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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Ian Collyer wrote:

> 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.

I'd have to disagree here. The player's PoV is important, of course,
but the player's PoV is necessarily limited in most cases. The
player does not know what is good for him in many cases.

 
> 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.

Not at all. It's enough to simply recognize that a MUD doesn't
control a character.

 
> 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.

I'm not sure which player you are talking about. I'm a player, and
that's not my view. At best you can say that's how some players view
it.

 
> 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.

Shrubbery is nice.

--matt

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