Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - What types of games are impacted the most by permadeath?

DonathinFrye · 03-09-2010, 12:50 PM

I can't speak for ARM, as my head-staffing experience has been entirely with Shadows of Isildur, and now Atonement. However, it is a bit of an IC cultural thing, I believe, in most cases. Forced conscription and humiliation of PCs doesn't happen on Atonement due to the setting. On SOI, it is common practice, though, for orcs to act this way towards new orc characters. A lot of players loved the rough roleplay of orcs ... and a lot of players hated it. At least on SOI, you had (if anything, too many) different spheres/races/play-areas spread out. It was very easy to avoid this sort of play there if you wanted to. From my experiences as a player on ARM, I'd say that it's probably a little harder there - but not too much so.

Well, I'm not really a fan of waving the "level-less" flag infront of my game, but I think that you're mostly wrong here. Whether or not your skills have numerical values attached to them, the system itself is still significantly different than player levels. It's an entirely skill-based growth system as opposed to a level-based growth system (which oftentimes can/does include a skill-based growth system as well). I think that you can safely say that a skill-based system that does not utilize experience-points/levels is fairly different than an XP/level-based system.

With that said, it's still a system. It's not some magical answer to power-gaming. But with a skill-based system like RPIs use, that obfusicates the numerical values of stats/skills from players, the general idea is to encourage less meta-gaming/power-gaming and more improvement through natural progression. Most players don't even really understand how skill-growth truly works in these games, and that little bit of mystery is meant to drive players towards more realistic immersion. It has mixed results, and there are still players who obsess over their skill-levels, but having staffed at PK/H+S MUDs as well as RPIs, I can safely say that it does manage to help lower the overall focus on meta-gaming in an RPI's community.

03-09-2010, 12:50 PM	#58
DonathinFrye Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Name: Donathin Frye Location: Columbus, OH Home MUD: Optional Realities Home MUD: Atonement RPI Home MUD: Project Redshift Posts: 510	Re: What types of games are impacted the most by permadeath? I can't speak for ARM, as my head-staffing experience has been entirely with Shadows of Isildur, and now Atonement. However, it is a bit of an IC cultural thing, I believe, in most cases. Forced conscription and humiliation of PCs doesn't happen on Atonement due to the setting. On SOI, it is common practice, though, for orcs to act this way towards new orc characters. A lot of players loved the rough roleplay of orcs ... and a lot of players hated it. At least on SOI, you had (if anything, too many) different spheres/races/play-areas spread out. It was very easy to avoid this sort of play there if you wanted to. From my experiences as a player on ARM, I'd say that it's probably a little harder there - but not too much so. Well, I'm not really a fan of waving the "level-less" flag infront of my game, but I think that you're mostly wrong here. Whether or not your skills have numerical values attached to them, the system itself is still significantly different than player levels. It's an entirely skill-based growth system as opposed to a level-based growth system (which oftentimes can/does include a skill-based growth system as well). I think that you can safely say that a skill-based system that does not utilize experience-points/levels is fairly different than an XP/level-based system. With that said, it's still a system. It's not some magical answer to power-gaming. But with a skill-based system like RPIs use, that obfusicates the numerical values of stats/skills from players, the general idea is to encourage less meta-gaming/power-gaming and more improvement through natural progression. Most players don't even really understand how skill-growth truly works in these games, and that little bit of mystery is meant to drive players towards more realistic immersion. It has mixed results, and there are still players who obsess over their skill-levels, but having staffed at PK/H+S MUDs as well as RPIs, I can safely say that it does manage to help lower the overall focus on meta-gaming in an RPI's community.