[MUD-Dev] Non-combat advancement and roleplay

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

I had a thought about non-combat advancement and roleplay I thought
I'd share with the list.  Perhaps this could spur some good
discussions.

One problem I keep running into as I think about roleplaying is how
to have a non-combatant able to participate in a game with defined
combat rules.  It always seems that someone with exceptional combat
skills will always try to resolve disputes with a sword; everything
looks like an experience reward when all you have is a sword.

The goal is to keep the psychopath with a blade from just killing
anyone that he doesn't like, particularly people with "power" in the
game. While social-based systems are nice for this, it's sometimes
hard to get the system running under certain circumstances.

The core of my proposed system is a stat that is recorded on the
player.  This stat, called "Prestige", determines how you can
interact with others.

If someone has a much greater prestige than you, you cannot affect
them though violent actions.  You can try to attack them, but some
in-game mechanism rebuffs you (or even kills you).  If someone has
much less prestige than you do, then you know they cannot affect
you.  If someone has about as much prestige as you do, then "normal"
rules apply. Obviously, there should be some way to measure
comparative prestige levels in the game.

So, for example, say we have a (PC) king that ascended to the throne
through heredity.  He has had a bit of combat training, but he's not
the fighter his great grandfather, who unified the country, was.  He
rules a modest, but prosperous kingdom and has a fair measure of
prestige, enough to have a group of (NPC) bodyguards taking care of
him.

One day, Joe Blow, the knife-wielding maniac bursts into the throne
room.  He has no prestige, but demands that the king give him a
large sum of money.  The king laughs and tells him to quit wasting
his time. As Joe rushes toward the king with his blade brandished,
the guards step in and bring a quick end to Joe's life.

Later that day, the empress from a nearby country arrives on a
diplomatic.  The king knows that she's about his prestige level, so
he takes precautions against any spells she might throw against him.
He also keeps a magic dagger close to him should it come to blows;
due to the empress' prestige, the guards are more reluctant to fight
the empress.  It's rumored that she's favored of one of the gods and
gains protection from him.

A week later, the Dark Lord, Most Feared of the Children of Chaos
comes to give a threat to the king.  Knowing that the Dark Lord has
much more prestige than he does, the king treats him with respect
until the king can find someone to deal with the Dark Lord.  The
king's guards are powerless in awe to the power the Dark Lord
wields.

Of course, the devil's in the details.  How do players accumulate
this prestige?

In the concept I thought out, it comes from multiple sources.  To
simplify the example, we'll consider prestige from two sources, rank
and deeds.

Rank gives you a certain amount of prestige.  In the above case, the
king had his prestige because he held the rank of "king" in a
kingdom of modest size.  Perhaps being king of a larger kingdom
would be worth more prestige, while being lower on the totem pole
would result in less prestige.

Deeds would be the equivalent of completing quests.  To prevent
abuse, only the most notable deed would be recorded.  So, someone
that saves a puppy might get a tiny amount of prestige, someone who
saves a town from marauding orcs might get more, while someone who
slays a terrible dragon might get a sizable amount of prestige.
Yet, you cannot keep saving that poor puppy in order to eventually
get the prestige of a dragonslayer.  I would also be hesitant to
allow the slaying of relatively puny orcs to really affect the
prestige of a dragonslayer; aren't the orcs below you now that
you've killed a dragon?

These two parts combined together (added?  weighted average?) create
the sum of a person's prestige.  So, our king in the previous
example could gain prestige from doing great quests.  That would
allow him to eliminate the potential threat posed by the empress as
well as possibly be able to deal with the Dark Lord.  Or, if Joe
really wanted to be able to make demands of the King, he should go
do a quest to gather some prestige.  The king refused to "reward"
Joe, the Dragonslayer of Renown?  How rude!

Obviously, you could add more components to the overall prestige
score to suit individual tastes.  If you could find an effective
trust metric, that might be a good basis for a prestige system,
instead of or in addition to other elements.

What this system primarily does is prevent non-combat PCs from
running in fear of every knife-wielding psycho in the game.  It also
provides a strong, definite path for non-combat advancement.  As you
gain prestige, you become more powerful to others who deal with
prestige, even if you couldn't fight your way out of a wet paper bag
without your honor guard.

A few optional rules to consider:

Flavored prestige.  Prestige could be measured in terms of many
opposed goals, such as good/evil, law/neutrality/chaos, etc.  This
is mostly important for combining prestige from different areas, it
leaves the absolute effect of prestige untouched.

So, for example, if you run a benevolent kingdom (good prestige),
plus you have slain an orc encampment that was threatening a city
(good prestige), you get prestige that greater than either
individual part. However, if you run a benevolent kingdom (good
prestige), and slaughter a peaceful town of miners (evil prestige),
then your prestige not be cumulative.  The details of how to handle
conflicting flavors of prestige are left as an exercise for the
reader.

High prestige imposition.  You could allow high prestige people to
impose upon people of much less prestige.  In our example with the
King and Joe Blow above, the King could have had his guards throw
Joe out of the throne room instead of having to wait for Joe to
attack him.  This would help prevent a lot of "soft" PKing problems,
potentially at the expense of people abusing the system.

Prestige transfer/investment.  You're a diabolically evil sorcerer
that wants to get rid of that goody-two-shoes of an empress, but
don't want to get your hands dirty.  Or, perhaps you're a goodly
king that wants to rid the lands of the evil sorcerer, but just
can't fit it in between schedule appointments of running a free
health clinic for children and personally helping farmers with their
fields.  What do you do?  Hire a patsy!

But, with prestige rules, you can't just hire anyone off the
street. They have to have a certain level of prestige to even
approach the person.  Allowing individuals to transfer or invest
prestige can help solve this problem.  When you hire someone to do a
deed that requires prestige, you can share your prestige with them
temporarily.  They must complete the task within a certain time.
Or, you might "invest" prestige in the task, giving the hireling the
prestige necessary to do the deed.  If the hireling succeeds, it
gives you a (temporary?) boost to prestige.  Should they fail, you
will feel the opposite effect.  You (gain/lose) prestige as your
enemies (fall before you/uncover your questionable plots).

This could also work so that a group of people with a reasonable
level of prestige can band together to affect another person with
greater prestige.  So, again, the king in our example above might
decide to try to band together with the empress in hopes that their
combined prestige would be enough to deal with the Dark Lord.  The
fear here is that it would allow newbies to just band together to
tackle the rulers with moderate amounts of prestige, reducing us
back to the original problem.

Thoughts?  Feedback is appreciated.  I'm sure there's holes in there
somewhere.  I also wouldn't be surprised if someone else had a
system like this.  Any experiences to share?

--
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...."  -"Defender", Manowar
     Brian Green, brian at psychochild.org  aka  Psychochild
       |\      _,,,---,,_      *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   "They're not bugs, they're 'place-
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'    holders for code that works.'"
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)         - Andrew Kirmse, Meridian 59 creator
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev