[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 27th February, 2001, Vincent Archer wrote:

> there are two conditions that are required to make permanent death
> palatable in a game.

>    1) The player must be able to trust the game not to kill him
>    "needlessly".

Yes, that's a definite.

>  2) The player must not have a strong attachment to his character

In massively multiplayer games of the kind I was discussing, there's
no point in having PD if the player doesn't give a damn about their
character. It's the fact that you DON'T want to lose your character
that makes the threat of this happening exciting and the players
heroic. If they don't care about it, all you get are the
plodder-stopping benefits that ensure achievement means something -
but those are incompatible with not caring about your character.

FPSs, yeah, as you say. People regard their characters there as
disposable, and therefore are not upset when they're disposed of.

> P&P RPG games, which satisfy condition #1. You usally trust the GM
> not to kill you unless you really deserve it.

In a virtual world, you have to trust yourself. Don't do anything that
might get you killed unless you're prepared for it to happen.

> Unfortunately, I don't think you can satisfy condition #1 "enough"
> in a MMORPG/Internet environment, unless you severely restrict the
> conditions under which PD can occur (special PD "deathmatch arenas",
> very high level tailored "epic encounters").

I disagree. I believe it is possible, just no-one has done it yet (at
least not in a large scale game).

		Richard

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