Recently an offending player has stolen both gold and bottles of esteem from
another player. For the sake of the argument I'll refer to bottles of esteem,
or any other items obtained in game, as "items".

Some have viewed this as an in character action that has no repercussions
Out of Character. They are wrong. Here is why.


When a person steals, they do not know a priori the origin of the materials
they stole. Ie the thief does not know if the gold and items they stole was
obtained from in game effort, or purchased via paying for credits with real
money.

Now characters in lusternia use to drop gold upon death. This was changed by
the admin, if memory serves, for the reason that someone
whom had purchased credits with money, then bought gold with credits, lost
all of their investment when they died and someone unscrupulous took their gold.
I'd appreciate verification that my memory is correct on this point.

When you pay money for credits you can transfer this into gold or artifacts.
To my knowledge artifacts cannot be stolen. As individuals have demonstrated,
gold can be stolen by the following methods:


Wiccan, Telepaths, and Nihilists can force people. Wiccan with
pooka, Telepaths with dominate, and Nihilists with dominate.
(quoting Malarious)


A defense to this is Selfishness, however I suspect this ability is
not often purchased without credits. It doesn't make sense to me, to have a
defense against theft of items or gold purchased with credits, require a further
investment of credits. The point being that not everyone who purchases credits
will invest in this skill to protect their gold/item investment, nor do I think
they should be required to.

And can the defense of selfishness be stripped? I'm not sure offhand.


So anyway, given that we no longer drop gold on death (for which I'm very grateful)
for the purposes of protecting out of character money used to purchase gold, I
propose that gold itself cannot be forced to be given to anyone, for any reason.

Otherwise, if you take out your credit card to pay for credits, some prat
halfway across the country can steal your money from you if they wish.

Ideally any item you buy with gold obtained from credit conversion would be protected
too, if you take the principle to its completion, but I just think that is technically
unfeasible.

Opinions?

I'm not averse to this idea, in principle, but people already can't force you to transfer actual credits to them. If you don't use Lusternian banks- although you should, as it's a very safe way to store money- then just convert your gold into credits, and keep them safe that way. Specifically block people forcing the giving of gold, as opposed to other items, probably won't work.

That said, of course, it would definitely be a considerable help to newbies if those who committed theft faced some kind of penalty for doing so, as at current there is no real system to deal with thieves, other than trying to gank them every time they are found off plane.

Why're folks walking around with large sums of gold in their hands anyway? I mean, yeah, sometimes you sell some credits and the gold winds up in yoru hands, but can't you just put it in a pack till you can get to the bank? Folks should use banks more too. Why would you carry hundreds of thousands of gold around - unless you're directly on the way to buy a manse or clan or something and if you are, you just oughta be quick about it.

Quick discussion ack!



Even if you put your gold in a pack someone can force you to remove the pack and drop it (pooka I think). Also vestiphobia can force you to remove your clothes (not sure if pack is considered a piece of clothing to be removed in this instance).




The problem I see with banks is they charge you for the sake of security, thus reducing the initial investment you payed for to convert credits to gold. More later (and a response to Karnagan who brought up great points.) In the meantime I 'stole' this from the Shadowdancers. Also however all of these IC mechanisms REQUIRES the individual to know about them first before they are useful. And there is no warning for credits saying that 'Warning some prat can steal your stuff unless you know X, Y and Z.' Neither should it.

Theft prevention is so easy, plus there is a disclaimer saying that IRE isn't responcible for the loss of the credits that you buy, or the loss of whatever you choose to do with them. I'm indifferent to the idea, since I don't steal or get stolen from, but I don't think its something that needs to be change.

I don't think theft is an ooc issue.

Read your terms of service.

9. Credits. Credits are in-game tokens purchaseable from our website, at www.lusternia.com/credits.php. You hereby agree that the chosen character's reception of credits purchased from the Company concludes the transaction, and that the Company has no further obligation to the User except as provided for under this agreement. The User hereby agrees that the purchase of credits from the Company does not constitute an investment of any kind. The User acknowledges and hereby agrees that the perceived or real value of anything purchased from Lusternia now or in the past may change over time. The User acknowledges that the Company does not provide refunds under any circumstance. The User acknowledges and hereby agrees that the Company cannot be held responsible for any loss of data that may be associated with the running of, or the maintenance of, the Services. The Company acknowledges that it has an ethical obligation to attempt to ensure that no one loses credits due to data loss.

So, say someone did steal your pack full of gold, are you saying that the gold should magically move from your pack to your hands or something?

