[MUD-Dev] A system for lives, death, old age, PK and perma de ath

[Smith]

On July 05, Eamonn O'Brien wrote:

> Musashi suggested a lives attribute for players which regenerates
> slowly over time, if this ever hits 0 and they die again then they
> are wiped completely (permadeath).

This is very close to a design that we're trying to use
carrot-and-stick-ishly. One exception is that we've preferred a
chance of forced re-char versus a lives attribute/permadeath. At
death (the actions that kill you may modify your chance of forced
re-char; i.e. dying in a PVP combat you initiate is worth an
increase) you roll to see if you're forced to re-char. It was an
early decision to avoid permadeath as disruptive. In a permadeath
situation, the character is "gone", and the player _should_ come up
with a new character, including potential story arcs,
descriptions/detailing, etc. This itself is a huge part of the
barrier that permadeath represents for an avidly role-playing
player. Since an early decision involved building a way to allow
player-initiated treadmilling of characters (re-charing), forcing a
player to re-char a character was chosen as it involves a setback in
terms of the character's "power" in exactly the ways (levels,
skills, equipment, etc) that most-limit PVP activities.

As important as the use of the "chance of forced re-char" attribute
is for our system, modifying the attribute is where we picked our
tweakable battles.

Even without (yet, perhaps ever) a way to automate Role-Play-Reward
distribution, we did decide that the reduction by some ammount of
the "chance of forced re-char" would be an excellent reward. Our
hope of course is to encourage role-play and pvp in the same
characters (if your character's a killer, kill whoever you wish,
just be excellently in character while doing it).

On the "increasing" side, we're currently targetting certain types
of death, pvp activities, character age, and character levels as
metrics influencing the increase, or rate of increase of the "chance
of forced re-char" attribute. For example, characters may reach
heroic levels; however, the advantages available at heroic levels
carry the penalty of an increased rate of increase of the "chance of
forced re-char" attribute.

Finally, the current value of, starting value of, and rate of
increase of this attribute are all opaque to the players. Both in
that it's not shown to the player, and in that mutation of the value
is always subject to some small random component. While players will
still play the numbers with that attribute, we wanted to raise the
barrier at least a bit with respect to the numbers game (aside of
course from the possibility of an unlucky role on your first death
outside of the newbie area).

Some aspects of the system are still in the works (for instance, we
may leave dead characters wandering around as ghosts until
resurrection or chosen re-char, but allow only staff-caused
ressurections for those who would otherwise be forced to re-char. To
allow balancing for the "unlucky few" cases).

Regardless, I think that the basic concept of a player incurring a
barrier to advancement, but not a barrier to role-play is an
excellent enforcement tactic, but I'm still leery about the effects
of perma-death as enforcement simply because it's so much greater a
barrier to those who _would_ role-play.

-Dave
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