[MUD-Dev] Player Justice

[Koster]

From: Michael Sellers
> Raph wrote:

>> Later on in SWG, we ended up with an elaborate switch
>> system. However, there was a remnant of the original system with
>> "militia." These are people who are allowed to bypass the switch.
>> Named by the local government, they have the ability to PvP any
>> target they want, within the confines of the town. They are
>> basically police.  The system was removed when players basically
>> held territory that the designers did not want them holding (the
>> entrance to dungeons and the like). There was no way to overrun a
>> government, so players could not get back the territory that was
>> held.

> Very interesting, Raph.  I have to ask though, why was there no
> way built in to overrun/change the local government?  It would
> seem that any of several mechanisms for doing this would have
> positive effects: create an actual and active citizenry; create
> more gameplay rather than removing it; and in effect maintain the
> "PvP removal" system, adding a governmental scope in addition to
> the individual scale.  That is, the message from the rest of the
> citizenry would be, "you keep your militia-based license to kill
> only so long as the militia overall doesn't abuse it."  Of course
> when a new government was installed by the players and the new
> militia began abusing their powers, the cycle would begin again
> until either a) people figured out how to keep their abuses below
> the radar, or b) the government found some way to threaten the
> populace to keep themselves in power. Both of these are seen in
> real life of course.

I should clarify--there was no way built into the design to overrun
the local government BY FORCE; you could do it via moving in and
then voting out the current government. However, players were
extremely vocal in demanding the ability to decide who should be
allowed to move into their towns, which they wanted to use as a
method to prevent immigration that might destabilize their
government. Governmental changes via population influx were
perceived as a form of griefing. Spectral threats of roving
relocators moving into town after town voting themselves in and then
ruining the place were raised by those interested in the politics
game.

At this point, I think enough concessions have been made to the
existing governments that it would be impossible to remove one if
they didn't want to be removed. A good argument can be made that
given the size of groups we're talking about here, we're not really
in a social position to have democratic action working
correctly--most player governments are led by force of will by a
single highly dedicated individual. Having the "game of politics"
when there's really only one qualified player per government (and
replacing them would cause disintegration of the government) isn't
really viable.

-Raph
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