[MUD-Dev] Real Life Consequences

[Michael Tresca]

Rodney Lorrimar posted on Sunday, February 18, 2001 7:49 PM:

> Of course, the problem with fines, etc. is that for your average 13
> year old l33t d00d $50 can be a lot of money but for other players
> this amount is not quite so significant. Maybe this is good though.

Money as a fine just ensures the jerks you do get will be the really
really rich ones.  It's fallacious to assume it's a deterrent for
everybody -- it isn't.

The only method of curbing behavior that I've experienced in a world
without physical consequences is social consequences.  Social
consequences can be reinforced, but they cannot be created:

If a staff members punishes a player, and the rest of the players
secretly think that the punishee was in the right, that behavior will
crop up over and over again.  The players are united AGAINST the
staff, and the punishment only served to encourage the negative
behavior.

However, when the players are openly supportive of the punishment, and
those players are the majority, this tends to stop a lot of problems
before they become so extreme that a staff member needs to remove the
player.

In extreme cases, when the player won't quit and doesn't care about
the in-game social consequences, real-life social consequences can
sometimes be brought about by banishing sites (because you can never
really be sure who's who from any one site).  By notifying all players
at the address that said player will ruin their fun, there's usually a
quick rectification.  It's an approach I find distasteful (and it
smacks of hostage taking, frankly), but it does work.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org

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