[MUD-Dev] Reputation & Trust Circles [was UO rants]

[Matt Chatterley]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, John Buehler wrote:
> 
> > There are some ugly results that have yet to be tackled:
> > 
> > 1. Loans of items must involve some kind of contract system that the game
> > can enforce.

An interesting point, which I've never considered, to be truthful. Its 
not too hard to envisage how a system might be set up for this. However, 
it can be simulated by players - you might ask for some collateral or a 
deposit on an item, and only return it when the item is given back, for 
instance. Of course, one of you can always rip the other off, which means 
that the only recourse is threat of force (much like in the real world, 
occasionally!), and I should observe that the game world which I was most 
recently involved in building was to have been set up in such a way that 
crimes are defined in a location dependant way. Eg:

If I rob you in a town, the guards will take a great interest.
If I rob you on a highway between two towns, the guards from either might 
be intersted - if it happened often, they might begin to mount patrols 
and enforce that area too (although smaller towns would not - their 
guards would be too few in numbers to judge it effective).
If I rob you in the middle of a forest, away from a town, the law will 
most likely have nothing to do with it.
 
> > 2. I can hand you an item under contract, then bolt, preventing you from
> > fulfilling the contract.  Next thing you know, we have arbitrage, with
> > gamemasters having to fill the job of mediator.
> > 
> > 3. It is a crime to assault another person, but not to defend one's self.
> > This says that my enemies can spend a long, long time preparing for their
> > assault on me, and I cannot take proactive steps to prevent them from
> > completing their plans - if my proactive steps involve assaulting them.

Noting the above clauses from my game concept, you simply wouldn't be 
able to do so in a town or other enforced/protected area. Since NPCs who 
are 'on your side' are available (as well as those that are neutral and 
hostile), you might make preparation by hiring a couple of bodyguards, 
going on the offensive, or even hiring an assassin, if you felt affluent 
enough.

I should add to the 'crime' definitions that in some lands, in addition 
to town guards who police individual cities and villages, the crown might 
take an interest in criminals of note, and dispatch his soldiers to 
investigate, or to temporarily protect an area which was suffering a 
crime spree. It all depends on the ruler, really.
 
> > 4. It is a crime to assault another person, but not to defend one's self.
> > Can I help defend others?  That involves some additional mechanism to
> > ensure that at the time of the crime, others can come along and help to
> > defend a victim from a criminal, but that open season isn't declared on
> > criminals at arbitrary times after the original assault.  I want to
> > avoid vigilantism.

This is definitely a problem, though. In the justice system which we had 
planned (only on paper; it hasn't been implemented in any way to this 
day), the guards (if they were around) would intervene to break up the 
fight, and then decide who was guilty of what later on. It might be that 
they found no witnesses, and charged all participants with causing 
affray, or they might notice that it was an attack, and so forth.

The combat system is/was set up to allow non-lethal fighting, too, making 
things such as tavern brawls possible within reason.
 
> > 5. Player bounty hunters are dangerous.  If there is reward in being a
> > player bounty hunter, we're right back to Ultima Online, with players
> > looking to hunting criminals as the way to become rich.

I don't really see the problem with player bounty hunters, as long as any 
advantages are weighed out by the difficulty of play/survival. A bounty 
hunter to my mind might find themselves with few friends, and only a 
couple of followers who are actually loyal. Displeasing the wrong person 
could prove a very big mistake.
 
> > All of these uglies have potential solutions.  The question is, is this
> > approach to limiting PvP crimes fundamentally and seriously flawed such
> > that no matter how much time is spent plugging holes, it will always
> > have more holes?
> 
> 
> John, if you (or anyone) could create a system like the above that I or
> any other reasonably intelligent person couldn't easily 'game', I'll
> worship you as a god. 
> 
> No one in real life has yet been able to create a legal code that defines
> with any serious level of detail (which is needed for a computer to model
> it) what a crime is. Take obscenity laws for instance. From my days
> studying law, I recall a Supreme Court case back in the 60s on obscenity.
> The court ruled that 'community standards' should have some influence, and
> admitted that while they couldn't define obscenity, 'they know it when
> they see it.' That is the case with a whole, massive range of 'crimes'. If
> the combined wisdom of 2500 years of serious philosophy is not enough to
> enable us to define in detail what a 'crime' is, what makes you think any
> of us can?

While this is true to an extent, I'd like to throw into the pot:

One of the reasons that defining laws in real life is that it is never 
trivial (and indeed often impossible) to collect the sort of information 
(evidence) which is available to you as a Mud Programmer.

You have the ability to *know* for *sure* who took which actions, in 
which order, upon whom, and when. Real courts, and real law officials 
have no such luxury.

-- Matt Chatterley
".. You live for the fight, when its all that you've got .."
		Jon Bon Jovi; Livin' on a Prayer, as always.




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