[silvarilon]

What you just described is pretty reasonable, given the information in this thread. But I certainly haven't explained things in terms of how I balance fairness vs PC power.

We do have a legal system that can lead to permadeath, and my character does have some influence over it - however, there are many checks and balances. All the laws that lead to permadeath are clearly marked, and the players are given plenty of warning. Things like "If you are roleplaying a slave, and have a weapon without permission" (slaves have to be approved by staff, who run them through the IC and OOC rules) or "If you keep claiming to be a noble when you aren't one" (we had a character claiming to be a king. Since this hadn't come up before, he was contacted and told that it could lead to his execution if the in-game authorities heard of any future incidents, but they would ignore the past claims) or "If you don't retract your statement of heresey and make a public post about converting" (It's a religious setting. You don't have to *believe* but you have to at least not walk around spouting heresy, or you'll be executed. Even in those cases, when caught they are given the chance to just say "Oh, I see my error and convert" that first time.) - there are other crimes, like "assault" or "destruction of property" that might be more subjective, but none of the more subjective crimes can lead to permadeath. And that's where my character would most often be consulted, when there is a question about a subjective crime. Also, I didn't just grant myself that power for my character, I roleplayed being interested, learning about the crimes, and constantly giving consistent advice when asked, until the other characters would ask. Officially, my character has no power in the legal system other than that given by the other players through asking for advice. - I have roleplayed my character into gaining in-game allies, that sometimes are helpful. And I have roleplayed my character into a position of respect (from some characters.)

So... my character has little to no ability to use that influence to get someone executed. Certainly my character does not "dictate the law"
And even more certainly, me running the game has little to do with my character's in-game position, any other player could have done exactly the same.

Secondly, when I said that the legal system upsets the players, I was specifically referring to how the legal system doesn't encourage the violence escalation that we were discussing earlier. If two people pull swords and fight each other, the legal system charges *both* with assault, even if one was attacked. That's more the players wanting to play the hero who can pull weapons and kill "bad guys" with no consequences, and not really anything to do with my character having influence on the legal system.

Thirdly, the legal system is totally, utterly, dependent on evidence gathered by players. I'm constantly striving to "put the power in the hands of the players" and let them take more and more of a role in running things, rather than having staff always "at the top" - staff will always play characters like the king, but we make an effort to make those characters fade into the background (the king hasn't even come out in the past two real life years...) and let the players make the real decisions. We need systems so an abusive player doesn't ruin the game for others. The legal system is one of these cases, instead of a staff magistrate deciding if someone should be punished, the players gather evidence and enter it into the system. When they have enough "points" of evidence for the crime, the criminal can be arrested, then has to choose a punishment based on the number of "points" against them. What that means is that staff can sit back entirely, and let players follow up the crimes. The players can charge each other, gather evidence, arrest, the criminal's player chooses the punishments, and life in the game goes on. Hopefully with fun roleplay at each step. But it also means if the players don't *want* to enforce certain rules, well, they just won't gather any evidence for it. So to have someone executed, you're going to need to find a lot of evidence or witnesses. Makes it very hard for one character to be an OOC dictator about it.

We also have other checks and balances, of course. For example, no staff ever puts in a game change that benefits one of their characters without getting the change approved from another, unaffected staff member. Including me. So if my character is in conflict with, say, a poisoner I wouldn't change the laws to make murder an executionable crime. I might suggest it, but I'd have to leave the decision to someone else. More likely I'd wait for that conflict to end before making the change, to be doubly sure that we don't unfairly benefit our own characters.

As a side note, on the "unpleasantly nasty" - the suicides really were players who wanted to delete their characters and play something new. They decided to target my character because of the nasty attitude they thought they could be the hero by killing the "bad guy" - it wasn't because my character had actually *done* anything to them.

Actually, yes. The game is entirely a dictatorship. I'd like to think it's a benevolent dictatorship, because I run a game with the intention of making it as fun for the players as possible. But it's not a democracy, it's not a commune. I listen to ideas and suggestions and debate, and then make the decision I think will be best for the game. That's a dictatorship.

Hopefully I'm doing a good job, and hopefully by running things well we make a better, more consistent game for everyone.

I certainly don't *roleplay* a dictator character in the game, my characters are all pretty low, socially. Mostly because I spent almost all my free time building the game rather than playing it, which makes it hard to climb the ladder. And I don't allow staff to take shortcuts just because they're staff, if they're playing a character they play it *exactly* the same as the other players. Including myself. The influence my characters have (well, only really one. The others have zero influence) is entirely due to the fact that I've been playing the same character for years now, and have slowly built up trust with the other long-term characters. If I played more instead of building and coding, I'd probably have gotten to this point in a matter of months instead of years.

And... tying that back in with the larger discussion... permadeath would mean more to me than some other players, since it took me years to get here, while someone who can play more could get there in months. So, even if we're loosing the same status, it's a larger "hit" to me, since it'll take me longer to get it back. Also, this point of a "dictator" character, there are some players that DO have more OOC power than others. Some have more friends, some some are staff on games that let staff give rewards directly to their characters, or make game changes that benefit themselves. Some have better weapons that make them significantly tougher (maybe through a chance drop, or for some other reason) - all those things make the competition of PC vs PC more unbalanced, which affects how happy players are with a permadeath situation. Unbalanced isn't always bad, someone who's put in effort for the past two years should certainly have an advantage over someone who hasn't.