Banks charge a tiny fee and yeah, so you have to pay for a bit of security. Better than losing all your gold though, isn't it?

And sure the IC methods of theft prevention require you to know about them, but that's what your guild and city are for. That's what your guildmates and citymates are for. Is to make sure that the newbies know how to protect themselves. That's why helps like the one you quoted exist.

Theft in Lusternia isn't as rampant as all that anyway. Thieves should be hunted and made miserable sure, peer smackdown is what keeps thieving down. But a bunch of weird coded stuff that moves your gold from your pack or whatever? Nah. Not needed.

And Acrune's right. The Disclaimer says clearly, "Lusternia is a functioning world, and while we guarantee you will not lose any of the credits you buy, no such guarantee can be provided for what you purchase with the credits themselves. Naturally, we wouldn't be in business very long if this happened frequently, but as it is a world, your actions have consequences, and the actions of others can result in consequences for you."

i.e. The gold you buy might get stolen.

Theft is not an OOC issue. Not everything bad is an OOC issue. Not everything that appears to involve credits if you squint really hard and turn your head a certain way is an OOC issue.

Celestines can give generosity to make you give things away
-This strips selfishness

Leprechauns can steal gold

While you can lose your OOC investment, using a few precautions should keep you safe.

Indeed.



>Or the transaction only includes the purchase of credits.



>As I see it buying credits does not equal buying shares in Lusternia. You
do not vote on business decisions, et cetera.



>This clause reflects the risk inherent in the change of value of the credits,
I don't believe it covers theft. You are guaranteed the same number of credits
you purchased, but their value may change.




> Ok, I see. Here is where theft is implicitly covered. This makes sense. Lusternia
is not liable for theft (and I didn't suggest or imply that to be clear). The goal was
to determine if theft was an OOC concern based on the origin of gold or items.




> Constructive please. Thank you.


What do you think about preventing anyone from forcing someone to give them gold?
Perhaps individuals under a certain level?

Well, here's the thing about giving gold. You have to specify an amount. Say you're wanting to pay for some pants you bought, and the tailor asks for 1000 gold. You get 1000 gold out of your pack/letter/satchel/purse/whatever and type GIVE GOLD TO RANDOMTAILOR. It doesn't work. You actually have to type GIVE 1000 GOLD TO RANDOMTAILOR. That means that anyone trying to force you to give gold would have to first see exactly how much gold you have by looking in your inventory. BUT if your gold isn't in your inventory, Randomthief can't do that, can he?

So really, there's already a way to keep from being forced to give away gold. Don't hold it in your hands.

eta:

Thinking about it, a thief migh be able to hit you with a random, high amount of gold. I don't know if say forcing you to give 1,000,000 gold would make you hand over the 310,000 you had in your hands or not. But still... if you've got it in a pack, it for sure wouldn't. And if you've got it in a bank, it really for sure wouldn't!

GET GOLD FROM LETTER will automatically take all of it out. After that, the theif can hand you a letter order you to PUT GOLD IN and GIVE or using an Anchean trick of making you put it into an artifact pack that will reset in the next 3 seconds or just make you give it in increments of 1000 or so (assuming the theif is also willing an able to hold you down).

While I do not think that it is realy an issue for the adiminstartion, I would strongly prefer if the players would all put OOC pressure on theft, regardless of who was stolen from.

Interesting. Can this be renamed to 'Theft, a discussion'. Lets talk methods and defenses more.

Well, anyone trying that trick on my bank using character would be annoyed at the waste of time. My characters never keep more than a couple of thousand on them at a time.

Banks!

I like keeping my gold in a letter which is in a purse which is in a letter which is in my pack

@ 3rd post: People don't use banks because there is no incentive to use them, especially since there are solutions like Daganev's Dimensional Pocket's of Insanity. I've always stated that banks should not function the -opposite- of RL banks. Theft isn't necessarily an OOC issue, but I can see where losing items purchased with gold purchased with credits would affect one's gameplay experience.

Uhm. Side note. You can't force more then 50 gold giving at a time. Thus with the 'no gold drop on death' thing if you hold all your gold in your hands... you never lose your gold!!! Unless a leprechaun comes. Then yer screwed

This said. It's a dumb idea that anyone or any guild promotes keeping gold in a container, making that container easier to steal from

edit: Also Leprechaun only steals in 50 gold incriments

I've always wondered why stealing is so easy. Particularly IC gold/item theft being converted into credits, which I believe should be banned by the administration.

It seems a reasonable request to have both the 'gold' as well as 'credits' keywords cause any force command to fail.