[MUD-Dev] PK headaches

[Matt Mihaly]

My lord. I realize this sort of thing isn't anything special, but I
just wanted to go on record about one hell of a difficult PK/general
PvP issue we had recently. It really convinced me that small MUDs
like Achaea are not going to be knocked down by Sony etc anytime
soon, as I don't see the big games willing to deal with situations
in a productive way.

A little background:

One of the player city-states is called Shallam. It is a 'good'
city. There is a guild of Serpentlords in it called the
Dawnstriders. Over time, the God of Darkness had slowly been able to
get his followers elected to powerful positions within the guild,
and eventually as Guildmaster. Shallam was tolerant about it though,
and in any case had no way to definitively prove they were followers
of Darkness (though everybody knew).

Now, each guild in Shallam is a signatory to a Guild Charter that
they wrote. This spells out the obligations of that guild to the
city. The new Dawnstrider leadership had decided that it didn't want
to be bound to the guild charter (and there was some dispute over
the exact meaning of some of the clauses in the charter). The
members of the guild left the city (though they can't move the guild
hall, or their guild teacher NPC) and they all began joining a rival
city-state instead. Eventually it became clear that there was going
to be no diplomatic resolution to the system, so the Sultaness of
Shallam kicked out the Dawnstrider leadership and installed another
Dawnstrider that she knew to be loyal to Shallam.

This caused quite an uproar, particularly as it was the first time
the leader of a city-state had ever exercised such direct power over
a guild. (There is no hard-coded method to do it. We reviewed the
circumstances and decided that the Sultaness was warranted, and so
gave her the power to do it.) The ex-Dawnstrider leadership was
_quite_ upset of course (even though they had been openly warned of
this possibility two weeks before), particularly the
power-behind-the-Guildmaster (who seemed to have more sway than the
actual Guildmaster, who may or may not have been a puppet leader.)

So now, this angry ex-Dawnstrider (we'll call him Xandor), decides
that revenge must be had, for he has lost his guild and been shamed
in front of the whole land (this was a very big deal.) He decides
that he is going to take revenge on the entire Shallamese
government. He approached me asking whether this was legal, as our
PK rules are intentionally vague. I said that no, this was not
legal, because the government did not do anything to him, only the
Sultaness did (which I know for a fact, because I didn't give her
any warning that she was going to be allowed to do it), and thus
revenge (probably in the form of him hunting her anytime she leaves
the relative safety of Shallam) could only be taken on the
Sultaness. He argued that someone told him a post was made to the
Shallam newsboard stating that the Sultaness had the full support of
her Viziers (the Viziers are elected by the people, and the Viziers
in turn elect the Sultaness, who appoints the various Ministers of
state).

This was really difficult to make a decision on, and simply not
possible in a system that relies largely on hard-coded rules. In the
end, I ruled that he was only allowed to take revenge on the
Sultaness, but I could just as easily make a case for him being
allowed to attack any of the Viziers as well.

Looks like there's another issue coming up to. The collective
Serpentlord guilds are asking for permission to kill and harrass
anyone in possession of "illegal" venoms (Serpentlords produce the
25-30 types of venom by secreting it and then milking their
fangs. The illegal bit is entirely their designation).

It's a very cool idea, and we'll probably let them enforce the ban,
within reason, but only providing that they are working towards a
goal with the ban. Ie, it can't just be to maintain a ban for the
sake of a ban. Venoms are an integral part of combat for two other
classes and are only obtainable from those of the Serpentlord class.

It's only small MUDs that are able and/or willing to make
distinctions like that, and to deal with things like that
administratively rather than via code. That's not a dig at big MUDs,
just a little inspiration for those depressed by the naysayers of
text MUDs.

--matt

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