RP & PvP thoughts for towns.

I thought this would be an appropriate place as I am directing this at town owners and residents..

For several years I was a DM on a Neverwinter Nights server Twilight Legacy. It was a role-play server that allowed fairly open but consensual PvP.

Now the problem with establishing any set of rules for PvP is enforcement. In a large, MMO sized community you just can't do it, but a smaller community.. where you have people capable of enforcing ettiquete it's very possible. A community much like a player owned town.

The rules were simple.. all PvP had to be consensual.. but what did 'consent' mean? On our server it meant that if you engage in ANY form of PvP.. you're giving consent. And ANY form of 'PvP' includes verbal dialogue and gestures..

So if I'm sitting in the local tavern and group of ruffians comes in.. I'm safe so long as I mind my own business. But toss one insult.. or one rude gesture and they are well within their right to come put me down. Any provocation could trigger a fight.

If you didn't want to fight.. you made sure you didn't provoke one or respond to provocation. It was that simple and it worked very well.

Policing is as simple as banning offenders from your town. Players report incidents.. you make a judgement call.. ban if necessary. Though in our case it was a 3 strike system.

I would be very interested to see any RP town adopt a similar system. If I had a larger more public town I just might've tried it myself.

I'm also curious what folks think about writing an article on this? There's a lot of interesting RP a community could do in this kind of environment.

 

Well, after being banned from a POT for stealing its tough to understand anyone's views on this game. Personally i have put over 3 million exp into subterfuge and the only feeling i get is that if people want to make an example of you, they can. Since ultima online, the restrictions on your personal space has increased from the banning of personal property, to the banning of an entire zone. This really saddens me and honestly, I am going to call non pvpers who flag pvp but don't enjoy the pvp aspects, uninformed or lazy.

 

First off if your idea is implemented then there would be no PvP since no one is technically authorized to "start" a fight?

How do you determine who can and who cannot start a fight?

Other than the "starting" the fight issue I think it is a good idea.

The stealing issue is a whole other problem. Since as it is now stealing can end up taking something that is very valuable and a lot of it. You do not grab 4 silver you grab all 400 of it. So if you stole in a town and from one if its occupants then sucks to be you. Whn they actually fix stealing so ; one you can be caught. and two you cannot steal 400 of an item, then it will be come more viable and accepted.

Banning from POTs is at the control of the owner - if they ever change it, they will have to figure out how to pay back over 50% of what was spent as it was sold as your property.

 

Well let me give you an example. One of my favorite characters I used to play had something of a short fuse. It's gotten them into trouble a couple of times if you knew what buttons to push. Basically they made a rude gesture one time at someone.. and got laid out for it.

The rule was... ANY provocation. If you insult someone.. they can kill you for it. If you steal from someone.. they can kill you for it. You threaten someone.. they can kill you over it. You dump a bucket of water over their head or puke in their helmet.. they can kill you for it. Any of these types of things was considered initiating PvP.

Of course, any agreements between players was also good and we often ran storylines that involved conflict between players leading to PvP. We relied on the honor system and most players behaved for the most part. Naturally that's a little harder to do with a larger community unfortunately.. but I think some towns could probably pull it off with the right people.

 

I am not PVP flagged, but how are you going to maintain honor in the system, when you have folks laying in wait in certain towns to kill folks as they enter,then kill them when they try to rez? There is zero honor among those players.

As I stated in another thread,you cannot expect as a thief that you have free rein everywhere. You can make a choice to play a thief, that is your decision as a player and it is yours alone to make. But just because the game allows you to pick pockets,does not mean there will not be consequences for it. And the results may not be you just getting killed and run off, but a town owner banning you as a thief and a bother to it's townsfolk. I hope you can understand that many town owners are not going to welcome thieves with open arms.

 

I understand the consequences, but my post points out a developed de-turance of pvpers and thief's in general. It is literally a moral issue that players should understand that, this action did not originate from the player, but from the developer.

 

Those are the ones you ban from the town. Likewise, anyone who abuses not being flagged. ie doing things that would normally initiate PvP when they can't be attacked.

Besides, those are PvP issues in general the devs need to address. But it would be up to the town to set the rules, make those rules known and enforce those rules. It would not be difficult to report players to the town owner or whomever is able to ban someone.

