Member Discussions

Several MUDs have a part of their Terms of Use which states that anyone found to be adhering to the letter of the rules, but violating their "spirit", will be punished anyway.

It would be nice if we could all figure out as we encounter them [if not explicitly, in advance] whether a situation was against the "spirit" of the rules. I am looking for the essence of the rules. Game-balance might be an excellent place to start; anything that you do, which not everyone else can [knows of] or will [because of specific rules against it] do, may be considered against the rules. The best playerbase is the playerbase which never needs to be policed OOCly; not because they police each other [ICly], but because they police themselves, making sure they never get into a questionable [anyone can avoid the definitive pre-defined letter-of-the-rules violations] situation OOCly. The best players, in the eyes of those IMM's responsible for enforcing the rules, are those, are those who do all the work for you - figuring out what is illegal or not as new situations come up, applying the spirit of the rules to write new letters.

Do you prefer to write out explicit rules ahead of time that "cover all eventualities"? What would you think of IMM's who prefer to reserve all knowledge of the rules, or decisions about the rules, or both - for themselves?

-FireCat

> Several MUDs have a part of their Terms of Use which
> states that anyone found to be adhering to the letter of
> the rules, but violating their "spirit", will be punished
> anyway.

It's a lazy way of covering your own behind from situations in which a player skirts around the exact wording of the rules, or tries to play the syntax game with you. For example "The rules say you can't PK other players - but I didn't kill him! I just beat him unconscious and left him to die! That's not against the rules".

Of course you could just rewrite the rules every time their spirit is violated, but that's likely to cause much more upset in the long run - a persistent troublemaker could cause no end of problems and you'd have no grounds under which to get rid of them. Equally, the constantly changing rules might catch other players out, and even become overly restrictive as you attempt to prevent the disruptive behaviour. Finally, a huge list of rules will sometimes put off prospective players.

Speaking from experience, I've found that if you treat the players like children (for example, with excessive rules) they are more likely to act like children. If you treat them like adults (eg, make it clear what sort of behaviour you expect from them) they are more likely to act responsibly.

Of course it also depends somewhat on what style of mud you're running - players on a heavily roleplaying-oriented mud, which requires character backgrounds and email registration before connecting, are much more likely to be actively trying to follow rule guidelines rather than work their way around them. The same cannot be said of most muds, however.

Tyche's all-encompassing rules system

1) There are no rules.
2) You will be punished for breaking the rules.

Back on the mud I coded for a while back, our rules were: "If we don't like it, we'll code around it". For the large part, it was successful, believe it or not. A couple of features were changed or removed, sure, but I believe it promoted a far better spirit of play.

I mean, what's the point in having both a) a rule that says "Thou shalt not PK" and b) having PK available in the game?

Kas.

> Back on the mud I coded for a while back, our rules were:
> "If we don't like it, we'll code around it". For the large
> part, it was successful, believe it or not. A couple of
> features were changed or removed, sure, but I believe it
> promoted a far better spirit of play.

All well and good, but it depends heavily what sort of players (and how many) your mud has, which in turn depends on what type of mud you're running. If you're not careful, you might find yourself in a constant battle of wits against the players, leaving you with very little time to actually work on anything new.

> I mean, what's the point in having both a) a rule that says
> "Thou shalt not PK" and b) having PK available in the game?

Because it's often easier and quicker. So you want to stop Bubba from killing all the newbies? No problem - just put a check in the "kill" command which will stop players from attacking other players.

But wait a minute! Bubba has now tricked the newbies into attacking him. by casting aggressive spells on them (or maybe disguising himself as a mob) which initiates the combat at a lower level. Easily fixed, though - just delve a little deeper into the code.

Now Bubba is summoning the newbies to aggressive mobs, which results in them being killed just as quickly. Not a problem - you implement a "summoning" flag which players can toggle on or off at will.

Uh oh - Bubba is tricking the newbies into switching off their summon flag, by using a secondary character called "Hint" who uses carefully phrased emotes! No worries, you ban names like "Hint" and "Info", and adjust the emote command so that it should be obvious from now on that it's not a system message.

