolepoints back at the rate of one each day, provided you log on that day. 

I think both of you (Greg and Caliban) are arguing absolutist positions,
neither of which is likely to be enjoyed by a great majority of people, as
they are the extremes. In my experience, players like roleplay, but don't
want it enforced upon them. They make up descriptions for their characters
that aren't anything like what they look like irl, they act in ways they
wouldn't irl, etc. Most aren't going to bother with that fake medieval
brogue that people seem so fond of, but they love pretending to be a
paldin or a ninja or whatever providing they aren't forced to do it too
strictly. There's no reason that ooc and roleplay cannot co-exist.
--matt




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