 

Bowen; Here is a suggestion I have from the way we did it in UO Chessie: I read somewhere that in the future we can have guild alliances. Maybe we can also have guild wars with a no loot option and only allow the guilds that are warred to PVP with each other. You can build up the staged drama between guilds and the place were they can end the staged or non-staged drama via PVP. We did it almost weekly in UO and it worked well for all parties involved. It could be a prequel to the endgame. Just my two cents and feel free to elaborate on this suggestion if you wish. R/Boris

 

The one thing I can see with this is that it's very restricting to the war mechanic. PvP would basically be pre-planned. You wouldn't have much in the way of spontaneous RP driven PvP between individuals. Technically, you could do duels but the problem with that is you can always refuse.

One thing I hadn't really considered before was it's possible to PvP in 'friend only' mode. The main limitation there being you basically have to be accepted into the community first.. but you could use Friends Only as a means to build sub-communities but I imagine being in full multiplayer would be better.

 

Bowen, If and that is a big if the devs decide to study this suggestion and you have two guilds at war they could have spontaneous as well as pre-planned RP PVP. The one advantage is that when UO renaissance came out with Trammel this was something that was implemented. Not sure if Lord British and Darkstarr were still with UO at the time that happened but if they were then I am sure they remember how it worked and could have the devs here prep it that way. If we keep bouncing this around long enough they may pay attention and it could be used to entice more people to PVP whether RP based or not. I believe it would work best in multiplayer as an extra game feature to entice gamers to check SOTA out. R/Boris

 

By spontaneous PvP I mean between ANY 2 individuals.. not just between ones from warring guilds. Example: Two random people sitting in a pub and one gets sick and vomits into the other's helmet.. The 2nd takes offense and a fight breaks out. Ideally you shouldn't have to rely on a mechanic that restricts who you can PvP. Otherwise, how am I to force you to pay the cleaning bill for my helm?

 

I see your point Bowen. I was looking at it from the Guild to Guild large or small scale point of view.

 

Just as a word to town owners, be very careful about banning people from your town. If you piss enough people off you will or can get blacklisted. As a town owner, our greatest fear is to be hated by the community and therefore own a ghost town.

I am not saying banning troublemakers is a bad idea for the health and sake of RP in a community. I am saying to be very careful who you ban and why. Your decisions may come back to bite you.

What I see as a problem here is the town owner banning a thief. In any RP environment there will be thieves. Thieves usually rather not speak to the person who they are going to rob. So in their defense there isnt much RP other than get close and pickpocket. So said town owner bans the thief. The thief was role playing the entire time. The town owner just punished someone for their RP.

So this is where a DM would make alot of sense and stop the town owner from doing something out of character and wrong.

Now here is a useful purpose for a ban. The town is holding a council of magistrates to decide on a trade agreement between two towns. In the middle of the discussion player x walks in and starts spamming rubbish totally out of character. Town owner bans such individual.

So with that said I think we need someone above town owners to help role players from getting banned for no reason. As a town owner I think having someone to go to in order to settle a RP dispute would be helpful.

Say I ban a rogue for robbing someone and he feels that he was wronged. Who does he turn to?

I have no desire to ban anyone, however if someone disrupts RP they will be banned.

I would gladly submit my towns RP to be governed by someone such as Bowen or Lara who are acting as in game Dungeon Masters. I also think other RP towns should follow suit in order for RPers to feel they have someone to go to in case of a ban or RP dispute..

So with that said anyone wanting to RP in Serenite can go to Bowen or Lara to settle a RP dispute/Ban you feel was handled incorrectly. I will give my word to honor their decision as our community DM.

Will we ever need to use this mechanic, probably not. However its important for someone to govern actions of RP.

 

Now this is an interesting idea. Kind of like an RP magistrate to deal with sticky scenarios. and thieving can be very problematic. How for example do you know that the thief really is RPing? vs just trying to rob everyone cause that's how they play? It should be up to the town owner to decide if that is acceptable or not.

I think if any town owner, guild or other group were to submit to someone acting as a DM then there should be clear guidelines in writing that both parties agree to. Probably a discussion for the new RP forum.

 

Of course I am sure that this thievery does not apply to pirates who help overloaded ships from sinking in the high seas *grins*

 

*sigh* one day soon. One day soon.

 

One day soon Numa. We will have a fleet and control the Novian waters *grins*