Role-Playing Rewards

[richard peplinski]

Just a question:
Has anybody been able to successfully implement a Reward for role-playing
system? I'm not exactly speaking about a code-based system. Can you find
a way to create an atmosphere where people desire to role-play either for
intrinsic or extrinsic reasons?
Just once I would like to see a group of adventurers refuse to kill something
because of their character's ethics, rather than any code-forced set of
rules.

Also I'd like to see a character which went for style points rather than
min/max-ing the stats. How nice it would be to see a warrior wielding a
chain, or a hammer, rather than a long sword which averages more damage.

My goal is to move our mud (Erizon @ kinger.com 8080) from a well designed
and well implemented mud, into a true role-playing gaming experience. The
mud is still in beta, still building a world, so this is a chance to make a
mud into a real sitting-at-a-table-with-dice type of experience.

Talantos

Erizon MUD: http://www.nd.edu/~rpeplins/All/Erizon.html
kinger.com 8080
--
Rick Peplinski
rpep...@kinger.com
A Signature?
Why? Will it be worth something someday?

[md...@insect.sd.monash.edu.au]

Our mud uses a favor point system. Favor points are used in the following
ways:

From level 15 up, to advance past level 15, 20, 25, 30 etc
requires 1 FP.

You may go up a level for the cost of 2 FP.

You may purchase renames at a rate of 4 renamed objects
per FP

You may remove/add a flag to an object for 1 FP

You may become younger by beseeching the gods (5 years per FP)

You may build houses and have creatures with mob-progs in them
purchased with FP, starts at 3FP and goes up from there.

100th level characters can use FP to obtain skills from
other classes (5FP)

FP can be used for any other roleplaying idea that
the player can get passed by the imms, e.g a storyline
that requires significant imm intervention to help occur.

So as can be seen, FP are a crucial part of the game and
a player who receives lots of FP has a distinct advantage in
the game.

So how do you get FP?

1) Finding and reporting major bugs/abuses in the game, this
is very rare.

2) By being awarded FP for good roleplaying. This is the major
source of FP in the game. FP are awarded only for good, consistent
roleplaying.

Who awards FP?

1) The imms. All the imms keep an eye out for people who are
actively roleplaying. We snoop on a rgular basis looking for
good roleplaying. We switch into mobs and see if people roleplay
with us (a bit of giveaway this one) and most of the imms have
*one* character who plays in the game (some have none). These
characters often witness lots of roleplay and one of hteir
roles is to encourage roleplay.

2) The players who are FP spies. When a player has shown over a period of
several weeks that they are a good consistent roleplayer, we
usually ask them to become a FP spy.

An FP spy gets to recommend each week up to 5 people for a
favor point for good roleplaying. FP spies may not
recommend characters who are in their clan or are closely
connected to them (eg characters in a marriage). This
prevents any accusation of nepotism amongst clans and also
helps discourage clans only roleplaying amongst themselves.

FP spies cannot tell anyone they are a FP spy and if they
do and we find out about it, we stop them being an FP spy.

Most FPs are awarded by the spies rather than the imms.

Does it work?

Well introducing this system seemed to increase the amount
of roleplaying dramatically on our mud.

What are the problems?

Highly subjective, but hey roleplaying is in itself
highly subjective, so any method which assesses and
then rewards roleplay is going to be objective.

Advantages loud and visible roleplayers over
quieter roleplayers.

Advantages

Does significantly reward roleplay
Has characters to a large dgree being judged
by their peers, who are usually more aware of
the roleplaying than the imms.

Martin aka Scarabae

Dragon Realms - realms.envy.com 4444

[Gil]

richard peplinski wrote:

This has been done before rather successfully by Armageddon MUD
(currently
down due to a malicious hacker). while their specific code and
implementation lacked in my opinion, they have set a few guidelines to
be
followed by muds that wish to become role playing environments.
As I mentioned they were quite successful at that, and indeed the two
examples you gave had became common and expected behaviour in
Armageddon.

