[MUD-Dev] an essay on PK

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Chris Turner wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> [Example of Bubba getting his unsheathed weapons confiscated by guard]
> 
> Nice, if a little artificial.

When it comes to stuff like this, I like to follow K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple,
Stupid) - at least when suggesting ideas for other people's muds.  For
one, it makes them more likely to consider implementing it, as it's less
daunting.  Second, it offer fewer loopholes.  Players have a way of getting
past this stuff with alarming regularity.

I think it was the same mud where the guards would drag you in for having
bared weapons that people wanted to get the guard's equipment (they had
something reasonably good).  Of course, killing a guard made you an enemy
of the city.  So they'd fight them down to mortally wounded, then go and
sit in the other room and wait for them to die.

> I'd be kinda annoyed if the game didn't give
> me a chance not to lose the weapon or to dive past the guard.  But then I've
> never really like Diku's super level 200 invicible guards.

Hmmmm, in my experience the guards are way too wimpy.  You can usually
kill them with a backstab or so if they get in your way.

> I think it'd be
> more fun to be able to evade capture and have to flee through the city
> streets trying to find a safe haven (cos mobs shouldn't be able to
> automatically find you).

Well sure, I guess it depends how much work you want to put into it.
If you just want to try to make the town a little safer for stamp collectors
and tailors and then move onto writing a new zone or something, the above
is going to be a hell of a lot of overkill.

> Maybe players could set (a'la wimpy) something that states how aggressive
> they are so the game can respond accordingly to threatening acts.

Yeah, I've done this before, too.  On that mud, there were a lot of
'aggressive' acts you could perform on people that weren't combat.  For
example, socials had a "touch level".  Socials with a high tough value had
a good chance of conveying contageous disease (if either of the people
have such a thing), as well as being a good way for thieves to pickpocket
you.  In addition, people could wear cloaks (concealing their identity), and
you could type "uncloak" to try to yank down their hood and reveal them.
Each person sets their reaction level to such things - a very paranoid
person would set it at maximum and would dodge out of the way if anyone
tried to so much as shake their hand.  So you could easily apply that to
this situation.

Adam





_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev