<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers --> <!--X-From-R13: Epnggre <fpnggreNguribegrk.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 02:49:43 -0700 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 35DC36E5.4466#thevortex,com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:scatter#thevortex,com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00782.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00784.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00850.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00806.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00783">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00783">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00783">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Scatter <<A HREF="mailto:scatter#thevortex,com">scatter#thevortex,com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 10:47:02 -0400</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> Marian Griffith wrote: >In <URL:<A HREF="news:local.muddev">news:local.muddev</A>> on Wed 19 Aug, Scatter wrote: >> Marian's Tailor Problem seems to me to be a case of "how do we enable >> Buffy to prevent Bubba ruining her fun without ruining Bubba's fun when >> both players are enacting different but valid facets of the game?" >I actually was more concerned with how to prevent the fighter spoiling >the fun of the tailor without forcing the tailor to become a fighter in >the process. Granted, but equally why should a tailor be able to spoil the fighter's fun? If both things are in the game, then both things should be fun for the players (else their presence at all becomes pointless). >> For the case in point, Buffy enjoys role-playing a tailor in a medieval >> setting. Bubba enjoys role-playing a strong fighter in a medieval setting. >> I'm assuming both Bubba and Buffy are valued players (i.e. you don't >> particularly want either of them quit) and that you don't want to >> drop either facet of the game (tailoring or fighting). >Belief it or not, but the medieval times were only as dangerous as the >average mud in the fantasy of the players. People died early from a lot >of causes, but rarely from combat. Real medieval cities were very likely less dangerous than those facsimiles that exist in muds because they had laws and other mechanisms to protect their citizens, because death was final and because there were very real reasons for people to need the citizens of the cities. These are the kind of things I suggested should be implemented in muds to bring them closer to the protection a tailor might have had in reality. >> There are certain stipulations in that medieval setting though. By >> chosing to play a mud with a medieval setting, Buffy has chosen to >> allow medieval-type things to happen to her. Presumably if she wanted >> to play in a safe environment, she wouldn't be playing a mud that >> didn't provide one in the first place. [snip] >This is were I strongly disagree and why I asked the question that is >now referred to as 'Marian's tailor problem'. The fact that I chose a >medieval setting for a mud has nothing whatshowever to do with if I >want a safe or dangerous environment. The fact you chose a mud that didn't provide a completely safe environment tells me that you didn't want a completely safe environment, and all my discussion and suggestions hinge upon this. There are muds out there that provide safe non-combat medieval settings so if you wanted to be 100% safe, you'd have chosen one of those. >I am not talking about roleplay (acting) games but at a ultima like >game where I can chose not to be a fighter. Assuming you are not a medieval tailor in real life, any game you play where you can assume the role of a medieval tailor is a roleplay game - no? There are many different levels of roleplay ranging from 100% consensual where nothing happens to you unless you agree to it - as in some mushes and the like, ranging down to the "imposed world mechanics" type as implemented in most dikus, LPs etc. I would guess Ultima to fall into the latter catagory - you play a role as restricted by the way their world works. [snip] >> There's now a question of motivation - >> there may nothing wrong with this if it is valid, in-theme, in-character >> roleplay - for example if Buffy had previously done something to insult >> Bubba or one of his friends or followers and Bubba was exacting revenge. >I think being killed is rather a extreme reaction to a result. So do I. However, if I insulted a high level mafia member I wouldn't be surprised to find killers after me. Similarly if I insulted the head of the local Free Mason's lodge I wouldn't be surprised if my little shop started to be mysteriously squeezed out of business. [snip] >> I think the core of the tailor problem is in the valid, in-character >> motivations, because these require game-world mechanisms and can't >> be dismissed so easily. >The IC motivations already are suspect if the attacker forces -his- >playing on somebody else who may not be interested in it. -He- feels >that he is roleplaying properly but the tailor still feels her game >is ruined. I agree with what you are saying here. The question is how to reduce the risk to the tailor without making the fighter's playing invalid. If you've added code to your game to allow players to take up other professions than combat, then you need to add code to ensure that they can take up those professions without needing combat. I don't think it's a good answer to stick in artificial restrainsts like "you are a fighter so you may not attack anyone who isn't a fighter". Instead you need mechanisms like those I suggested to make it un-rewarding to attack non-combatative players. >She has neither the skill nor the motivation to prevent >this kind of things from happening and frankly I strongly believe it >is not -her- job to prevent it anyway. I agree. [snip] >> What in-character, in-setting