[MUD-Dev] Definition of permadeath (was: Maintaining fiction)

[Christopher Kohnert]

Madman Across the Water wrote: 
> Christopher Kohnert wrote:

>>   Permadeath: <noun> from Permanent and death, meaning dead for
>>   ever.
 
>> I would argue that permadeath means you die, plain and
>> simple. You get nothing, your stuff does not carry over to other
>> characters,
 
> Why not? That doesn't seem to me to ruin the word "permadeath."
> Tying some things to, for example, your family rather than an
> individual character doesn't bother me, and it's still a blow to
> have the character die forever. I think you're tying too much into
> permadeath. Granted, I agree that "temporary permadeath" is a
> contradiction, but I think permadeath is very simple- your
> character dies and is gone forever.  Everything else is details.

If you equate permadeath with the death of an individual character,
you remove the word from its place as the absolute in a
spectrum. Perhaps I'm just arguing semantics but there needs to be a
specific word which means loss of your investment (which permadeath
happens to serve nicely). Otherwise any conversation about the
middle ground (families, clones, etc) is a bit pointless in that any
comparisons are without basis.

Permadeath is, or rather, should be, the concept of losing all
aspect of a character -- completely -- forever. Which I should think
is the whole point of coining the idea in the first place. By doing
so we can talk about interesting things such as motivation not to
die, etc. If you don't, you're simply talking about various ways to
have an identity persist in the environment (thereby pacifying the
player who might otherwise be quite angry).

The definition of the word is required to make the distinction
between an environment in which you lose your investment entirely
and one in which you do not. This allows us to talk about various
flavours in between. Those various "shades" of permadeath should not
be equated with the absolute however.

Chris
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