To come back to a topic that's always worth re-hashing, I thought I'd briefly describe how death works in LexyMUD (the main reason I do this because posting these things on the forum helps me sort them out for myself.)
First of all, death is decidedly inconvenient. You lose all of your equipment, and get put into a blank holding area for a few minutes, where you can only talk to other dead people and any Defilers (who are, among other things, necromancers) who happen to be online. It also leaves a lasting mark on your character: each time you die, you lose a point of vitality, permanently. Vitality is what fuels your character's natural healing, so aside from giving an upper limit to the number of deaths you can "survive", this tends to make each life shorter/more dangerous than the previous one. Also, the lower your vitality, the longer you spend in limbo before you can reconstitute your body.
Second of all, death can be, under the right circumstances, fatal. As mentioned above, if you have lost all your vitality, you can't be resurrected... this refers only to permanent vitality, not temporary vitality lost to life-draining attacks or gained from magical items (except for very rare potions that permanently increase attributes). Also, truly evil characters are rewarded (?) with the alignment of "damned", which also makes death permanent... this helps balance out the fact that by ignoring all constraints of decency, they're able to do as they damn well please. Your character can also sell his or her soul to a demon or Defiler... soul-less characters have no hope of resurrection, either.
ID:154513
 Jul 5 2001, 4:41 pm
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Second of all, death can be, under the right circumstances, fatal. As mentioned above, if you have lost all your vitality, you can't be resurrected... this refers only to permanent vitality, not temporary vitality lost to life-draining attacks or gained from magical items (except for very rare potions that permanently increase attributes). Also, truly evil characters are rewarded (?) with the alignment of "damned", which also makes death permanent... this helps balance out the fact that by ignoring all constraints of decency, they're able to do as they damn well please. Your character can also sell his or her soul to a demon or Defiler... soul-less characters have no hope of resurrection, either. well.. if the necro wanted to.. couldent he raise you again if he had your soul (but youd probebly lose more than just vitality). youd have to become his slave.. but that is still alive.. and you would have to buy your soul back befor you could be set free(or he has to just give it back). buying your soul back after you are one of his minions would be hard .. considering if you actually HAD something your owner wanted he could just force you to give it to him... | |
well.. if the necro wanted to.. couldent he raise you again if he had your soul (but youd probebly lose more than just vitality). youd have to become his slave.. but that is still alive.. and you would have to buy your soul back befor you could be set free(or he has to just give it back). buying your soul back after you are one of his minions would be hard .. considering if you actually HAD something your owner wanted he could just force you to give it to him... From a roleplaying standpoint, being enslaved by selling your soul to a higher power would be VERY interesting. But, being forced to serve another person isn't fun. If you had to do every bidding from an evil master, and then get kicked in the head and be forced to say 'Thank you sir, may I have another?', just think of when and what exactly that was in real history. | |
'Thank you sir, may I have another?', just think of when and what exactly that was in real history.
OH! i know when and where! it was at inisiation time on the movie animal house! | |
On 7/6/01 10:55 am jobe wrote:
'Thank you sir, may I have another?', just think of when and what exactly that was in real history. Insensitive... | |
But, being forced to serve another person isn't fun. If you had to do every bidding from an evil master, and then get kicked in the head and be forced to say 'Thank you sir, may I have another?', just think of when and what exactly that was in real history. Hmm... if the "what" is slavery, then I suppose the "when" would be all periods of human history up to and including today. All in all, I prefer Jobe's answer. | |
On 7/6/01 11:43 am Gughunter wrote:
But, being forced to serve another person isn't fun. If you had to do every bidding from an evil master, and then get kicked in the head and be forced to say 'Thank you sir, may I have another?', just think of when and what exactly that was in real history. Yes, and your point is? ;-) All in all, I prefer Jobe's answer. Well, it was a camouflaged reference, and I was slightly amused, but the fact that he chose to ignore the much more obvious point I was getting across came across as extremely insensitive to me... | |
On 7/6/01 10:51 am Spuzzum wrote:
From a roleplaying standpoint, being enslaved by selling your soul to a higher power would be VERY interesting. How about if the necromancer can resurect someone who was lost their soul to the necromancer, but the necromancer can chose to 'revoke' the soul from the reincarnated body at any time. It would in essense make you the necromancer's slave after your first death, but you would still have the ability to say no. I'm curious Lexy. Is there a way to reclaim a soul after it's been given to a defiler? | |
