Basicly, it was trying to make a little community where everyone contributed and got along. But ever so often there was a bad person(not in a sense of actuall badness, buy RP bad) who would steal, and this would bring lots of action to the game.

Actually, I dunno... quite often, the people who chose the most aggressive occupations did so out of a genuine interest to mess things up, not simply to roleplay a bad character.

Sariat was the only person who even marginally roleplayed banditry well, and even then he often violated the guidelines and simply attacked without any obvious reason.

The trick I'm using in Haven to avoid that problem is to require a clear <font color="red">Aggressive</font> and <font color="green">Passive</font> mode. When you tap the button to go into aggressive mode, your character gains a red indicator above his head. You also have a 2-second delay to switch into Aggressive mode, so you either have to stay in Aggressive mode (making it darned clear that you're a bandit) or give the other person a fighting chance to get away before you suddenly stab them in the back.

Ultima Online probably beat me to it, of course. ;-)

Yeah, but how many people are in-character sneaky, and how many people are just out to ruin the fun? =)

Sniper Joe wrote:

Of course, then that takes a lot of role playing aspects out of it, as in being sneaky...pretending to be a friend, which you are actually a foe.

No, it doesn't. You can switch to aggressive mode without warning. Two seconds is not a long time, and if you're not fast enough to notice, you can easily be stabbed in the back by a good and trusted friend.* The difference is, it gives you a chance to defend yourself if some random stranger comes along and then decides to whack on you, and also gives you a chance to protect yourself if you're wary of your supposed friend.

In Haven, death is permanent, so I figure it's a bit better to allow people to protect themselves as much as they can. You can always use ranged weapons from ambush if you really want to screw someone over...

The game plan also calls for a few different systems of automatically switching into aggressive mode when you are approached in any fashion that sets you on edge.


By the way, a Backstab is defined in the game -- not defined as the backstab from D&D (where you ambush the enemy), but rather, defined as attacking any character who is in Passive mode by surprise when they have actually seen you. Backstabs inflict no more damage than a normal swing, but because you don't defend yourself while in Passive mode, you won't get to use your Dodge skill to reduce the impact to a graze.

For fairly obvious reasons, performing a Backstab causes your alignment to plummet.


* Note that in movies, the number of times that people notice when their "friends" are about to attack is matched almost evenly with the number of times they don't notice at all. Picture Anakin attacking Obi-Wan.

Ok, now we need ferrets...



Whenever I switch species on SecondLife that species must be added to HrH! =3

~Kujila

~Kujila