[MUD-Dev] Who Killed Miss Norway?

[Gubbs]

From: "F. Randall Farmer" <randy.farmer at pobox.com>

> Stories like this are commonplace in my experience.

> Every major service I've worked with has had at least one
> well-known fatal-disease related- or accidental- RL death followed
> by an in-world memorial, sometimes including in-world operator
> created changes, followed (often months later) by discovery that
> the person in question didn't die at all.

> Each of these cases was someone simply trying to find a
> non-reversible way to leave a group of people they'd formed
> complex personal relationships with without saying "I have to
> quit." For some, the draw of these communities is so strong that
> 'cold turkey' is the only way to quit and the only way to force
> themselves to do it is to stage their own 'real-world' death.

I have always found it rather annoying that people seem to want to
celebrate/perpetuate RL relationships in RP games.

The most infuriating was when the towers went down and people were
demanding statues and memories and characters were asking for black
armbands to wear but player deaths do rank up there.

Everyone is sympathetic when something unfortunate happens, but
ultimately most people I know play a game to escape reality not be
constantly reminded of its inadequecies.

The death of a player is largely irrelevant in a transient fantasy
world.  People come and go, if you're player base are more concerned
with the RL events proported, not neccesarily well documented
happings surrounding a particular player then ultimately what you
have is a talker and not a RP game at all.

Obviously the strength of that argument varies dependant on the
theme of the MUD/MUSH/MOO etc. But largely it is a source of mild to
severe annoyance to many people in RP muds ..

Does anyone have this opinion or experience? I'm quite interested to
know if people think it is suitable to allow the real world to
encroach in these ways or if making 'friends' are more important.

I was particularily amused to read the line about LegendMud having
had a largely professional player base. Well sure, we're all grad
students if we want to be! Not that I doubt there's truth in it. No
sir.

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