[MUD-Dev] Histories and Legends

[Koster]

From: paul.schwanz at sun.com

> If these virtual worlds were more dynamic, if they offered players
> the ability to accomplish things outside of their own character,
> and if those things persisted beyond the life of the character,
> would players be more inclined to accept death as part of their
> character's life?  And without death, can a character truly be
> memorialized or become a legend?

Both real-world death and the simple act of never returning to the
game provide exactly this form of persona death. I would argue,
though, that in many ways the real-world death of a player is
handled better in these communities than the act of departure. Why? 
Because we build rituals around the one, and generally not around
the other.

In the event of a player death, there is often a groundswell of
support for some form of memorial to be added permanently to the
map. In addition, memorial services or rituals of some sort are
extremely common. On UO, a player death led to a memorial in which
an invulnerable dolphin was created with the name of the deceased
player, and let loose in the oceans. I seem to recall a wonderfully
complex memorial space being built in OnLive! after a player's
suicide...

More recently, the commercial mud operators have grown very wary of
providing any official support for memorials of any sort, because
they have been bitten too often by hoaxes. I find this eminently
regrettable; I'd rather be tricked into doing something human and
compassionate than not do it at all. Even more regrettable is that
given policies against enacting memorials, there is also no tools
support for players to create these memorials themselves.

As far as character departures--this is often as final as a
real-life player death. Yet it often goes unremarked, because many
times the player simply disappears in a fashion that calls to mind
The Hunting of the Snark. In fact, anecdotally, the players who make
the loudest noise in stomping out the door ina huff are the ones
most likely to not actually leave.

The typical rituals surrounding character death of this sort seem to
entail passing on all the virtual goods the character has
accumulated. This may be because it makes the act of departure
"irrevocable" in that so much of a character is invested in his or
her history in the game, and thus in her or her accumulated stuff.

On LegendMUD, there is the ability to "retire" a character and have
the character embodied as an NPC with the typical catchphrases,
combat tactics, and custom items that the original character
had. This is considered a high honor, and players must actually
submit applications to be thus memorialized. However, it is an odd
sort of memorial which entails repeatedly killing the deceased ad
infinitum for as long as the mud stays open. :)

I'd be very interested in hearing stories about memorials and
similar rituals from the MOO/MUSH world--there must be much richer
examples to be found in that genre than in the combat games.

-Raph

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