Making your mud into a role playing environment is very easy, only
a large portion of your players will probably desert - most mud
players don't really like role playing. if nevertheless you wish to
try it, here are a few guidelines which IMHO you should follow:

1. Make sure you have a "closed world". make it consistent (not
to be confused with realistic), with its own rules and logic.
That is probably the basis of every good SF or fantasy
book.

2. Don't impose artificial limitations on players. there's no
sense in preventing player killing or stealing in a
real role playing environment, which strives to imitate
a "real" world (if fantastic in nature). in real life people
cheat, swear, kill, and generally do bad things to each
other.

3. Don't introduce external tools that have no explanation
in the context of the game (sort of like spacing-out in
a pencil-and-paper game). in the real world (and 99%
of the fantasy worlds I've ever heard of) there are
no 'public channels'. in the real world you can't shout
something and expect every other living being to
hear what you're saying. in the real world you can't
type "who" and see who is currently present in the
near area. in the real world you can't automagically
"tell" everything to people hundreds of miles away -
even in most good fantasy this requires a special
magical spell or a psionic ability.

4. Get rid of numbers. if your players don't even know
that a long sword does more damage than a war
hammer they won't have any reason to choose one
over the others. furthermore, they will become less
obsessed with numbers (a bad attitude that often
hampers pencil-and-paper role playing sessions) and
more with their character.

5. Unless you have a very good reason not to, make death
permanent. players take their characters much more
seriously when they know their actions can lead to
their premature death and therefor the loss of their
character for good. it also adds to the consistency
of the world. in most fantasy worlds dead people are
just that - dead. they don't re-appear in the church
20 minutes later and go to avenge their death and
collect their stuff from their own corpse.

6. Have your other immortals/wizards/admins reward
players for good role playing. do not reward them
with skills and levels, but rather make life more
interesting for them - create plots and quests revolving
around them, allow them to become important
figures in a certain town, switch into npcs and
play with them, etc.

7. You should consider giving up on experience points
and levels, and instead using a skill-based system.
a skill improves after you use it for a given time.
this does not prevent people from fighting from
morning till dawn, or mages from casting their
spells over and over again, but its a step in the
right direction, and it makes -some- classes do
other things than killing monsters all day long.

8. Have your admins regularly switch into npcs and
make the world realistically react to player's
actions. don't prevent them from killing the city
guards - but if they do make sure they become
wanted in the city, and attacked on sight. have
monsters group and act intelligently - a clan of
goblins would not allow human adventurers to
butcher them one by one while they're all waiting
quietly three rooms away for their turn. eventually
they may even get so tired by humans attacking
them so that they may organize a raiding party and
attack the city where the humans come from, or
terrorize the roads surrounding it.
While this is more of a coding problem - have the
world automatically update itself according to
player's actions. if someone kills a shop owner - the
shop owner should be gone for good and the shop
closed for considerable time. after the first time
they kill a shop owner thereby eliminating
competition and allowing the only surviving weapons
dealer to sell his swords for fifty times their
original price, every player will think twice
before he randomly attacks shop keepers.
If players kill innocent civilians in towns have
the authorities react and outlaw the carrying of
weapons within the city, and the guards
enforcing this law. if a stupid mage casts an
earthquake spell in the town's favorite inn (and
this actually happened in Armageddon) have
the inn and the near surrounding completely
destroyed for a very long period.

9. The last but not least guideline is simple. you
and your admins should enforce the role playing,
and make notice of this in the MUD guidelines.
Let potential players know that this is a role
playing environment, and so they are welcome
if they wish to role play and are kindly asked
to go some place else if they don't.
After a while (and this actually worked in Armageddon)
players themselves will begin to enforce the
role playing - for the simple reason that one
player who doesn't role play can ruin the game
for many others who do.

Yours, gil.