Shattered Kingdoms

What is to stop people from making a non-tribunal/cabal character and participating that way? No uberskills to fall back on, or leadership to give a meatshield, but greater flexibility in where you can go and what you can do because there are no diplomatic issues about which to worry.

Tbh instead of ever considering spending 600 IC days in jail i'd delete and make a new character, GM, and get geared again in the time that you'd spend 10% of that time offline.

Curious, how many people have actually deleted chars due to obscene amounts of jail time?

I've deleted a character that racked up 10 hours of jail time. However I later made sure not to kill players in cities or areas that could have me reported several times.

That, is ridiculous.

After reading that, I would say that some kind of cap is needed. A sentence should cap around 2 rl weeks, with some kind of added punishment. You should not have to face losing your character over jail time. That really does seem like OOC punishment. I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences, but it shouldn't be the end of your character.

Idea: Flogging. If you serve a maximum sentence, you accumulate so many lashes for your crimes after that. Each 10 lashes is a temporary -1 CON.

I like the flogging idea, or maybe a pillory. You will NOT be auto-deleted, however you WILL lose leadership flags. That is rather to be expected, however I do think a cap is needed.


Don

Yeah, I just mean the end of the character summarily. Some people might return to their character after that, but not many.

I also have to admit that a jailbreak used to be pretty easy. I personally was never stuck in jail that long. But, the player base is much smaller than it used to be. Basically, it shouldn't be that much of a problem that people have to delete and if it is that sucks.

What you're fighting over is a symptom of a problem that could be addressed more elegantly: PCs shouldn't rack up crimes for killing law enforcement NPCs -- e.g., tribunal guards that auto-attack outlaws, and auto-spawning bounty NPCs. Sort of a hybridization of the "low murder vs. high murder" and "tribunal members can be attacked without breaking the law" rules already in place.

That way you differentiate between the person who accidentally stumbled into the gate while his tribunal was at war, and the serial killer of PCs and small children.

Overall, I don't think too many players are truly asking to just have it capped. They just want something to do that isn't staring at a monitor, doing nothing.

After thinking a while about what the jail system is for, I've decided to offer the following suggestion: do away with the jail system completely.

What is the jail system for? To punish lawbreakers. What is punishing someone for breaking the law supposed to do? Deter the one being punished from breaking the law in the future.

There's just one problem. No amount of jail time or execution or loot removal is going to deter anyone. The jail system's one and only job is irrefutably unsuccessful. You could say it has caused some to delete their character. That is an OOC action. The IC character was not, in any way, deterred from wanting to break the law. The player just didn't feel like waiting.

What should take it's place? Well, after a little optional GRP, I'd say a new banishment system. I say optional GRP because it isn't really necessary for a change like this, but it could be cool.

Characters who have only killed a few people or attempted murders, stealing, that kind of stuff, don't necessarily get banished. Pretty much keep the same rules on when a tribunal leader can banish someone. If someone has committed a crime and flees so they don't hurt more guards and what not, then the RP begins. They can negotiate a way to be paroled, meet with a leader, and discuss what happened, and terms of making up for any wrong doing, and they can be on their merry way. Pretty RP-centric. Of course, the leader could always just be stern and demand that they stay out of the city or whatever, but that's RP for ya.

On to the banished details. First off, the amount of time someone is banished for is the exact same amount of time they would be sitting in jail. There could be a way for tribunal leaders to reduce banishment length because the banished person did some sort of community service or something. Pretty simple, but after the GRP, the meaning of banishment changes pretty dramatically.

The GRP would focus around the Gods beaming down a device that puts up a barrier around the city. For Exile and Sith, the lightie Gods, for Zhenshi, the greybie Gods, etc., would watch over their cities. The barrier would only be visible to those that are banished. When the banished one walks into the room where the barrier starts, they get an echo warning them that any further steps towards the city will result in their attempted death.

They continue towards the city, and a NPC spawns to attack them. This NPC would function like that of a cabal guardian as far as how strong it is and how much health it has. If a group of three people show up, and one of them is banished, then the NPC spawns prepared to take on three PCs. If the character is victorious in killing this city guardian, then they can enter the city freely. Of course, they are still highly wanted and will be attacked on sight by all the guards.

Also, gating in will spawn a NPC wherever. It's a barrier where the Gods can see everything in the city. That won't work. You'll still have to fight for it.

A tribunal leader isn't needed to banish someone. Another way for someone to get banished is to be apprehended by soldiers as if they were going to be put in jail. If they only have a few crimes, and not enough for banishment just yet, they are stripped of their items like they normally would be, losing equipment as normal, as well as some loss in gold, and they are sent out of the city with their crime list as is, but a timer is set. They aren't necessarily banished so much as on parole, but still kill on sight. They aren't allowed in the city for as long as they would be serving jail, but they can just walk in. No city guardian spawned to stop them.

However, if they have many crimes, something that would rack up a few hundred hours of jail time, for instance, then they are automatically banished, stripped of their gear and the appropriate amount of coin, and EXECUTED!

So yeah, I expanded on this idea a lot more than I thought I was going to, but I like it. I can think of absolutely nothing that will deter a character from breaking the law in any city, but at least this way, it can be harder for them to enter.