nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

1865: Re: [MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

In <338B3770.31DFF4F5@iname.com>, on 05/27/97 
   at 08:36 PM, Shawn Halpenny <malachai@iname.com> said:

>I dislike the idea of permanent death, but I abhor the Diku-style of
>death where you lose some xp and merrily continue on your way once
>you've retrieved your corpse that no one else can pick up while
>you're en route anyway (the latter is too simple while the former is
>too strict--I like to fight things and don't want to risk everything
>I've got if my opponent gets in a lucky shot against my superior
>fighting skill).

Has anybody here any definite experience with Nightmare's underworld? 
George Reese has dropped some interesting comments on it of late,
detaling that upon death a character becomes "undead" and is confined
to the Underworld where he has different but largely equivalent skills
(and a whole slew of associated new weaknesses).  There he can die
again to become permanently dead, or may in various manners strive to
live again.

>To me, this makes death sufficiently nasty to be avoided (no one will
>want their abilities to decay, since those are the determining
>factors in what one can do and how well one can do it in the world),
>but also gives the recently dead a few perks--it can actually be
>advantageous to be dead for short periods of time.  And a simple
>wrong move or misguided action that has fatal consequences doesn't
>dump me back to absolute square one.

I can just see a set of enterprising players using this as a body-swap
regime.  They go kill Bubba who has a nice body, then get themselves
killed to have one of their compatriots ressurect them in the "better"
body.

Equally I can see such "body trades" being used as a method of gaining
access to areas otherwise impossible.  eg.

  Bubba can get to area X for various reasons.

  Boffo and Bernie go to X.
 
  Boffo kills Bernie.  

  Bubba kills himself.

  Boffo ressurects Bubba in Bernie's body.  

  Boffo does whatever.

  Bubba gets where he couldn't get.

BTW These aren't complaints.  I see these above as huge features of
the design.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw@null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder@ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc@cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...