> An aspect I am finding hard to implement into my MUD is a believable, fair &
> somewhat player driven justice system. I am not really interested in seeing
> any code (so don't reply with "I'm not going to send you my code") but more
> of the concept.
>
> If anyone is interested in sharing thoughts and ideas on this topic, email
> me off the list at: ritchie@pacific.net.au.
>
Actually, I think this is a great topic for the list in general.
Muds everywhere lack a sense of justice. Assume we take a mud which
hasn't tackeled the subject, we have people running through the town
killing the town guards and stealing from the townspeople. If we have
player-killing allowed, there are daily duels in the main courtyard
outside the player load/recall room. Then 'justice' turns into groups of
people who dislike groups of other people. It's unrealistic, or unfair.
Has anyone found a good balance on this?
I started to write a system to enforce a set of rules in town, but
I overwhelmed myself right away with the necessary complexity. Any given
system would need to have witnesses, perhaps a magistrate, differing
penalties for the crime (many of which, like branding, or
removal/crippling of limbs were impossible without alot of special case
code, or whole new systems). Add in the fact that death is often used as
an escape for whatever current malady is affecting you at the moment, and
it's hard to use that as a punishment (though I did write up an
executioner spec_proc. He takes 4-5 minutes to kill someone, all the
while hollaring the status, and explaining how he just stopped the guy
from getting away - also bound, gagged, cutting the tongue out first,
blinding, removing limbs, breaking existing eq, stuff like that, in a
public room set aside for that usage. It's sorta bloody and sick, but the
main drawback is the character is unusable for 5 minutes, you loose all
your eq and gold, and then they're killed. (And he also takes unanswered
swings at people who try to help the prisoner escape, summoning, etc).
PjD
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