Bubba's at it again. This time he's using a disguise skill to make himself look like an immortal, and he's telling the newbies that they need to switch their summon off to help him test out a bug! Well, that is easily fixed - a quick change to the disguise command and he can no longer make himself look like an imm.

Now Bubba's just pretending to be a friendly player, and asking the newbies to switch their summon off so that can give them some cool equipment. Annoying. Most newbies learn after the first time, but some of them are still quitting outright and posting nasty reviews about your mud being newbie-unfriendly. So you post a warning on the MOTD, and hardcode a restriction preventing players from switching off their "summon" flag until they reach level 5.

Now Bubba is bringing the aggressive mobs to the players - he's summoning the mobs into the newbie zone (where they kill any newbie players that turn up) as well as the temple alter (where they repeatedly spam-kill the newbies as they reappear). You prevent mobs from attacking within the temple alter, and stop mobs from being summoned outside of their areas.

Now Bubba is charming the mobs, and getting them to follow him to the temple square, where he quits (removing the charm affect). They then kill any newbies who have just got out of newbie school...

I could go on, but I think you get the idea - and that's just one feature. Imagine having to do that for every abusable aspect of the game - and having to deal with dozens of players like that. It's eating up valuable time that could be spent improving the mud, and in some cases the "fixes" are actually making the game less enjoyable (for example, perhaps a newbie really NEEDS a summon, because he's lost?). And what do you do while you're fixing the problem? Close the mud down? Some of the problems could be fixed in a matter of seconds, but others might require quite large work-arounds.

And then you get on to things which simply cannot be handled completely by the code. How do you code around people who want to harrass certain players? How do you code around people who want to spam adverts for their own mud? If you're a roleplaying mud, how do you code around people who won't roleplay? You can provide support to make these easier (player-configured ban lists, preventing channel talk until certain levels, etc), but you cannot completely automate them if you want to do the job properly.

*sagenod*

A perfect illustration of one of my favorite sayings: "You can't code common sense".

/Fredrik

The mud community is an international one so I will inform everyone that my views are that of a citizen of the USA. I blame the attitude on the fact that the US has become overly litigious, and the laws are interpreted by letter, not spirit. This means that while there are players that do understand the spirit and adhere to that spirit, there are those that look at the rules like tax laws, trying to find a loophole that they can use towards their advantage.

The problem that players fail to see, is that a mud is not a democracy. The imms, while they should be fair, and just, have no requirement to do so. It is their mud, the one that they work hard for, and in some cases pay for, so it is their right to deny or abuse anyone who threatens that. So the player in question stands up and says, well, I found a loophole, you can't do anything to me. That's not true. While you may not gain favor with your player base, there is no rule stating that an imm still can't take it out on them.

The mud I'm on, has a couple of all encompassing rules that have a loose intepretation to them that always lean towards the favor of the imm staff:

* Doing anything that annoys the immortals is not good.

* Changes to these rules are at the discretion of the immortals, and may be done without warning, notice, or even evidence of sanity. Walk softly, and carry a black stick.

Are they fair? No, do they stop arguements? Yes, but then, so does the vape command.

Baezel

>And then you get on to things which simply cannot be handled completely by the code.

Utter brutality ;)

Yes, the slippery slope argument is all very nice, but, well, it didn't happen, and although I could go into all sorts of psychological bull about the whys and wherefores, I think that the empirical evidence is the best counter-argument of all.

Kas.

Heh! I'm not sure about your game, but I've seen too many players completely weasel around our rules and tiptoe around our policies in amazing ways. Players find ways to abuse the game that I would never even dream of...so the evidence I've seen runs counter to yours ;)

> Yes, the slippery slope argument is all very nice, but,
> well, it didn't happen, and although I could go into all
> sorts of psychological bull about the whys and
> wherefores, I think that the empirical evidence is the
> best counter-argument of all.

Which is fine for your mud, but not necessarily true for others. As I said in the first paragraph of the post you replied to, "it depends heavily what sort of players (and how many) your mud has, which in turn depends on what type of mud you're running".

After running God Wars as a "no rules" mud for over a year, I can assure you that the scenario I described certainly does occur on some muds.

