MUD rule considerations

I think the problem is and always will be rules lawyers. So vague is out of the question. The wording is going to be everything, but not too many rules so that people won't look at them.

i think vague is the way to go. a MUD is like a pick-up game of basketball. beyond the basic rules of the game, which would be equivalent to don't hack/exploit/whatever you just go with the expected behavior. i'm not going to set down a codex of rules and well you violated subsection iia so i'm going to initiate punishment protocol step 1. it just comes down to go away you're a bigger pain in the ass than someone who makes things interesting and fun. that's my general attitude on how i moderate this place.

as long as you're open about your expectations in the beginning i don't see it as an issue. it becomes bullshit when you go both ways and try to play up your rules and you must follow them but then end punish people for things you didn't imagine/aren't covered in the Official Rules, or punishment ends up getting applied unevenly and so on. this the trap that Arm falls into.

it's obviously a system that's easy to abuse, but then again so is the Arm-style of moderation. i like my system better though (surprise surprise) because i have better things to do than pretend i'm king solomon the wise and even-handedly meting out justice to my kingdom on the internet and i'm not going to bullshit around it either.

yes, and here's why. a mud isn't a basketball game. all the hardcoded rules are incorporated into the game and codebase itself, i.e. damage modifiers, skill levels, etc. it's the soft rules you need to enforce and there's where problems start. let's say one player just wants to grief another one and keeps rolling characters with contrived backgrounds to kill the other and generally harass them. on the one hand, you either allow it and have the other player (and possibly more) driven away. or you put a rule down, something like 'no remaking characters to kill the same person'. ok, fine. so now the player instead just does other things, like steals from the player. new rule - 'no remaking characters to harass other characters'. griefer says well I didn't make him to do it but blah blah blah, contrived reason. at that point you either need to unilaterally start judging character motives and how realistic they are, or permit it because well it's not technically against the rules.

or you end up circumventing all of it by laying down a vague rule like "don't be needlessly disruptive to other players". well that's not really a rule, is it? how do you judge what being disruptive is? what criteria? there's a lot of loopholes, and it's going to be impossible to enforce the rule evenly or accurately and it's so subjective to interpretation that it's really just coming down to dealing with problems as you see fit. so why bother then going through the hassle and heartache of going back and forth with players under the pretense of rules? if you want to do it then hey, more power to you.

i personally don't, which is why this forum doesn't really have rules beyond don't be a dick. i deal with problems as they come along and as i see fit. i get rid of people that don't go with my ~~~vision~~~ of the forum and honestly don't care much about justifying it because it's my sandbox. granted i'm pretty lax on things so it's never really been an issue but in the scheme of things it's a forum and a personal project. i don't see anything wrong with holding it to those standards as long as you're open about it. but like i said, it becomes bullshit when you have rules set down and pretend you have some kind of constitution or whatever to go by but end up just doing whatever you want. which, considering the addressed problem of open-ended rules in MUDs, leads to that.

I'm assuming this is an answer to "would you consider it a problem if someone played up their rules but actually applied them consistently?"

i agree with what you said about the soft rules being difficult, but all rules on subjective behavior come down to a judgment call. Your specific rule "don't make new characters to kill/rob the same character" is only slightly more specific than your vague rule "don't be needlessly disruptive to other players". neither one actually addresses the criteria for telling if what someone does is motivated by a desire to grief or actual IC events, which is the thing you try to stop in the first place.

lets be honest there are a number of people who play their characters as such asshats that it'd be poor rp for you to not want to retaliate solely because they were asshats to a previous character of yours as well.

Also i think a lot of it comes down to the punishment/correction. don't assume it'd be limited like arms codebase where your options consist of "ban the fucker" or "remove character options"

I'll take this to mean "consistency would alleviate the problems with multiple specific rules, but that it's implausible to 1) follow them or 2) be seen as following them" Would that be a fiar summary?

well like i said, "rules" includes rules for staff. i guess i could have explained this better but Im writing this from the standpoint of "what rules on staff and players would give you a sense of fairness from a mud?"

Agreed. you can't start with shit and expect shinola.

I don't have a strong opinion either way. hence why I am fishing for feedback. I was writing some rules for staff behavior and was like, "holy shit this is bulky." Rules for players are a lot shorter because staff are the fuckers who can do the most damage if yuo dont rain them in.

But the problem is if I went ahead with a mud the rules page would be a bit bulky since I want all the rules in one place.

Hm. i don't know about making them THAT vague but i do like the organization style to parallel the punishment