[MUD-Dev] Permadeath or Not?

[Jeff Freeman]

From: "Ananda Dawnsinger" <ananda at winterreach.com>

> And yet both Bartle and Trubshaw's original MUD and Gemstone III
> have forms of permanent death, unless I'm mistaken.  If it were true
> that nobody wants to play a perm-death game, I'm not sure how this
> industry managed to get off the ground.

For that matter, so do the vast majority of PnP RPGs, on which pretty much
all this stuff is based anyway.  I think maybe players ask for permanent
death because they want MUDs to be more like RPGs.

> Granted, in MUD you were only "dead dead" if PKed.  In GSIII you're
> only permanently dead if you run out of favors (which become
> increasingly expensive with level) and fail to be resurrected by a
> player... and even then I think there's a chance that the gods will
> take mercy on you and bring you back to life.  Fed II had real perm
> death when I played it briefly many years ago -- but it wasn't a
> primarily combat-oriented game.

Permanent death tends to be pretty rare in PnP RPGs, too.

> There are clearly ways of making perm death workable and palatable.
> Otherwise GSIII would never have drawn 3000 players a night.

I think dissociating a great deal of "character advancement" from the
character itself helps a lot (in addition to making sure that
permanent death is pretty rare).  While the characters aren't
disposable, the player doesn't "lose everything" when his character
dies.  He loses some stats (which he gets back later) and some gold
(which he gets back later).

> > A lot of them seem to want to throw in "Unrestricted PvP" to the
> > bargain.

We have "unrestricted PvP", but that doesn't mean it is without
consequences.  I think what the players are asking for is more control over
their world.  Meaning each other.

> >  It seems like this is yet another face of "Fantastic
> > Realism", people want a world that's like the real one as much as
> > possible, but without the boring parts.
>
> I can see how a world like that might be appealing.  You'd want to
> develop a design where player skill was more important than
> character skill, you'd end up with something that resembles
> persistent RP Quake/Heretic, and *I* wouldn't play it, but that
> doesn't make it a bad thing per se.

You lost me.  We have unrestricted PvP and permanent death but it isn't
anything like Quakeword, and PKing is roughly as common as it is on our "no
PKing allowed" mud.


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