"No rules" might be an ideal catchphrase, but there's always going to be some dork that decides to multiplay and kill their alt over and over. However, there's always a place to draw the line. If you don't want pk on your mud at all, why should players be able to attack each other in the first place? You might not be able to catch every possible way they could hurt a newbie, but to even take that small precaution is a huge step toward a goal of a non-pk mud, as well as prevents all sorts of accidents from newbies attackinng people by mistake or getting caught in area spells.

Also, you can't cater too much to gullible people who would allow harmful things done to them. I've heard stories of newbies who were told to type something like "password letmein letmein" to enter a secret area with good exp. There'll always be ways to scam gullible people and people who do it, but the trick is to _not_ cater to _every_ possible idiotic thing somebody might possibly do.

So basically, you agree with me then?

Fairy Nuff.

We have a major rule in our mud:
'Use your common sense. Act like a moron, and you'll be treated like a moron.'
Works for me - but then again, I never liked excessive rules.

What I have done is a combination:
Firstly, as we allow alts (tho not simultanious logins) there is an account system to track the people behind the players.
The rules are as clear as we can make them, however they still contain the 'These rules are a guideline, and players should keep this guideline in mind if they cannot find a rule for a particular situation" kind of thing, along with 'If you are not sure, ask an Immortal", etc..
The best part, however, is a 'rapsheet' so that each time a char is punished, it is done through a special command, with type of offence, imm who punished, time and date, and a comment, etc.
Any Imm can view a players rapsheet at anytime, and any player may view their own. This helps you keep track of who is a serious repeat offender, and who is just making a mistake, so you can handle the rest of their punishment likewise. (It also helps you to keep track of what immortals are cracking down 'too hard' or persecuting players, or anything like that).
The code only took about 20 minutes to write too... fairly simple stuff.

I, personally, favor the approach which involves spelling out with pages of definition and quasi-legalese just what is forbidden. It's more fun that way.

After all, rules are meant to be broken, and as such, I have a quota to make. If I'm not catching some predetermined quantity of rule-violators every predetermined period of time, I'm not doing my job, or something's wrong my rules, and it's time to tighten down the loopholes.

When you stop worrying about how horrible and awful it is that people might break the rules, and just accept that rules are meant to be broken, and as such, it is inevitable, expected, and even necessary to maintain public order and meet quota, it stops being such a burdensome problem.

Because hey, we gotta make quota somehow.

I have a similar viewpoint on my mud, but I make it clear what the consequence is.

I can't find the exact wording I used, but it goes something like this:

Annoying the implementor is not a good idea. Upsetting him will just make him remove you from the mud, or, in extreme cases, may cause him to become depressed and lose interest and not be around to fix things.

This generally gets the message across to people who want to play. Those who don't want to play eventually get tired and leave... admittedly I've only ever denied one person, and only ever actively caused two others to leave.

I keep my rules simple, and common sense prevails in my staff... it's a nice combination.

Dsarky2001 and the One Thousand Monkeys,
A cyberspace odyssey.

People who deliberately look for loopholes in rules so they can exploit them have no business playing in *your game* Kick them out. It's underhanded and dishonest. It's no mystery what a rule means if it's documented well enough. If someone finds a loophole they know damn well what the rule was supposed to mean if they can identify their behavior as a 'loophole'

People who deliberately look for loopholes in rules so they can exploit them have no business playing in *your game* Kick them out.

The problem is that, to quote from my original post:

It would be nice if we could all figure out as we encounter them [if not explicitly, in advance] whether a situation was against the "spirit" of the rules.

You remind me an awful lot of the place I left; merely asking for a clarification about the rules, because the rules weren't documented well enough, was seen as planning to break the rules.

It's underhanded and dishonest. It's no mystery what a rule means if it's documented well enough. If someone finds a loophole they know damn well what the rule was supposed to mean if they can identify their behavior as a 'loophole'

So, if it's "underhanded and dishonest" for anyone to possibly be curious about your rules, because there can't be any question that your rules "are" documented enough, it must be plain and honest for staff like you to kick off the game anyone who "breaks the rules" by inquiring about the "mystery"?

The problem here is that you still have only the vague "if you break the 'spirit', but not the 'letter' of the rules, we will break you", and have not gone one step towards defining either of them.

-FireCat

Sometimes, KaVir, you don't worry me.

E