[MUD-Dev] Re: Permadeath

[Richard.Woolcock at rsuk.rohde-schwarz.com]

Nigel Chapman wrote:
> > Eric wrote:
> > > There are clearly ways of making perm death workable and palatable.
>
> Not, I think, within the DIKU-Deriv family of MUDs, nor within the
> pure RPG MOO families, that is to say, not at the extremes of M*+ing.

A mud is a mud is a mud.  I could make a MOO look more Diku-like than most
Diku derivatives - or vice versa.

However I do agree with the reasoning behind your argument.  The more time
and effort required to create a character, the more severe the penalty for
permadeath is.  Unlike you though, I don't believe that such effort is
limited purely to statistics - you could spend 10 hours killing mobs or 10
hours building your character's personality through roleplaying, but at
the end of the day it's still 10 hours of your time.  Perhaps some people
consider those 10 hours to be the "fun" part - but there are many others
who consider it character building, and thus "wasted" if the character is
killed and therefore lost.

I have seen some muds which implement permadeath quite well (Harshlands -
a Diku derivative - is a good example) however it does tend to attract a
very select audience.

The approach I use in my Diku/Merc derivative is to divide each character
into two parts - their soul (overall power gained through play) and their
body (the current incarnation of their soul, and division of their power
among various attributes and abilities).  While death destroys the old
character, the player is able to create a new character of a roughly equal
power level to the previous one - and in some cases this actually becomes
vital in order to progress on to the next stage of development (I suppose
you could almost consider it a sort of "remort" system).

The advancement system I use is not as linear as most muds, either.  A
starting character specialised in combat could quite easily defeat many
older characters who hadn't.  Equipment gives an advantage, but is easily
created by anyone with the appropriate skills.

[snip]

> Multiplaying means everyone gets two characters which they can use the
> ALTERNATE command to switch between in-game without logging in again
> (whether for functional or espionage purposes).  They may or may not
> make the name of their 'Alt' public knowledge.  In any case this
> means, amongst other things, that they have a backup in the case of
> losing one character, who can help them rebuild their other character,
> and who can 'inherit' their inheritable goods.

Does their alt advance at the same time as their normal character, or do
they have to divide their time between the two characters?  Personally I
prefer to restrict people to one character at a time, although I can see
the advantages of your system, particularly in regards to inheriting
goods - I just assume that the player's next character inherits their
old character's property (not equipment - that's lost - but houses, shops,
etc).

[snip]

> As I say, however, I haven't coded or playtested this, though I hope
> to in the coming year.

I'll look forward to seeing how it turns out.

[snip rest]

--
KaVir.


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