[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Vincent Archer wrote:
> According to Matt Mihaly:
 
>> You guys keep throwing around concepts like "If you die and don't
>> come back it's permadeath." Define 'you' first, otherwise the
>> statement is pretty meaningless. Permadeath revolves around the
>> definition of a character, and so far, I haven't heard any
>> persuasive argument that a character is held exclusively in a
>> database.

> To paraphrase someone: "I know permadeath when I see it".

*grrr* When I was studying American constitutional law, there was no
decision I had more contempt for than the obscenity definitions that
relied on the principle "I know it when I see it." (for instance,
Roth vs. United States, 1957). I will be happy to go on about why it
is logically unsound as well as an intellectual cop-out if you
want. Granted, my arguments would assume that we're attempting as
objective as possible a definition, rather than one whose meaning
varies person to person.

> To me, the accurate definition of having permadeath is when, to
> bring a character back to the point I want it to be, it takes as
> long with that character as it would take if I choose to create a
> new character and played it exclusively for a while.

This presumes that the only currency that matters or should matter
in a MUD is time. I strongly disagree with that precept. Permadeath
under the above definition is only possible if a) You assume the
character only resides in the database and b) That there is _no_ way
to apply skill and experience to become more efficient. For if
there's any room at all for the application of knowledge gained the
first time around, then it seems pretty likely that it wouldn't take
as long. It would really never take the same amount of time
anyway. The world won't be the same.

 --matt

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