22. DEATH

What happens if my character dies?

You appear back at the bind stone with all of your gear minus your wergild. Wergild is the amount of money you are 'worth'. This can be taken by whoever kills you - including monsters who may then destroy it, give some to other monsters, etc. If your society has not yet developed coin or if you are without coin then some random item of yours goes away. We encourage societies to learn how to mint coin as well as players to carry plenty on them. Since coin weighs either nothing or very little, it is possible to keep plenty on you 'just in case'. We agree that it is not a harsh death penalty for those that carry coin but we can live with that. We believe that the over quoted 'respect for the environment' will come about through the amount of time lost getting back to where you died, etc.

The more powerful your character is, the more their wergild goes up. Kill more 'innocents', your wergild goes up, etc.

I like violence. How much gore will there be in the game ?

If I had my way, you'd have gore splattered on the monitor. Two people would stand next to you and dump buckets of blood over your head as you played. Unfortunately, I don't get my way so you will just have to settle for good splatter effects in game.

What effect will eating or not eating have on my character?

I'd have four levels of deprivation:

Hungry: This is the norm for adventurers. Your skills are about 70% of what they should be because you haven't bothered to feed your character, clean him or her up (I want dirt and flies animations around the character when they are at this level) or slept in a nice inn.

Lean: You have food in your backpack. Your character is automatically eating it. Your skills are at about 80% of what they should be.

Rested: You have food in your backpack. You went to the inn and bought a room, clicked on the tub (which causes a brief timer bar to appear, say 5 seconds) and the bed (same timer bar) and ran out. Fortunately, the keys to the inn are all one shot. You pay the innkeeper, he gives you a one shot key, you use it, it disappears and the door opens for 10 seconds. The bed and tub (though they don't disappear with use) are one shot per room key. Your skills are at 90% of what they should be.

Well rested: You live in town. You log off at your house. You take many baths, sleep and have food in your inventory. You won't be required to bath too often as I hate micro-management.

Note: There will also be special food that can offset this or make the character go above 100% - probably food that adds 10% for various skills and stats - make baking worth a crap. I might even get rid of the tub/bed timers - don't know - but I'd want to have people able to stay at inns and have it help them.

Will you have permanent character death?

Only if you stop paying us money for more than 3 months. Then we may erase your characters, condemn your buildings, etc. Best to give us a minimum of four payments a year just to be safe. There are a lot of positive things permanent death can do for a game but the one big negative thing (losing player subscriptions) overwhelms these.

More on death:

In WW2OL, we learned that having people respawn in the area you are trying to take over or close to it really diminishes trying to take over a city - the defenders are endless. I think I'd balance this by having people get a pop up box when they die. They could have several choices for respawn points like: Respawn at Drexda Zeus temple (Drexda being the city under siege), respawn at Frexxia Zeus temple (Frexxia being an 'allied city'), respawn at random Zeus temple (random list does not include Drexda or Frexxia), resawn at random spot in wilderness (this random spot would be in some 'explored' area, probably at least 20 minutes run from the city if not further), respawn near Atlantis (the 'first' GM run city that - as soon as players made their own cities sank forever - we'd put them on dry land though...). This would do several things. It would allow players to not subject themselves to possible 'base camping' as we've seen in first person shooters where someone spawns and are immediately killed by the attackers. It would prevent death-loops; if you are stupid enough to keep selecting the same location over and over and dying from it, you deserve it. It would make getting allied cities *useful* in a practical sense. It would make being a member of a religion useful (Zeus was used only as an example as he's widely known). If the person was not a member of a religion and his city had no allied cities with temples, he wouldn't have those options. This would also cause the temple to be a high priority strategic target - once it was destroyed people couldn't respawn there. Attacking, even with lots of fire power, a city that has many allied cities close by would be dangerous - not only would you have to worry about the people you killed running back from those cities but they'd probably also alert the allies their city was under siege. Other side effects would be cities/governments/people building as large and elaborate of temple as they can afford - remember, things in the dream FAQ cost a bit more to destroy than they are to create, many temples being created within a city, etc.

If someone got killed while doing an 'automated action' (like fishing) while they are at work, asleep, etc then the 'repop screen would come up'. The screen would have a very long timer counting down on it - say 10 minutes or so. After that 10 minutes has passed with nothing being done by the player, the game would log them off. This reduces my bandwidth cost. When the character logged back on, they would be taken to the 'repop screen' with a 'you have died somehow' message. If we were really slick, there might even be a short film showing how they died.

Another option:

Perhaps have this only available to those who earn the title of 'The Explorer'. When they look at their 'respawn menu' they see an option for 'completely random, non-populated area'. This could put them literally *anywhere* in the world (but not in someone else's 'lands'). If the game was advanced enough for the stars to rotate realistically, they could try to figure out where they are. [I wouldn't have any click skill to tell them - I'd let them figure it out on their own. They might eventually make their own charts, etc.] Worse comes to worse, they eat another death, drop another wergild and choose to respawn back in familiar territory. They may choose to try to make remote colonies, try to get people to join them, etc.

Note: If you didn't want to have people just porting around for 'free' (just wergild) you could disable the random option and have only temples the player has visited available on their list. Perhaps have them pray at the temple to enable it or something.

Q and A on death:

What should the "price of death" be?

The price of death starts out cheap for everyone. If you are the kind of person who isn't into killing your fellow players or being hated by your fellow players, your price of death will stay relatively cheap. If your character likes to engage in a lot of PvP and is usually flagged as the 'agressor', your price for death will be much more costly. The price itself, in societies which have invented currency, is determined by how many gold (etc) coins are dropped upon death. I would have absolutely no problem with a hard core PK (or griefer, for that matter) drop the price of a nicely outfitted castle when he died. He knew what he was getting into when he was killing those hundreds of people. This money gets dropped whether he gets gacked in a duel or if he gets eaten by a grizzly bear. In the case of the bear, the money would simply lie there until a being with enough intelligence/motivation to pick it up wandered by - be it an NPC or a PC. [Also note that NPC's would then have that amount of money on them if they were killed - they wouldn't simply eat the money as in EQ.]

What should the "price of death" not be?

I dislike players losing skills/xps. Necessitating a corpse recovery.

How do you keep the system from being abused by hardcore players?

Hardcore players gack people that don't get into PvP much. Result, very little money. If the hard core guys go after hard core PvP'ers, good for them - their reward pool goes up. I could personally care less if the player decides to use this as a 'free port' to get home. I want to encourage exploration without the pain and suffering of leaving a corpse out there somewhere.

How do you keep from frustrating new/casual players?

Death for new players in the system described above is a light slap on the back of their hand. They probably don't have money and they certainly have not killed hordes of people.

Should PVP death carry different penalties as PVE death?

No.