[MUD-Dev] Thought Experiment: Permanent Monster Death

[Ben Kirman]

ghovs wrote:

>>   monsters can only be added to the game if the admins explicitly
>>   add them.

>   What would a game look like, if monsters stayed dead?  E.g.,

> All in all, I find the idea of DM-spawned monsters unworkable, no
> matter how poetic the idea might seem. Either you'll have an
> empty, boring world, or you'll have a DM spawning monsters all the
> time, which is not materially different from timed respawns,
> except that the person doing it might feel quite bored doing what
> might as well be automated.

How about looking at it from another perspective. The single GM
created monster could actually be a band or tribe of smaller,
respawning mobs, that have taken over a region of the
gameworld. Players could skirmish all they liked with the respawning
scout units, but with concerted effort a group of players could
recapture significant objectives. For example, clearing and
defending an infested farm could reduce the respawn rate of the
creatures due to lack of food. This is the equivalent of chopping
off an arm of the larger GM mob.  With enough effort and battling,
the players could eventually kill the last unit, essentially
perma-killing that particular enemy(the whole mob collective).

I wouldn't say this eliminates all the problems with perma-death
monsters, but it spreads the focus of the players in that there is
more than one target and some over-arching battle strategy will help
in fighting it. One of the problems I can foresee is that this, as
it includes respawning, would inevitably lead to large guilds
farming the area, essentially protecting the mob collective from
other players who seek to destroy the fountain of exp/items. A bit
like that old cliche when the hero saves the life of the villain,
because without an enemy his life is meaningless (or just empty of
ph4t l3wt).
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