[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[shren]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2001, Ian Collyer wrote:
> Matt Mihaly wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

>>> How about "The close is not reversible through in-game actions"?
>>> Theoretically, intervention on behalf of the system
>>> administrators should ALWAYS be able to recover characters in
>>> the event of a clause B violation.

>> I can restore characters while in the game in Achaea. Further,
>> even if I couldn't, I could add that feature in the future. It's
>> not possible to define a close as being irreversible through
>> in-game actions. It can be irreversible _at that moment_ through
>> in-game actions, but then you've got a situation where I can
>> flick "absolute death" on and off every day. I'll have absolute
>> death one day, and then the next day when I don't, I'll restore
>> all the "absolute died" characters, and then the day after claim
>> to have absolute death again. It becomes rather meaningless.

> Surely _all_ definitions become meaningless in a system where
> axioms are changed on a whim.

I agree.  It seems that one side of this discussion is trying to
completely deconstruct language.  Perma-death has no meaning because
a mud can't really cause character death, character has no meaning
because the mud can't actually store it.  It's pointless.  You
shouldn't willfully destroy the meaning of a word (turn it into a
tautology) because you disagree with the concepts involved.

If I say that a mud is a perma-death mud, then you can conclude,
from context and the simple meaning of words, some of the qualities
of that mud.  In some way your character on the mud can die and go
away forever.  These muds exist.  Perma-death is a word used to
describe them.  I'm starting to think that philosophical meanderings
on the nature of character death get in the way of discussing these
muds, where they are, what thier draw is, and how they work.
Because they do have a peculiar draw - perma death games are some of
the oldest single player RPG games, and many of them exist and are
played today in essentially the same form.  Some like the challenge.

I tried to lay down some specifications for perma-death, and Matt
told me that my definition was invalid because a mud administrator
could break it at any time.  I can't figure out where Matt is going
with this.  If we point at mud X and say that it is Y, changing what
mud X is doesn't invalidate the definition Y.  It just means that
the definition Y doesn't apply to X anymore, and it definately does
not mean that definition Y couldn't apply to some mud Z in the
future.

I retract my defintion.  I don't wish to discuss it any more.  I
didn't think this was an etymology list when I signed up for it, and
if I want to prove black is white I'll go somewhere else.

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