[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[Matt Chatterley]

On 24/05/07, Tess Snider <malkyne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/23/07, Jeffrey Kesselman <jeffpk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/22/07, Phillip Lenhardt <philen at monkey.org> wrote:
> >
> > > > 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.
> >
> > This is a problem.  I've already seen it in action.
>
> The original question was: "Is there /any/ ways perma-death can be
> implemented without being hated by players?"  That was the question I
> was answering.


 To good effect, too. :)

#5 may well be a problem, and it is also a *necessity*.  You can leave
> it out, but then you don't answer cruise's original question.  :)


Touche. And of course, there are various ways you could work it in - though
all the options I can think of would be vastly unpopular, defeating the
point. E.g. Your last character was worth 578 points. You have 578 points to
allocate to your new character, but there must be an X percent different
between the two.

> Player  kills ActionBoy, and recreates Action-Boy, who dies and
> > recreates ActionBoy', who dies and recreates...
>
> You know what?  They'll do this, even if you take away everything.
> It's not about game mechanics.  Some people will even make the same
> character on a totally different game, with totally different game
> mechanics. Players are sentimental, and they get very attached to
> their characters.  Their idea of who those characters are is much
> bigger than your game mechanics -- and will, in some cases, outlive
> them.  If you really want characters to stay dead, you need to court a
> player base that gives a damn about fictional coherence.  And even in
> that case, the game mechanics won't make any difference.


Oh, yes.

To such an extent that (back when I was active in the circuit, anyway) many
"strict RP" (particularly MUSH-like) games block out a whole list of names -
often including every famous character from every popular genre (e.g. LOTR,
Star Wars, Star Trek, etc).

The game I was associated with was themed on Babylon 5 - we had no end of
trouble in the early days with would-be Merlins, Saurons, Picards and Kirks.

Of course, such minded individuals will always try, and often end up getting
blocked or kicked off in some way - but still, foiling first attempts at
generating the character names helped!

Moving above and beyond this, a lot of players will aim for character
continuity on many levels - if the game is action-orientated, and your last
char was a seriously-buttock-prodding-warrior who was immense fun to run
around with - when he perma-dies, you may well choose to recreate almost
exactly the same character. Personally I'd do something different - but
thats not true of everyone (I'm one of these irritating gamers who tries to
whelk out every single shred of different content from games I enjoy - the
NWN2 campaign took me 80+ hours to complete, as opposed to the quoted 40ish,
because i plodded through it examining everything in minute detail).

I think what you've really been trying to head towards, Tess (and others),
is along the lines of:

How can perma-death be implemented in such a way that it forms an accepted,
enjoyable part of a game world?

I know it can - we've already covered this - it forms (to my mind) an
integral, albeit rare, part of a "pure" (hardcore?) roleplaying environment.
Without death, RPed risks are meaningless - and although we wouldn't all
wipe out our characters on a monthly basis, we might consider doing it once
in a blue moon if it moved a story on and created enough good "play" for
those around us. Not to mention a nice end-story for the character.
Sometimes a change is as good as a rest, too.

In more action-based games, I'm unsure that it works as well. It goes back
to one of your original points about meaningfulness - although, the notions
which have been bandied around surrounding "heroic" abilities are very
interesting indeed..


Cheers,

Matt