[MUD-Dev] curses and grief players

[John Buehler]

Malcolm Valentine
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 3:12 AM

> (John)
> >   It sound like there's a difference of degree here.  I would
> > say that interactions with the player base should simply be done
> > with an attitude of respect, fairness and all those other goodness
> > and light things that are symptomatic of the weak - but using all
> > the brains and skills that you have in your arsenal to do so.  The
> > examples presented in a prior post of letting people believe things
> > that are absolutely false is not an example of what I would consider
> > a healthy and useful way to interact with a player base.
> 
>   Is this last sentence the heart of the matter? There are many reasons
> for the admin to actively promote a "lie" to the players' characters,
> as the line of player/character is so finely drawn this is obviously
> going to bleed over to directly lying to the players. Any admin who
> installs something against an "un-doctored" majority vote by whatever
> means (claiming it was "voted" for) is likely to find the majority
> will enforce their vote by going elsewhere.

  I read this a couple times, but you lost me.  If you're not interested
in the results of players' votes, why are you having voting?  Voting
immediately suggests democratic rule, which is apparently not the case.
This is the exact sort of disrespect that I'm talking about.  Parents do
this nonsense all the time.  They do it to avoid confronting difficult
problems and to avoid spending the time needed to really manage a
situation.

  Note that I'd never let my players vote unless it was an issue that I
really didn't care about.  Not that there are many such issues...

  Design by committee produces some interesting results.

>   Unless you can get players to sign NDA's with regards to their players,
> I believe some mistruth is required. Also, I don't think it really is
> the players' business how the administration of the mud is conducted, and
> this probably applies even more to a commercial endeavor. Of course,
> detrimental adminstration affects everyone, but I don't think this
> is what Jon was suggesting.

  Again, you've lost me.  I thought the discussion was about how
admins dealt with their players.  If a player insists on knowing the
internals of the combat system, the admin politely declines.  If 100
players insist on knowing, the admin posts a notice in some public way
that the internals of the combat system are not available to the
players for this and that reason.  After all, if an admin insists that
something must be a certain way, then I assume they have good reasons
for it.

JB




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