[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[Cory Cohen]

Caliban Darklock wrote:
> What are the results we want from perma-death?
1. Encourage players to think before acting.
2. Enable thrills for risk-takers who need significant consequences.
3. Improve the stature of accomplishments (no unlimited do-overs).
4. Punish aberrant behavior encouraged by meaningless death.

In modern games I find myself clicking on everything that moves because 
taking the time to think about it is rarely worth the effort given the 
minimal consequences of death.  I want choices to matter!

Tess proposed:

 > 1.) Death must be rare.
>  2.) Death must be meaningful.
>  3.) Death must be noteworthy.
>  4.) Death must be avoidable, and it should be a *consequence* of 
something the player has consciously chosen to do.
>  5.) The player must be able to make a new character with the same --
>      or roughly the same -- level of ability as the old one.

I'll start by saying that my goal is not to make players happy, but 
simply to prevent them from feeling like perma-death is unfair, while 
accomplishing the objectives above.

I agree completely with #1.  Meaningful and noteworthy are noble goals, 
and anything that can be done in this area will improve the players 
attitude towards perma-death.  Modifying #4 to "usually avoidable" and 
"something the player recognizes in hindsight was foolish" should be 
enough in my opinion.  As for #5, I don't think it's perma-death if you 
get to start over at the same level.

So here's my half-baked untested ivory-tower design:

1. Start with a game that is _not_ fundamentally about combat, killing 
and dying.  Players can choose to turn "off" perma-death by simply not 
playing the combat game.  This is a tall-order by itself, but assume 
it's true.

2. Like in Ammon's description of Discworld, players have a limited 
number of lives.  Say 3 to 5 to start.  To maintain the fiction, deaths 
are explained as miraculous recoveries, divine intervention, benevolent 
NPC rescues, etc.  But make no mistake, the player knows that the 
"lives" ticker just decreased by one.

3. With only one death remaining, the player receives instructions on 
how to increase the number of lives remaining, and it's _expensive_.  
Not financially, but it terms of player effort.  I'm envisioning a 
combination of tithing and significant quests for a deity.  Wise players 
will be in "cautious" mode when the only have one life remaining. And 
will rarely die at all.

4. When you use your last life, you're dead, but not dead in the 
perma-death sense just yet. You're a ghost and can't do much of anything 
except seek out someone else to resurrect your pathetic excuse for a 
corpse.  This is even more hugely expensive than adding additional lives 
and comes with the added catch that someone else must (at least 
initially) bear the cost on your behalf.  The corpse has to be 
recovered, rituals must be performed in the temple over the body, etc.

5. At any time when you are a ghost, you can willingly "pass into the 
light" and have your character immortalized in a dead adventurer's 
leader board.  Perhaps your belongings are passed on to a new character, 
but definitely not your skills/experience.

I believe that the key concepts are:

* Deaths are rare (#1 from Tess's list).
* Little or no chance of sudden unexpected permanent death (#4 from 
Tess's list?).
* Little or no penalty for initial deaths (a free buffer period for 
newbies).
* The ability to recover from past mistakes by increasing your lives 
pool (at a non-trivial cost).
* An opportunity for a last-ditch appeal (in a small MUD, a ghost might 
appeal to a GM for a bonus resurrection).
* Significant penalties for multiple deaths (certainly unsustainable if 
the character keeps dying).
* Ghost mode is essentially a "time-out" to think about the consequences 
of dying (how close to screwed you are).
* The decision to finally just let go is made by the player (although 
perhaps without many other choices).

I think this design imposes some constraints on the combat system, 
including that it not be radically unpredictable or particularly 
brutal.  Dividing damage into "minor" which is easily healed in the 
field, and "wounds" which require the character to return to town for 
serious healing would create a level of inconvenience that is roughly 
comparable to that in most games today (being wounded would be like 
dying).  Most players would avoid monsters likely to cause wounds, and 
this would presumably reduce the number of actual deaths.  A few 
heroic-scale defensive-only, save-your-butt skills that only kick in 
near death would help reduce deaths.  Finally, division of MOBs into 
those that death-blow and those that don't, should help players manage 
their risk of death.

To die in this environment, I think the player is: a) reckless b) 
incompetent or c) indifferent.  Options A and B deserve death, and in 
option C, the player doesn't care anyway.  My fear is that d) insanely 
unlucky -- still doesn't have adequate protections, but jeez, we've 
gotta be close.

In summary, I think what perma-death really boils down to is:

* Players don't want their characters to _actually_ die, but they need 
to feel like their characters could die at any time.

I think it's possible to accomplish the goals while creating the 
illusion of the later without much of the former.

Comments?
Cory Cohen