[SPAM] Re: [MUD-Dev] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Dana V. Baldwin]

P J wrote:

> What happens if you either had a singleplayer portion of the game
> -- the 'tutorial' that stepped people thru what they needed to
> know on game mechanics and world rules and then introduced them
> full grown into the multiplayer environment?

Traveller did this well. When you completed rolling up your
character he could be an old man with lots of skills. Play goals
were not about levels and not really so much about getting better at
skills as they were about accomplishing things. Becoming a notorious
pirate or a wealthy merchant. This type of success can still use
levels to indicate rank but levels of recognition do not need to
have skill advancement.

> I'll grant a lot of players will find this concept foreign, they
> are looking for the 'game' in the game.  The game at the point
> becomes what you give them to do and the community that they
> form. All players eventually get to this point anyway.  Once
> skillgain/leveling is out of the way, many players have focused so
> much on that AS the game they are at a loss.  IMO, in the long
> run, that does more harm than good to developing long running
> goals and continued interest.

Agree. Leveling is at its worst the time filler before the actual
game can begin.

> Another organic element that has always been missing is aging and
> eventual retirement or death.  This would very handily replace the
> milestones that you lose in the xp grind.  You are born with X
> number of life credits and activities, injury and time eventually
> whittle that down so you aren't as effective.  Look at it as a
> backwards instead of a forwards counter.  You are born, you have
> so much time to accomplish great deeds, and then you retire or
> could die if you participated in very risky events.  While I'd
> make great death possible in heroic circumstances, it wouldn't be
> something that could just happen without the player specifically
> volunteering for the risk. If training other skills took life
> credits you could virtually allow anyone to do anything but they
> simply don't have enough 'time' to do everything and still be
> effective.

While I don't particulaly go in for the raising kids part this idea
has a lot of merit. Hackmaster uses a system where a character can
and does die. Perma death is not so scarry in this environment
because each character has sidekicks, protogees and hierlings.

Sidekicks are basically pets but protogees are the cool bit. In HM
you play what you roll and the point isnt to necessarily have the
uber character. You're likely to play many characters because death
does happen. That variety is excellent for keeping the game
fresh. Single character servers tend to become stale and turn people
away because many people become so invested in the character that
they would rather get bored and quit playing than change the
character. Death is an excellent method of change here and death
allows you to activate a protegee whom you have been siphoning
experience to over time. Resurrection (cloning) can still happen but
there are instances where it does not.

Another excellent use for death is in PvP. There will be a limit to
the number of truly evil high level wizards (or whatever) running
around in the game as they will, over time become dead. If these
characters can be given the ability to lead content, the story
writes itself as they say.

Protegees can also be family members as HM has a complex set of
famillial rules that cover the gamut of relatives, honor and how
functional the family unit is.

> The most common problem with permadeath is -- 'Well, I don't want
> to play my character for 9 months and DIE!... That's absolutely a
> problem, but using another natural and organic mechanism this can
> actually be used to advantage.

That's too bad really but its true. This was always the thing I
hated about players who fudged their die rolls and DMs who catered
to keeping characters alive instead of making for thrilling
adventures.

Removing the experience point affects a lot of things. Fundamentally
if you change some fo the foundations, you can create a system where
the experience point has a radically different context. Foundations
like death and progression are, to me, as ripe for change as the
experience point which joins them.

Great post P J.
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