This can be fought against. It has been fought against. And, by and large, it can be beaten.
Now, it's human nature to want the best and to be the strongest, to have the coolest toys. That's never going to change, I'm afraid.
But what you have to do is impose a sense of personal responsibility and consequences into the act of attacking another person during the course of RP.
To this end, you could (as we've done at OtherSpace), eliminate any automated combat system you might have and rely instead on consent-based or refereed fights in which the participants make rolls on their stats and skills.
Let's explore the difference between consent-based and refereed for a moment.
Consent-based: Two or more players decide they want to rumble. They decide their own combat modifiers for their taskrolls (and deliberate amongst themselves when they disagree). And they all agree that however the fight plays out through taskrolls, they'll abide by the outcome - even if that means someone dies.
Refereed: Two or more players decide they want to rumble, but they want a staffer to oversee the fight and assign modifiers. Everyone agrees to abide by the outcome with the referee's oversight.
During the fight, as Player A suffers injuries, his ability to effectively roll his stats and skills decreases. This is pretty realistic, as the more one fights - and the more injuries one receives - the wearier one gets. Sweat and blood get in your eyes, making it hard to see. The pain from that searing plasma rifle blast makes you dizzy.
When either of these types of combat comes to an end, a staffer will inflict permanent damage to some +sheets, +kill people, maybe make them take +luckrolls to see whether a miracle saves them from certain death (but not near death injuries and probably permanent disfigurement).
Now, the key element in all of this is: Staff involvement and the absence of an automated system. When you have referees on the playing field, you can make sure the penalized team goes back five yards as required by the rules. Without referees, the automated system might say "Team A must fall back five yards," but Team A doesn't have to listen, and can run rampant all over the field.
Consent-based and refereed combat are more difficult and time-consuming than automated combat, but I've found they are much friendlier to a truly RP-oriented environment.
|