[MUD-Dev] PVP and perma-death

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:08:14 +0200 
iso  <olag at ifi.uio.no> wrote:
> HRose <hrose at tiscali.it> writes:

> To be honest I have hardly ever seen a griefer, just what other people
> label as "griefing". 

This section directed more to HRose than Ola:

  Context and perception is everything, and a lot of context comes down
  to "why are you playing?".  Many would call the activities described
  in Lorry's tales of wizarding back in the days of MUD 1 and SX MUD as
  griefing.  At the time we considered them business as usual and only
  to be expected.  If they happened today in a commercial game there
  would be riots.  I'm not at all clear that this is an improvement.

    Take the paper bag/white dragon as a simple case in point: Good
    design or bad?  Why?

    How about the B52 bomber?

> So I have to disagree with the assumption that "griefers" per se act
> outside the game play, they just act outside my preferred playing
> style or are a bit single-minded about what is valid game play. 

Precisely.  They exceed your tolerance boundaries.

> 4. PvP has a place in hard core roleplaying. RvR completely misses
> that target.

While I've not asked the larger commercials, it seems clear that for
large scale games that they've abandoned anything but a weak attempt at
a thin skin of functional roleplaying as a goal.

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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