Since we seem to have a large amount of excessive stealing going on (which I detest)... I was thinking about ways in which we might reduce the impact of a thief on the player they target, without reducing their ability to steal. One way this might work is by weight and carrying capacity.

If you can't carry everything out of a shop, then you must select only the most valuable items. This at least gives the owner characters a chance of rebuilding their investment after a thief has struck. Similarly, if you can't handle hundreds of thousands of coins at one time, you can't hand over your entire life savings to a thief.

All items in lusternia currently have a weight assigned to them, so why not set it so that only a certain amount can be borne by any character before they simply can't carry anymore? This would need a lot of thought put into it of course, I'm not suggesting that just setting a weight limit and walking away would be very efficient, but it could go someway towards making thievery a little more palletable.

For instance, Airy the Faeling can only carry 30 pounds of weight (Note I have no idea how heavy a pound is, so don't flame me for getting it wrong, its just an example! ). He must store any extra items he wants to own at a bank's safety deposit box, or in a manse safe. Burly the Tae'dae, being much larger, can carry 40 pounds of weight before he is overloaded. (note the difference shouldn't be too extreme, because clothes/armour/weapons of small races will be about the same relative weight to the person as that of large race clothes/armour/weaponry.)

Some other ideas:
- If you get within 10% of your maximum capacity, your movement is delayed by 1 second, and you cannot maintain a grip on the aether strands, so you cannot use planar teleport.

- Enchanters can enchant a special dimensional pack that will hold a maximum of three items, but they can be of any weight and their individual mass won't contribute to your total. Only one of these dimensional packs can be carried at a time.

- Gold will have some weight... you can't carry hundreds of thousands in your pack. Put a machine in all banks that allows you to convert certain amounts of gold into unstealable credit-like things, at no charge.


The weight idea can be handled in many different ways... does anyone approve or have an alternate suggestion here?

One sentence:

Fun > Realism.

EDIT:

That may not be specific enough, so I'd just like to say that the weight thing looks great on paper, but the actual execution would be utterly hellish. Realism might be nice, yes, but if Lusternians aren't having fun they may start to quit. This is a thing which would seriously hinder the ability to have fun within any IRE MUD.

I play another MUD called Awakened Worlds, where there is not only weight, but size limits. Let me get (make up off the top of my head because I'm too lazy to go find) my logs...

You massacre a Mitsuhama security guard with your incredibly powerful burst fire!
Blood spatters everywhere as a Mitsuhama security guard cries out his last breath.
You gain 0.86 karma.

reload
Reloaded a STK 'Virulence' Assault rifle.

get all guard
You get a plastic credstick from the corpse of a Mitsuhama security guard.
You get a roll of nuyen from the corpse of a Mitsuhama security guard. There were 629 nuyen.
You get a Mitsuhama security overcoat from the corpse of a Mitsuhama security guard.
A Heckler and Koch shotgun: You can't carry that much weight!
A Mitsuhama security helmet: You can't carry that much weight!
A striped keycard: You can't carry that much weight!
A blue keycard: You can't carry that much weight!
A box of shotgun cartriges: You can't carry that much weight!
A box of shotgun cartriges: You can't carry that much weight!
A box of shotgun cartriges: You can't carry that much weight!

It gets annoying after a while... the no weight encumberance thing is what I really like about Lusternia.

How about, instead of having a maximum carrying weight, have an endurance tax for each pound? That way, the low-endurance Faeling will have some energy loss for lugging around the 3265-pound ravenwood tree, and the hefty Tae'dae would have a little less of a problem...

Hmm, what about making it a soft limit? There's no absolute maximum, but if you exceed a certain amount you start experiencing escalating disadvantages.

I don't think it would destroy fun... it would be more limiting to a certain extent, that is true. However, it would also hopefully (at least in part) address some existing problems that work against 'fun' in a big way.

how about your defend yourself against theives?

And what about forgers who carry 10 weapons on them at a time? I think its silly that you have a weight restriction.

Just set up the proper triggers and guard your shops and you wont have the problem

im not a forger, but I carry 6 weapons on me - and thats not even taking into account the 180+ pounds of armour, the billions of vials I need not only for elixirs and salves but for venoms to even be thought of as moderately combat ready.

Yeah, currently playing another mud, and one thing (other than the repeated drowning / falling to death while exploring) I absolutely hate about it is the weight restrictions. It makes things way inconvenient and irritating, especially when you have to drop your belongings because you absolutely have to pick up an item to complete a quest.

Edit: and not to forget those who can juggle 20 or more little sprigs of herbs (in their inventory) while fighting

I know there are defences against thieves, and I don't want to stop thievery altogether (well, I do, but I know thats not realistic since some people actually enjoy it ). My problem is that there is no effective limit on how much damage you can do by stealing.

If I make a careless error in judgement in my personal safety and someone attacks me, the most they can do is make me lose a certain amount of experience. If I make a careless error in judgement in the safety of my possessions, and someone steals from me, they can take pretty much everything.

There are solutions of course... own multiple shops to distribute your risk, keep all your money in a bank and deal with the fees, purchase a manse and safe to store valuables and keep it locked forever... but they aren't always very useful alternatives.

Clearly the weight restriction isn't popular (though I'm still curious as to why all the IRE games include a weight descriptor for objects), so maybe I'll have to think of some other solution.

Any ideas?

You can limit yourself. Just ask yourself if you can afford everything you have on you at the moment. If you can't, you're carrying too much. Credits usually appreciate in value Like a +interest bank.

Oh, and just need to learn the basic theft prevention stuff (e.g. triggers / cures)

I'm mainly talking about shops here.

Same thing for shops. Learn how the thieves are stealing so you can prevent it. Like get a lockable door for your shop (not just the storage room, the shop itself), get the necessary sigils and skills (or get someone to help) to make sure there isn't anyone in the shop itself, before going down to the storage room etc. Set your aliases to close and door up and down / in and out just in case you get prevented from moving out of the storage room despite all your precautions. Heartstop can be considered too... depends on whether you value your exp or gold more.

Well, the same thing can be said about combat. Prepare adequately and know how to escape, and you should never die. Right?

The difference is that it's a lot easier to prevent theft (ie. doesn't actually take a whole lot of skill / complicated systems). Or so it seems to me anyway. Maybe it's just as you say, like fighting, practice and knowing your opponent makes perfect.

I say make your people start using fist and flame sigils. Wear your backpacks, and start being *gasp* original with your gold, and put it in strange things like preserved letters, which is something very few people think to take.

I do.

How about no.