Actually, this is not all that extreme. Although I am not currently
playing in Olympia, I have been following the posts with quite some
interest, and what you've suggested here is quite similar to what is
done in the "Island of Kesmai" game on Compuserve.
The IOK game is very similar to various fantasy games in which players
go around various countries/towns/areas hunting down monsters and treasure
in a swords & sorcery setting.
Killing player characters -- in fact, killing ANY lawful creature -- is
seriously frowned upon, and the game has features in it that make doing
so very bad for your own health.
1) Karma Points - When you kill a PLAYER character, your character takes
a "Karma Point". Take 3 "Karma Points" in a row, and you
are PERMANENTLY "evil", the "ghods" will NOT resurect you,
and you're "fair game" for anyone else (I think!).
It is very difficult to get a karma point removed,
unless the player you killed issues a "forgive" command.
(Difficult in the sense that it requires a very expensive
or rare article -- in game terms -- to get the priests to
forgive you.)
2) Alignment - There are three alignments for people: lawful, neutral,
and evil. You start out lawful, unless you're a thief.
Killing a lawful turns you neutral. Killing another lawful
turns you evil, unless you've gotten forgivness from the
temple priests.
Being non-lawful is extremely hazardous to your
health, the "townies" (automatic NPC's run by the computer)
will IMMEDIATELY attack any non-lawful. Being attacked
by "townies" is not fun! They hit VERY hard, and they
don't often miss! (Thieves can "hide" from "townies",
and the shop keepers don't attack.)
It is not as difficult to get your alignment
fixed, as it requires a less-rare/expensive item to get
the priests to forgive you and fix your alignment.
This is because it is all too easy to make a
simple minded mistake, and kill some lawful (but not
player) critter. Such as one of the dogs that roam the
dungeon trying to protect people from chaotic critters
like goblins, orcs, trolls, etc...
3) Possies - It sometimes happens that a particular person/account
will make a habit of killing players. Why? I don't
know! I'm not a anti-social psychotic killer! Anyway,
when such a person/account is identified, it has happened
that possies of high level characters have tracked down
that character and killed them in turn.
It doesn't happen often, and has not happened
since I started playing, but it has in the past, and
there's one player/account who is currently under
consideration for such treatment. More likely, someone
will educate the poor fool before it gets that far.
4) Banishment - If someone is really making a horrid pest of themselves,
players gather evidence on this person and send it to the
"ghods" (i.e. the people who run the game). Upon due
consideration, and some really heavy duty investigation,
the "ghods" can permanently ban a particular CIS account
from ever playing Kesmai again.
They don't often do this, but when it is truly
necessary, they do. Sometimes, it's the only way to
get through to an anti-social idiot that killing other
people is not the way to play the game.
Note that this does NOT permanently ban a particular
person from playing the game, but it does force them to
get another CIS account.
>4. There should be a banking system which allows money to
> be deposited safely in the name of the faction so that there
> will be no reason to kill PC's except for revenge.
IOK has a banking system, mainly because carring much over 50K gold is
going to slow your character down terribly. :) The bank does NOT pay
any interest, and there are limits on the amount you can have in your
account, and on how much you can deposit/withdraw in a single action.
For those players unfortunate enough to get themselves killed, in whatever
fashion, there are several methods of being "resurected", and having full
access to whatever your prior incarnation had, less the penalties for
dying. (You loose experience points, stats, and skills, and could end
up "stripped" of all your goodies.)
1) Resurection by the "ghods". The program will automatically resurect
you after a certain amount of time has passed. Most people don't
like this, because this has the worst penalties. Really encourages
you to have friends handy to recover your corpse. :)
2) Resurection by the priests. If a friend is close, they can take your
corpse to the priests, who will resurect you. This is better than
having the ghods resurect you, as you will NOT be stripped under
any circumstances; sometimes the ghods will strip you.
3) Resurection by a fellow player. Thaumaturges of a sufficiently high
level can resurect players, or someone with a "raise dead" staff
can do so. This is the prefered method, as you will not be
stripped, will experience the least in penalties, and you will
be where you died, so you can immediately pick up whatever you
had in your hands when you died.
4) A trip through the underworld. If the ghods decide that you should
not be resurected, for whatever reason (like your consitutuion
was simply too low), you will be sent to the underworld. In the
underworld, you have to complete several quests in order to get
your guts back. Some people have deliberately gone to the
underworld in order to regenerate a character who had died
too many times. The penalty is that even if you know exactly
what you're doing, it can take several hours of play to get
all your guts back, and you come back stripped. The benefit
is that your constitution, and several other odds and ends,
will be restored to full.
There's also a "trick" which can get you LOTS of
training for free, but that might go away at any point. :)
The good points are that anything you had banked, or lockered is available
to not only your resurected self, but if you decide to re-roll your
character, whatever was in the bank or locker for that particular CIS
account is available to the new player too!
These ideas presented in the hopes that some of them may be useful
to the designers of Olympia.
-- ONLY: elw@netx.com Edwin Wiles NetExpress Inc., Suite 300, Who? Me?!? Responsible!?! Surely You Jest! Vienna, VA, USA 22182