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

[Ian Collyer]

I'll have another go at defining permadeath, this time without using
the rather emotive term 'character' as the definition of this seems
to be getting in the way of progress on the permadeath discussion.

(Note: I'm not dropping my discussion of what constitutes a
character, that'll be covered in another post ;P )

First take a couple of steps back and consider from which point of
view and in which context we are trying to define permadeath.

IMO, if you are running or designing a MUD with your primary goal as
entertaining your playerbase then looking at things from a player's
perspective is the correct PoV.

But when it comes to choosing a context for your definitions the
only one that you can claim with any authority to have control over
is that of the MUD world.

As soon as you start looking at player thoughts and motivations or
the meta-games that they are playing then achieving a majority
consensus, let alone an absolute definition, will be near
impossible.


So, from the players' point of view, within the context of your MUD
world, what is the definition of permadeath?

  A death is a permadeath if your avatar can no longer interact with
  the MUD world (either through deletion or some permadeath state)
  and there is no in-game method for the player, or another, to
  rectify this.


Specifically excluded are cases where the avatar still exists but in
some different form such as a ghost, a reincarnation (or a shrub ;P
) which is linked to the original form by some in-game
fiction. These do not constitute permadeath IMO.

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