Shattered Kingdoms

Problems addressed:
*Tendency toward larger and larger gank squads for PK
*Greater and greater NPC involvement in PK and tendency toward PK only on home turf
*Too hard to issue a warrant against known criminals/adversaries
*Banishment too harsh (can't purchase goods, bounty hunters, can't sneak around, can't scout for guards)
*Bounty NPCs appearing out of nowhere and overpowered
*Jail time encourages people to be online without "participating" in SK

Intended effects of changes:
*Encourage PK outside of home court advantage
*Allow smart parties to assault cities without overwhelming groups (thus allowing PC defenders a chance of fighting them off)
*Keep cities still relatively safe
*Make city defense more PC dependent

Proposed changes:
*Allow tribunal leaders to banish at will
*Remove all bounty NPCs (will require balancing some tribunals)
*Instead have a pool of (humaniod only) guards in the barracks who will start to move at a jog speed toward the point of attack once it happens. Two deploy at the first sign, then four (not sure what the maximum should be, or whether it should vary depending on how badly the criminal is wanted). Should be warrior type NPCs, maybe small % chance of being other classes
*Guard deployment changes:
*--Minimum number of total guards per street square in a city same for all cities
*--Tribunal leaders can opt to increase monetary burn rate/year to increase the guard density (up to, say, 2x)
*--Tribunal leaders can opt to increase monetary burn rate/deployment to increase the deployment rate or size in the case of an attack (up to, say, 2x)
*All guard NPCs yell and cb/tb their general location (could potentially put in some way for attackers to stop them from yelling)
*Place multiple non-summonable bouncer NPCs in inns who will attack anyone starting fights
*Allow disguised/polymorphed people a chance to:
*--Purchase goods in outlawed nations (near 100%)
*--Sneak past guards (~10%?)
*Allow jail time to be served off-line at 10X cost (1 day jail time in game, 10 days jail time offline)


Pre-emptory rebuttal:
"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
I hate this argument. Characters should be punished for their crimes, yes, but not the players who are correctly playing their alignments. Some kind of compromise that puts the character out of commission without totally screwing the player is in order. Cities should be relatively safe, but the MUD would be boring without people breaking the law.

Outstanding issues/questions:
*Allow tribunal NPCs in areas outside of home/warring territories?
*Will proposed changes make it too easy for characters like necromancers to raid cities?

Comments?

Disclaimer - I currently play a darkie (Krager) and these ideas will be influenced by that. Would be curious to hear what players of lighties have to say about this.

[Alshain Edit: Poll removed.]

Has this plan been hashed out in another thread already? I ask, because before going and posting a poll, it's generally a really good idea to get some consensus on the details, or you're going to have dealbreakers that get stonewalling when maybe the rest of the plan was fine.

Yeah, good point. Some of the ideas have been discussed in other places but people could very well get bogged down on one or two ideas.

Thread was meant more for the discussion of details than the "yay/nay" so I'll see if I can remove the poll from it.

[Edit] Doesn't look like I can remove the poll portion myself once it gets replies. Ah well.

Im not a fan of polymorph letting you past guards. It may not be as realistic but there must be a balance between realism and playability. I think it would be too OP

I'm a fan of basically all of it.
Doesn't mean I don't think it requires tweaking though.
Nice to see it all in one post.

I like it how it is.

Fixed the original post.

I am not fond of this idea. There was a reason deathmark got removed in the first place. I can only see it happening if it caps out at a certain amount of times applied on a character and if said character can counter it by buying himself/herself out of his/her sentence at a high price.

This doesn't seem to be so much of a tribunal reform package as a bounty hunter NPC reform package.

As for banish at will... Well, the problem with that is that tribunal and cabal leaders are often children, or people who act like children. I'm sure many old time players remember the log of what happened to someone who started SKs with the title "More evil than even the most evil of all evils".

I do remember people getting deathmarked for things as little as titles in the past, but I don't think this is that much of a problem. If titles are IC (which supposedly they are) and yours says you're evil, that's a pretty good reason to want you out of the city. Also, if the other suggested changes go into effect, being banished won't completely preclude you from going to a nation anymore.

[Edit] To clarify, I do think it would be lame to just random banish characters the tribunal leader has never even heard of, but this cost (hopefully mitigated by RP policing like any other RP policing) is worth it to have tribunal leaders have more control, IMO.

A compromise would be to have either a maximum number of banishments that any tribunal could maintain (requring the leaders to juggle their "most wanted" lists), impose some sort of cost per banished person/year, or a combination of both.

I don't think the banishee should be allowed to buy their way out of it. That wouldn't make sense from the perspective of the tribunal leaders.

pudgy