[MUD-Dev] Character Restraint & Capture.

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Jester wrote:
> Matt Mihaly wrote:

>> We put this kind of system into Achaea years ago and subsequently
>> removed it. It's just another tool for grief play.

> I think that 'this type of system' is a very broad categorization
> that IMHO shouldn't be applied to rjw's thoughts or any other
> future systems without due consideration to the details of the
> individual implimentation.  Sorry it didn't work for you but as
> they say 'the devil's in the details' :)

Well, considering he/you (don't remember who the original poster
was) described essentially the exact system we tried, I'm going to
disagree.

> I strongly disagree with this as IMHO addressing the in game
> justice will address the out of game justice. If a player sees
> their killer brought to justice and forced to pay them reperation
> then why would they leave the game?

Because the killer is no more likely to be "brought to justice" than
the killee is to be "brought to justice." (ie killed via this bounty
system).  What's stopping a city from making laws that absolutely do
not fit with any out-of-game sense of justice? How about, "All
dwarves are evil and must be eliminated on sight." What does that
have to do with out-of-game justice?

A game system does not know what 'justice' is and it is not
conceivable that a game system will be able to recognize it without
sophisticated AI WAY beyond what currently exists even in research
labs.

>> Instead, the bounty system applies to the second kind of
>> 'justice', in which justice is defined merely as punishing
>> lawbreakers. The laws in question here are being made by the
>> players running the cities, and they may or may not have anything
>> to do with the first kind of justice.

> You make the presumtion that the laws players set will not be
> within a framework where the system owner can set boundaries.

I know they won't be. Justice is a very nuanced, complicated
concept.  There is no known way to represent it in code, even
ignoring the fact that there's no such thing as objective justice.

Of course, the caveat here is that you could have human admins
overseeing everything. That's how our OOC PK rules work, since code
is incapable of a sufficient level of nuance for our purposes. (For
instance, code cannot recognize that you just broke an agreement
with me to stay loyal to my cult by plotting against the cult with
the enemy.) Even with our human admins though, we're forced to limit
the level of nuance we'll permit in arguments from players accused
of illegal PK. Takes too much of their time otherwise.


>> Further, as a practical problem this kind of system is eminently
>> gameable in the case of an NPC just creating gold to give out. If
>> the gold that the NPC pays out is simply created from nothing,
>> cities will place bounties on mule characters or even their
>> buddies, in order to generate free gold.

> This is a very implimentation specific illustration as neither I
> in my orginal post or rjw in the followup state the intention to
> use 'free' gold I also think that how gameable a system is depends
> on the robustness of the underlying concept and the attention to
> detail given to the details of the implimentation.

So write out a design or show me a workable example. I'm just giving
you the benefit of 7+ years of practical, commercial, hands-on
design/admin-side experience.

--matt
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