Hey,
I'm looking for some feedback on ideas to offer players ways of gaining xp without actual combat. This is for a non-roleplay mud.
Obviously the difficulties are:
+ How do you maintain a challenge so that the player is still taking risks and is therefore worthy of experience even though they aren't fighting.
+ How do you prevent abuse by people who have 'figured out' the system (ie, awarding xp for answering riddles obviously only works while the player doesn't know the answer).

Just looking for a few ideas. Thanks.
Pris

We use puzzles with multiple solutions, puzzles where each character can only get the experience once, puzzles which are only available once an hour, puzzles with different solutions based on either randomness or a hash from the characters name, etc etc.

There is an NPC called the riddler who gives xp for answering riddles, but he has a _lot_ of riddles, and players can actually add more, so it's very hard to automate the solutions.

You are right though, it's a tricky one to get right - something we are strongly against is 'risk free xp' - and puzzles can be that.

Icesus, one of the MUDs I play on, allows players to gain experience by hunting rats, fishing, and mining...although there is no risk of dying, each activity consumes time (and endurance points) and yields a little less experience than combat.

Let them cast spells of great learning that can blow up in their face and make them into human vegetables? ;-)

One of the most imaginative xp systems I've seen is on one of the less popular Simutronics games, Modus Operandi, a game in which you can achieve a respectable level without ever entering combat, though it can take longer. One thing to note with these examples, is that there is no death in Modus Operandi, so the equations for risk are generally financial...you can rack up expensive hospital bills or police fines, for example, and if you get too far into debt you have to spend time in jail.

They have a number of nonviolent methods of gaining xp such as:
--you can make citizen's arrests of criminals, by reading wanted posters in various places around the city, showing descriptions of criminal NPCs, then finding the matching criminals wandering the streets of the city. After the citizen's arrest, the NPC despawns and something new spawns elsewhere, based on a random description/name/crime generator. (Mostly NPC's with descriptions like "a young man", "a middle-aged woman" etc. where you have to look at them to see their descriptions.) PC's who get wanted for a crime can also be apprehended this way. False arrests are punished with a fine. As you move on to harder areas, there may be more hideyholes the NPCs can wander into, or the speed at which the NPCs move from room to room can increase.

--In the same crime-fighting vein, people can get xp for turning in certain mob loot to the "police station", such as stolen wallets, counterfeit money, and weapons. Although you have to kill to get these items, they can be given by the "killer" to a non-violent character.

--you can make deliveries for various shopkeepers, bartenders, and other NPC's. However, in that game they don't allow NPC-killing, so you never have to worry about the NPC in question not being around when needed. This xp method gives less xp at a time, because the NPC's are stationary and some people can create auto-walking scripts.

--Quests (or "mysteries" in Modus Operandi's case since it's a modern murder-mystery setting) give xp for getting solved, but can only be solved once per character.

dude you had me all worked up about this game, i searhed for it to check it out...and its play to pay...damnit...

neways, one of the ways Untamed Lands does non-combat RP is through skill use. Do a skill a number of times, and get XP for it. tho it coul lead to skill spamming, and prolly would.

Resource gathering. By making resources available in places where the danger is relative to the usefulness of the resource, then either the player must take risk in order to earn his non-combat-xp, or pay through the nose to someone else who takes that risk.