[MUD-Dev] curses and grief players

[Greg Miller]

It's been a while since I was last subscribed to the list (due in large 
part to problems with Mozilla undeleting old messages), and I've worked 
some more on my approach to dealing with grief players, so before I ask 
for suggestions, here's a brief summary of the system as it stands now:

(1) Limited lives: I've taken a page from the DW mudlib's book here. I 
saw this in action on Realm of the Dragon and liked the way it worked. 
Death has few penalties if it doesn't happen often, but can be used to 
force a player to delete if he's sufficiently unpopular with other 
players. It also eats up some cash.

(2) Curses: I haven't seen this one on any other muds, so if you know of 
one, I'd love to see it. I'm allowing players to put curses on anyone 
they have a name for (note that I'm using an introduction system, so you 
can only curse someone who's introduced himself, to whom you've assigned 
a nickname, or who has killed or cursed you) that last indefinately. 
They only take effect when the curser is logged in and do not have 
severe effects. A given player can have only one active curse on a 
single target, and can only curse a limited number of people. As a 
result, players will eventually need to forgive and forget old disputes 
in order to deal with new ones. Randomly cursing lots of people 
shouldn't be very effective as a harassment tool, since you can't harm 
them severely with one curse, yet they can cripple you since they have 
the advantage of numbers. Curses don't require hunting down the victim, 
so there should be no problem with powerful, skilled players being 
immune (which is a big problem with pk as an enforcement tool).

Now here are my questions:

Do you see any big problems or loopholes here that I haven't noticed?

Are any systems similar to curses in use on any muds?

Anybody got any good, creative curses I could implement?
--
http://www.classic-games.com/              http://www.indie-games.com/
Smarter than God? No, but I'm smarter than he was when he was my age.
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