[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Jon Lambert]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

>> 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.

You realize the attempt at these definitions mirror the GOP vs. RP
mindsets.  To a GOPer their character is defined by the database
entry(s).  It's just a collection of stats, skills, equipment, pets,
etc.  In fact the bulk of the GOPer investment is in the database
numbers.  This is probably why GOPers feel much more strongly about
permadeath, or at least their perception of it than RPers.  It means
repeating an investment of time (or possibly money) to get back to
where they were, or want to be.  That's a generalization of course.

To an RPer their character resides in their mind.  That investment
is not something that is completely "lost" or can be deleted by
anyone, except of course the player himself.  Come to think of it,
I've never heard the term permadeath outside of HnS games.  We just
call it death.

Temporary death would be breaking the fiction in an RP game. Unless
of course the fiction provides for it, then their is no breaking the
fiction.  For example a Highlander theme allows for both temporary
death and permanent death (beheading).  Playing a hologram in
StarTrek would allow temporary death (system offline), or permanent
death (erasure).  Or more interesting P.K. Dick's Ubik where one
doesn't know whether one is dead and in a mortuary imagining the
world, or really living.

I think perhaps some are looking for a term that means...
     "losing your game piece and starting over again" 

--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD        Email:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://tychomud.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--
 
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