[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[Peter Keeler]

Dana V. Baldwin wrote:

> We often hear "everyone wants to be the hero but not everyone can be the
> hero". What if everyone doesn't want to be the hero. What if some of
> them are content to hang out in toewn and not fight monsters or be
> adventurers at all. What if some of them like to go on nice safe patrols
> with decent rewards and low risk. What if those that want to be the hero
> get a shot at actually BEING the hero, as long as they can stay alive.

That sounds great and I totally agree with you, except for one thing
that Dave Scheffer said awhile back. I liked it so much I wrote it on a
sticky note and stuck it to my monitor:

"The problem is the game world not recognizing aberrant behavior and
providing a compensatory game mechanic."

Sure, I'd love to play a pure trader or crafter. If I could set up shop
in a town and have an engaging crafting game to play, I'd do it. If I
could send other folks to go sell my wares in some distant town because
the prices are better, I'd do that too. If I could hire a decent escort
whenever I had to go out of my town, I'd do it.

The problem is that one guy who decides to level his fighter up, then go
through town perm-killing all the guys like me. Old MUDs used to make
the shopkeepers the buffest mobs in the game for precisely that reason.
Later games made them non-attackable. Making them PCs introduces a
dilemma because you have to protect the crafter from griefers, but still
make the game dangerous.

So do you encourage crafters to arm themselves? Can they hope to defend
themselves from someone who has built a character specifically to murder
them (and hasn't bothered with all those useless crafting skills)? Do
you have the police magically teleport in and stop the attack? The
griefers will certainly figure out a way to get a one shot kill in
before they have a chance to appear. Do you make shopkeeping PCs
invulnerable to attack? Then what's to stop them from provoking an
attack and retreating into their shops?

At the root of this problem is that if you kill an NPC in a
"meaningless" or "unfair" way, the computer doesn't care. It makes a new
NPC. If a player gets killed in such a way, they may not play your game
any more. Making death not permanent is an effective way to cushion
against meaningless deaths by saying that not -everything- is at stake,
as it is in real life.

   Pete