[MUD-Dev] Character Restraint & Capture (bounty hunting)

[John Buehler]

Byron Ellacott writes:
> On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 16:13, Jester wrote:

>>   1.  Character V is hunting bear in the woods :) when he is
>>   attacked and killed by character K

> What happens if you replace this with:

...

> Basically, all to do with:

>   "The bounty has to be approved by an independent npc (that simply
>   reads the 'I was killed by:' data)"

The reason that we have courts in the real world is to convince a
jury of who did what to whom and why they did it.  The code of law
decides the appropriate punishment.  In a game, the software knows
what's going on, and the actions of the player characters can be
examined to determine exact infractions of the game's "laws".  The
'code of law' can become, quite literally, the code of the law
system in the game world.

It would take more than "I was killed by K" data to make many
judgements, of course.  Each action that can be interpreted as an
aggressive action must be incorporated into the ruling system.  The
archer attack that you describe can easily be interpreted as a
murder by three individuals based on simultaneous attacks by them.
If one of them made an attack an hour beforehand, and the victim was
completely healed prior to the archer attack by the other two, there
would be no ruling against the first guy - other than assault,
perhaps.  You can go by the American code of justice in large part.
Assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, murder, and so on.

The NPC judge does offer the possibility of roleplaying a judicial
system, but it also imposes the requirement that a victim visit the
judge.  That could be onerous to the victim.  Criminally-minded
players would then perpetrate their acts in places which are far
from judges.  That would produce lawless areas, which might be
self-defeating to the original intent of the game - to have a code
of law.

JB
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