[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[Tess Snider]

On 5/25/07, Jeffrey Kesselman <jeffpk at gmail.com> wrote:
> So what your really saying your position really is,  is that
> perma-death is not just impossible to make desirable, but impossible
> to accomplish at all from a design
> point of view. Yes?

Well, it's no coincidence that RP-games do permadeath much more often
than bunny-bashing games do.  RPers care about fictional coherence.
To the extent that I've seen it work, true death was enforced
*culturally*, rather than through mechanics.  That is, you didn't come
back as ActionGuyJr, because the other players would shun you for it.
However, in bunny bashing games, player culture can be kind of
irrelevant.  Even if everybody in the whole game /gags you, you've
still got bunnies you can bash.

You see, ultimately, the determination that this person has shirked
his responsibility to roll over and play dead is a human decision.
Any restriction your *software* places on this (and any mechanism it
uses to catch people who have misbehaved) will ultimately be worked
around by the players.

The problem is that "death," as such, is not really a mechanic, per
se.  Oh, sure, you can take all of somebody's points and abilities
away.  You can even force them to pick a different name.  But "death"
is just a name you put on it.  There's nothing preventing the player
from thinking of it as a prolonged convalescence.  "Death" is just a
piece of color -- an element of fiction, if you will -- free to be
ignored along with most of your other fiction.

So, in the end, you either:
A.)  Don't have permadeath,
OR
B.)  Learn to live with ActionGuyJr,
OR
C.)  Find some way to make fiction matter in your game.

Tess