[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Matt Mihaly]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jun 2001 16:45:41 +0000 (GMT), Matt Mihaly
> <the_logos at achaea.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 17 Jun 2001, Jon Lambert wrote:

>>> How about this definition:
  
>>>   Permadeath occurs when the player decides that the character
>>>   they have been playing is dead.
 
>> Yep, that's the definition of permadeath I've been pushing. It
>> recognizes that a MUD has no control over when a character dies.
 
> Shouldn't that be "a MUD has no control over when a character
> *lives*"?
 
> The MUD can certainly tell the player "your character is dead and
> you can't play it anymore", but it can't very well say "you must
> log in and play your character".

No. As has already been established, a MUD does not have control
over a character. I can play Lancelot on any MUD that advertises
permadeath, and there isn't a damn thing they can do to kill the
character of Lancelot. They could kill the avatar, but never
irreversibly, which is why "permadeath" or "absolute death" seems
fuzzy to me. They rely on being 100% certain of the intentions of
every designer who will ever contribute to the world in the future.

--matt

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