[MUD-Dev] Life

Jeff Kesselman jeffk at tenetwork.com
Sun Jun 1 12:51:02 CEST 1997


At 09:39 AM 6/1/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>[JK:]
>> Reasonably mature players generally DON'T want to hurt the other player...
>
>You're confused between 'player' and 'character'.  The statement
>above is correct, but has nothing to do with the game.
>
>If I kill you in order to 'hurt' you as a player, I'm not playing the
>game - I'm bringing in outside stuff which is beyond the scope of the game.

No, Im not confusing it.  Tehse players Im referring to not only DO
confusse it though, they don't even HAVE this concept in their vocabulary.
They do not roleplay, they play the game like they were playing chess....

And if I played chass i nsuch a way as to destroy your chess peices (and
its your set), I AM hurting YOU, no?

>
>If I kill you within the context of the game and you take it personally,
>than YOU are not playing the game correctly.

**sigh** Thsi is the standard Pkilelr BS. It works 100% for Duke.  It is
totally incorrerct ina true ROLEPLAY game.  It is also nonsense. i have
NEVER met a Pkiller who woudl accept me, with Sysop powers, just blowing
away their charcter or taking all their items??

Why shoudl they "take it personally" by your logic??

Nowe, to treat the statement with more seriosuness them IMO it deserves...
See the above. My character is important to me, in a  way I suspect you are
not equipoped to understand.  I am a roleplayer. The game to me is about
story.  If you kill out my character before I have had a chance to fully
explore that story you have taken soemthing very personal and precious from
me... like destroying the pages of a half competed Steven King novel in
front of his face.

Furthermoe, as a Pkiller at most all you care about is the pwoer of your
character-- you can rebuild it.  By contrast each character a roleplayer
creates is unique. It breaks the implicit rules of the game the ROleplayers
play to try to recreate the character and "continue" the story.  That story
is over, albiet in a nasty, unstatisfying way.

SO you do far MROE damage to a Roleplayer by Pkilling them thne I do as
sysop by wiping your charatcer out of existance.

It helps if you try to UNDERTSNAD the other guy ratehr then making the
statement that anythign that doesn't agree with your own world perceptio
nis 'wrong".

This IS the innate problem though. Neiterh the of games of Roleplay OR PvP
are "right" or "wrong"... they just do NOT belong together.

Ill ignore the rest of your diatribe except top oitn out that you are
giving a clasic Game-Oriented-Player POV, though as is ALSO classic you
attempt to justify it with occasional references to the 'real world'.

GAme oriented play is fine if thats what yo uwant, its just not Roleplay.
NOW why GOPers WANT to play in a world where so much emphasis and work has
been placed into Roleplay and emersion I haven't a clue. There are WONDERFUL
non-roleplay envrionments for such things.. .everything from Quake to
Diablo (which is NOT an RP game. Its Gauntlet on steriods.)

My last comment is that I've heard al lthese arguiments in the last year
invovled in DSO... yet when we GAVE the PbvPers a PvP world where they
coudl play THEIR game in proivacy... they weren't  interested.  Thsi tells
me that a HELl of alot of the so called "PvP'ers are really Pkillers as per
my earlier definition.  Do yo uhave another explaination?

JK




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