[MUD-Dev] Striving for originality

[Fred Clift]

On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Matt Chatterley wrote:

> The options which I've always favoured in the past have been
> disallowing attacks on a player within a few days of their
> creation (or a certain quantity of online time, or where
> appropriate, a certain level), or having safe newbie areas where
> they cannot be reached, much less attacked.

By 'disallow' do you mean the world prevents people from doing
harmful things to newbies?  or do you mean you have a rule against
it with admnistrative punishment for violation?  or something else?

The problem with preventing harmful actions (e.g. "You can't bring
yourself to harm such a pathetic weakling!") is that then griefers
make new characters to harass others in a variety of ways using
untouchable characters.  The oldbies that are playing have the right
defend themselves.

We (blackmud) log all agressive actions and then have a game policy
about not attacking newbies in any way, except when provoked... (ie
self-defense - does not include preemptive attacks etc...).  So if
punk-kid-newbie wanders into the room and kills your dog, or steals
from you, or attacks you, etc, you have every right to 'defend'
yourself.  It works ok, but is administratively expensive.  When
disputes arise, it takes someone to go read the logs and make
decisions about the issue.  This is mitigated by the harsh penaltys
and all but the most annoying kids are usually deterred by the
threat of punishment.  For those who aren't, a temporary
new-character-from-your-IP ban (ie 24 hours) and a 24 hour
petrification usually do the trick.

Is there a better automated way to handle this?  probably.  I can't
think of any off hand or I would have already implemented it -- My
basic philosophy is that we have as few 'policy' rules as possible -
if players shouldn't do somethign, the world should be modified to
prevent it.  There are somethings that can't be solved technically,
and we have policy rules covering those -- with good logging.

Fred



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