[MUD-Dev] Ethical behavior ... a hijacking.

[Travis Casey]

Friday, February 08, 2002, 4:27:06 PM, Marc Bowden wrote:
> --On Thursday, February 7, 2002 9:05 PM -0600 Jeff Cole
> <jeff.cole at mindspring.com> wrote:

>> I don't really understand the need for a distinction.  I mean
>> beyond engaging in some semantic argument, what is (are) the
>> substantive distinction(s)?  I have no problem referring to
>> avatars instead of players or vice-versa.  For what reason,
>> though, is it necessary for me to use one or the other?

> Mainly, this artificial distincion is to the advantage of whomever
> makes it; players use it to divorce themselves from any
> consequences of their actions, game developers use it to create a
> legal (and possibly public-relations) seperation for themselves
> from the perception of doing something to the players directly.

> Both cases are a lot like telling someone that it's their gloves
> beating you up and taking your lunch money, not them, or that
> we're stapling those gloves together, not your hands, so you as a
> person aren't affected, respectively.

This depends a lot on the mechanics of how characters work, though.
Right now, the majority of online games have a 1-to-1
player-to-character mapping, and give the player pretty much
complete control over the actions of characters.  There is, however,
no fundamental reason why either of these has to be true.

Paper RPGs currently cover a wider variety of models.  For example,
in Ars Magica, a single player may control multiple characters,
*and* a character may be controlled at different times by different
players.  Thus, if the character Bubba hates the character Buffy,
that may have nothing to do with the relationship between the
players who play those two characters.

(Ars Magica is one of the few paper RPGs that formalizes this sort
of thing; however, many gaming groups do this unofficially, with
party henchmen being played by different players at different times,
and/or with PCs being played by different players when their
"regular" players cannot make it to the game.)

Several paper RPGs also have the idea of characters having what we
can call compulsions -- the character's behavior in certain
situations may be constrained.  In some cases, these constraints may
require random rolls to see what the character does.  If, for
example, a character in Champions has the "Berserk" psychological
limitation, then in certain situations, a random roll is required to
see if the character goes berserk.  If the character does go
berserk, and all obvious enemies are defeated, then another random
roll is needed to see if the character comes out of it.  If that
roll fails, then the character is *required* to start attacking
other party members or innocent bystanders.

Under these sorts of systems, "my character did it, not me" can make
perfect sense.

--
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net

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