methods can be put in place >> that will allow Buffy respite from such attacks without requiring her >> to become a tougher fighter than Bubba? >> >> (I don't consider the options of simply blocking player-killing and >> player-stealing because they are out-of-character, artificial methods >> which block valid roleplay situations. > >Actually I would not since they obviously work. Leaving only the inten- >tional harassment to be dealt with. They obviously work, but they change the nature of your world completely. They divide your world into "real people" and "fake people" and thus encourage players to consider most of your worlds population to be unimportant and irrelevant and weakens the suspension of disbelief involved in being a part of the world. As in "I can steal from this person easily, but with this person some mysterious force makes it impossible..." Adding non-combat roles to play should not require that you remove the combat roles, IMO. >> Besides, as I mentioned above, >> Buffy has specificly chosen to play her tailor on a mud that >> allows this sort of thing rather than on a "safe" mud.) >I honestly do not see this as a justification for attacking anybody. It's not a justification for attacking a tailor. "Because I can" is not a good enough reason for PK and I would count it as OOC. On the other hand I do feel that if Buffy wanted to be 100% proof against PK then she wouldn't be playing a PK mud in the first place. >> So, what mechanisms could/should be implemented to enable Buffy to >> protect herself from attack? >> >> Buffy could hire a guard to protect her shop. Of course this would >> require that the shop make enough money to pay the guard, and that >> the guard is tough enough to be a deterrent for Bubba. Depending on >> setting details, she may be able to hire a mage to protect her >> shop and property with various spells. > >I think this is something the game should do automatically. Being a >tailor is fun but running an actual business just so you can run a >shop may not be that much fun, especially if this is drudge work you >have to do because there is no other way to protect you from others. >I do admit however that this is a weak argument. I guess this is an implementation & balance issue. If the shops have been implemented in a way that requires you to purchase or pay rent on the property, purchase your materials and sell your product then I don't see any real problem with having to pay a guard if you want one. The payment could be made sufficiently low as to be a token payment if needed. If shops are implemented so that you can set them up and run them yourself at no real cost then Bubba's raid is not really going to be much bother - it might be annoying but it's not actually costing you anything (except any penalties resulting from death of course). >> Or indeed she may be able to >> draw on player friends to do these tasks for her, for free. This >> could be a problem when she's just starting out and doesn't know >> anybody and/or can't afford much. >The problem is aggravated by the fact that the would be attacker has >very little to lose in a fight but the tailor will lose a lot. There are two ways to tackle this - make the fighter have more to lose and make the tailor lose less. Laws, clans, contracted assassins, guards all help to make the fighter lose more. Safes, locks, seperate warehouses for materials all help to make the tailor lose less. Put together, these help to make an attack upon the tailor much less worthwhile. They don't make an attack impossible in some big OOC artifical way like a PK block, they instead make it unlikely through making in un-rewarding. By making it unrewarding you significantly reduce the chances of an IC attack. >> In-theme law can be used to discourage such attacks on good citizens >> of the city. Bubba might have a valid roleplay grudge against Buffy >> but he's also much less likely to carry out an attack in a place where >> guards are likely to respond quickly to disturbances and punishments >> for crimes are strong enough to deter. >Which still means less to Bubba than it means to his victims. Why should public execution of Bubba mean less to him than Buffy's death? >A new fighter character is easier to create than building up a social net- >work that is needed to play a tailor. Well this depends upon the game in question. However, I would expect that the time needed to build up a powerful fighter character would be greater than that needed to pick up tailoring skills. This only really counts if death is permenant though. >> In a medieval setting, the >> penalty for murder is likely to be execution - the possible penalties >> involved in death could potentially be more detrimental to a fighter >> than to a tailor (e.g. stat reductions are common). >Seeing that the fighter can easily create an entirely new character Not if the game requires him to spend many hours training it to bring it up to scratch. >but that Buffy must play on with her own character (that still could die a >lot because of all these attacks on her shop) this may easily be worse >for the victims than for the attackers. Are all these attacks coming from different people? If all from Bubba then such repeated attacks would be considered by me to be OOC harrassment and dealt with as such. I don't believe there would be many attacks by different players if murder lead to execution. No player wants to sacrifice their life just to kill off a tailor. A dragon maybe, but a tailor? If murder in a city has severe consequences, then players will avoid murdering people in cities. If Bubba is repeatedly killing Buffy with successive new characters, again it becomes OOC harrasment. Bubba should then be banned from the game and blocked from creating new characters. [snip banishment from the city and revenge methods like clans and contracted assassins] >I agree that the only real solution can be found through social mech- >anmisms. And I also think that