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11950: Re: [MUD-Dev] Fair/Unfair? Scenarios (fwd)
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From: Matthew Mihaly <diablo@best.com>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 16:11:09 -0800 (PST)
References: [1]
Organization: Kanga.Nu
On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Lucas Moten (Krozy) wrote:
> > On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Mik Clarke wrote:
> >> Inescapable areas are just bad design - the player should be
> >> either dead or able to escape (or maybe be rescued by
> >> someone with less than divine powers). Getting trapped is a
> >> real pain if you don't have a recall ability - if the mud also
> >> doesn't do death from starvation/thirst then the only way to
> >> return the character to play is through direct divine intervention
> >> - which spoils the sense of belief in the world. Role playing
> >> someone trapped forever in a small dark cave is fun for about
> >> 5 seconds...
>
> On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> > Unless you are in a permadeath game, getting trapped in a death
> > trap does not entail not surviving. It's simply a setback (either
> > minor or major), and players quickly realize this.
>
> But is an unescapable setback "fair"? - In some sense, we can quickly
> justify this non-fairness by the way the real world works - life in itself
> isn't fair. On the other hand, players are there for their enjoyment. They
> expect adequate reasoning for a catastrophic event other then "hey - sh*t
> happens". To make an unescapable setback fair, warnings should be in place.
I am firmly in the fair-is-not-the-end-all-be-all-of-muds camp. Is it
"fair" to be killed by another player when you don't want to be? No. But
in my opinion, tough, AND good. I firmly believe that a little unfairness
is good to the game as a whole. Some individual users will suffer, but you
must break some eggs to make an omlette. I'm all about making things seem
serious and weighty, and a sugar-sweet world where bad things never happen
to good people isn't something I could take seriously as a player.
--matt
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