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Old 02-12-2013, 03:19 PM   #2
SnowTroll
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 183
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Re: RPI and PC power: can vs. should

This sounds like one specific example of the age's old question: player to player courtesy versus being true to roleplaying versus being an opportunistic jerk.

As players of online games that are, truthfully, a fairly unpopular and sparsely populated hobby compared to most, we want other people who play the games we play to have fun, stay interested, and keep playing. That means that if there's an opportunity to kill another player's character that wouldn't be against a game's rules, and would align with the roleplaying that's currently taking place, some players might bend their roleplaying a little bit and refrain from killing someone off as a courtesy.

You also see the opposite. Online games are competitive, and it's a rush to be stronger, more established, and better than your fellow player, and to beat someone at the game. That means that if there's an opportunity to kill another player's character that wouldn't be against a game's rules, and would align with the roleplaying that's currently taking place, some players might go out of their way to find excuses to off someone because flexing their muscle and actually affecting someone else's game is what makes multiplayer games fun.

In the middle of this, you have the "roleplaying purists" who will claim to do exactly what their roleplaying dictates with no regard for their own enjoyment as a player or the enjoyment of other players. Kind of on the outside of this, you have personal haters and brown-nosers, who choose option A or option B based on whether they like or hate the other player. Then, of course, they claim that whatever they did, it was solely motivated by good roleplaying and not by personal feelings.

Which of the above is "right?" That varies from game to game. Obviously, in the real world, it's very rare for someone to kill someone else as an alternative to an intense discussion. But most muds take place in darker worlds where murder is pretty common and evil abounds, and where being stronger is more important than being a smart and persuasive talker who wins arguments. Because the stronger guy is going to jump the smarter guy two steps outside of the city guard's line of sight. Or if the stronger guy is a king, he'll just summon the guards or something. Depending on the game, it could be perfectly okay and "right" to completely stifle someone else's roleplaying with death or threats of death if you're in a position to do so, though tempered by the above options (player courtesy versus competitiveness versus roleplay purity).
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