something must be done to give these a >chance to form in the online community. In a free for all situation >there is no real hope fo a society forming. I think if you are providing a city and providing mechanisms for trade, crafts and professions then you need to provide these social mechanisms as far as possible. That means code support and NPC aids to them. I think you'd need a huge population which relied on non-combat trades to keep it alive to hope for mechanisms to evolve by themselves. At the very least there must be a need for the profession under attack which cannot be filled in other ways. As an example, a mud I play on occasionally has a mechanism which allows limited "hostile" interaction between players (e.g. stealing, teleporting etc) but prevents outright combat. Some player thieves began stealing regularly from player healers, knowing that if they were in the process of casting healing spells they were unable to respond to the theft until the spell was complete - by which time the thief was long gone and hidden. The healers were outraged and decided they would retaliate by refusing to heal thieves. It didn't work for them because there was one healer who was friendly with the thieves and happily sold them healing services. For it to have worked there would have had to be some way to force that one healer to stop healing thieves - for example a mechanism whereby the healer could be cast out of the priesthood for disobeying directives of the high priests (thus removing her healing abilities). Without this, the social mechanisms just can't work. >> There is a compromise here in how much this restricts Bubba's enjoyment >> of being a thug and killing who he pleases. >Since his play has the tendency to annoy a number of players entirely >out of proportion to his enjoyment I tend to think not much concern is >needed for this kind of players. This depends entirely on how (well) he (role)plays his thug. On the one hand I believe that if the mud provides being a thug as a valid role, then enjoyment of that role should be protected just as much as enjoyment of any other provided role, like being a tailor. If he's using "being a thug" as an excuse for repeatedly annoying people then IMO he's not really roleplaying and I'd consider it OOC harrassment. However, the role of being a thug should be implemented fully enough that the drawbacks of being a thug are also present - e.g. annoying other thugs and getting killed, getting arrested and punished, being generally reviled in civilised areas and not trusted, having others carrying out revenge attacks upon you and so on. >> I think that as long as your game and setting allow a certain style >> of play, and there is an element of realism in that style of play >> then you need to make sure that the setting is realised in sufficient >> detail that the style of play in question is rewarding. That means >> providing appropriate social measures to protect certain play styles >> from being overly spoiled by other play styles but at the same time >> it means making sure that those other play styles are still enjoyable >> even with those measures in place. > >Which still leaves the question: How do you arrange this? I'm not sure what you are asking. You arrange this by designing appropriate measures as part of the process of designing a new style of play. Working out what measures are needed and which are successful may be a case of trial and error for a while as the new style of play is introduced. -- Scatter ///\oo/\\\ </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00782.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Standard Mud Room Format?</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00784.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Standard Mud Room Format?</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00850.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00806.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00783"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00783"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00798" HREF="msg00798.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Brandon J. Rickman <a href="mailto:ashes#pc4,zennet.com">ashes#pc4,zennet.com</a>, Fri 21 Aug 1998, 21:34 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00846" HREF="msg00846.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Travis Casey <a href="mailto:efindel#polaris,net">efindel#polaris,net</a>, Wed 26 Aug 1998, 03:20 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00916" HREF="msg00916.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Brandon J. Rickman <a href="mailto:ashes#pc4,zennet.com">ashes#pc4,zennet.com</a>, Thu 03 Sep 1998, 02:05 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00850" HREF="msg00850.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Wed 26 Aug 1998, 04:09 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00783" HREF="msg00783.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Scatter <a href="mailto:scatter#thevortex,com">scatter#thevortex,com</a>, Thu 20 Aug 1998, 09:49 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00806" HREF="msg00806.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Damion Schubert <a href="mailto:zjiria#texas,net">zjiria#texas,net</a>, Sat 22 Aug 1998, 03:19 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00824" HREF="msg00824.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Sun 23 Aug 1998, 10:42 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00811" HREF="msg00811.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, quzah <a href="mailto:quzah#geocities,com">quzah#geocities,com</a>, Sat 22 Aug 1998, 08:11 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00928" HREF="msg00928.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: UBE/high: Re: FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Thu 03 Sep 1998, 15:03 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>