Hmm... if the "what" is slavery, then I suppose the "when" would be all periods of human history up to and including today. Merely that its unpleasantness doesn't necessarily preclude it from being a useful component of a game, any more than the fact that real soldiers have been blown into "giblets" precludes violence from being useful in a game. But perhaps you weren't arguing against its inclusion in the game so much as you were encouraging us all to pause for reflection... or to beware the wrath of the "politically correct!" :) | |
On 7/6/01 12:00 pm Gughunter wrote:
Hmm... if the "what" is slavery, then I suppose the "when" would be all periods of human history up to and including today. Doh! I just noticed that I had forgotten to include one of the sections that I had wanted to have: "Slavery is fine in games as long as the players don't become chattel themselves. But slavery is still very bad and wrong." | |
On 7/5/01 8:41 pm LexyBitch wrote:
To come back to a topic that's always worth re-hashing, I thought I'd briefly describe how death works in LexyMUD (the main reason I do this because posting these things on the forum helps me sort them out for myself.) To answer all the good points people raised: I've already thought of all of these things. :) Defilers can give a soul back to the (still-living) owner, or trade it with another Defiler (souls are tangible, visible objects... but only for Defilers and possibly Clerics). Once a character, soul-less, damned, or otherwise, has died a "permanent" death... the character is not deleted, but merely will never pop out of limbo. So, they can hang around chatting with other dead people, and bargain with any Defilers who are around to help them out. If they're simply out of vitality, Defilers can channel them a point of their own (permanently... but Defilers who use most of their powers are damned, anyway, so they don't have to worry about how many "lives" they have), effectively resurrecting them... or the Defiler can call up their spirit, giving them an intangible but visible form that can only interact with the environment for limited time periods... or the Defiler can turn them into a revenant. A revenant is an indestructible undead creature that can only be put to rest by a Cleric or Defiler. It does have serious drawbacks, though. In short, Defilers do have things they can do for the dead... and the dead have things they can do for Defilers... but there is the question of how far they can trust each other. That's up to individual players. What do Defilers do with souls, anyway? They can devour them, to gain the soul owner's HP and MP at the time the soul was separated, or they can simply hold onto them... the more intact souls a Defiler possesses, the more MP they'll recover over time. | |
On 7/6/01 10:58 am Spuzzum wrote:
On 7/6/01 10:55 am jobe wrote: no but really.. it would still be fun in a game.. you dont HAVE to do what your owner tells you.. but the game could be made so you can hurt your owner and he can stop you in you tracks.. this would make for a fun game.. and it would encurage good RPers to find freedom(This is a good plot starter... in both real life and games..) | |
On 7/6/01 12:39 pm jobe wrote:
On 7/6/01 10:58 am Spuzzum wrote: Quietly adds slavery to the list (along with rape and STDs) of things Jobe thinks are fun. | |
I think the best way to do something like this is to allow the defiler to bring the other player back, and return them to death whenever they want. This allows the revived player freedom to do whatever, but gives the defiler power to punish the player if they disobay.
This also allows for players to potentially scheme against the one who possesses their soul, and maybe take it back through cleverness...somehow... But if the Defiler found out it'd be back to the pits with him. | |
On 7/6/01 2:22 pm Foomer wrote:
I think the best way to do something like this is to allow the defiler to bring the other player back, and return them to death whenever they want. This allows the revived player freedom to do whatever, but gives the defiler power to punish the player if they disobay. Just to clarify: possessing someone's soul and reanimating someone are two totally different matters. Anyone who doesn't possess their own soul can't be resurrected fully until they do, but can be called forth as a ghost or revenant by any Defiler... and any Defiler can call forth a dead spirit as a ghost or revenant, whether or not they possess that person's soul. Defilers can indeed send back ghosts or revenants, so if you do possess someone's soul, you can force them to be your undead servitor in exchange for a hope of a more satisfying life (some people might find playing as a revenant fun for a while... but they don't have the same breadth of abilities as any of the real classes, and of course, there's an evil sorceror somewhere with his or her finger over a button that could send you back to limbo). Since I'm not going to see my main computer much in the upcoming week but will have access to my laptop, I'm thinking about making a LexyMUD website with comprehensive information on the classes and their abilities. :) 'cause I'm coming up with some damned interesting stuff. | |
When'll the next LexyMud test be?