I think, to kick the dead horse once again, or maybe it's still alive?, that George Orwell's classic Nineteen-Eighty-Four, must be brought up here.

Why? Because the society is so "evolved" that you can be a criminal even for thinking of a criminal act [i.e. ThoughtCrime]. But moreover, criminals are sent to The Ministry of Love [see essay on Double Think for explanation], to be brainwashed into adoring Big Brother as their punishment although serious criminals who are beyond complete reform will find themselves at the wrong end of a bullet to the head after they've been through the brainwashing.

Why I bring this up? I think it's important to note that there are also many different views on what is and is not acceptable punishment for crimes in different societies. Here in the US, in the past, such things as firing squads, hangings, electric chairs and in the distant past, burnings were all at one time or another accepted modes of capitol punishment, although now we primarily stick to lethal injection (a much more "humane" way of killing someone). However, in recent years I remember people being caned, decapitated and many other forms of seemingly "barbaric" punishments for any number of given crimes. The problem I think you'll find in creating this evolving system is primarily establishing what are the boundries for any given crime?

If someone steals a loaf of bread, he may get a night in jail, or he may get a hand chopped off, depending on the culture. However, how do we model such a grand system, across multiple cultures, without having a super-database containing every type of possible crime along with acceptable, weighted types of punishment. [See any state or government's Statutes for an idea of the complexity and size of said project.]

However, perhaps the best place to start is with violence, giving everything a weighted value as you discussed OP, you have differing levels, minor assault (punching someone in the face) is given a value of 5 [based on the reverse American system where a level 5 offense is the lowest and a level 1 the highest] while murdering someone would be given a value of 1. Therefore, we go to our "Big Dictionary O' Punishment" (TM) and research possible punishments for a violent crime of value 3. There we have lists of acceptable punishments that go along on the same scale of 1 - 5, perhaps using a fuzzy logic implementation that can be cross-referrenced to the "Civility" score of the culture to decide whether or not they would find that punishment "Acceptable", "Severe" or "Mild".

Anyway, that's some things to think about, and I'll conclude this post before I lose myself to rambling.

Something to chew on,

Vopisk

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Original post by Dobbs Ok, I like your classification of jusitifed/unjustified/consensual violence, and a class system for who is an appropriate receiving end of what. The main problem I see is that within a single society these classifications of violence and people can vary wildly person to person. How would you handle this?

I'm hoping that the variance would be handled by classes and faction membership for everyone, with a matrix of classes and actions handling behaviors and their costs. The matrix would hold the reactions to the results of a given deed and the social cost, if there was a reputation system. In theory, a character could then rise and fall through the ranks of society by their deeds.

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A criminal knows he's a criminal, so does he view violence against himself as justified and just give up? Does every good person see violence against heinous criminals as justified, and so condone lynching?

This is where nuance comes in. (I skimped here for the sake of brevity.) The criminal knows that society thinks she's a criminal. She knows the cost of commiting a particular deed. As for the "good people," the culture would determine the acceptable punishment for the criminal. Lynching might be acceptable or not, depending on how the culture viewed violence as a whole. You might have cultures where no amount of violence is sanctioned (stunning only, for instance).

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I think the view of what is justified/unjustified/consensual is at least partly at the class/caste level as well as at the cultural level.

I saw people getting flags based on class. A class could be as varied as necessary, not just a social class. You could break people up into ethnicity, gender, height, citizenship status, etc. and then apply rules from there.

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Another useful tool for determining if your system might work is looking at all the weird societies created in various sci fi universes. Can your system create/support a race like the klingons for example?

This is a good example, and what I'm aiming for when thinking about this.

If I were doing Klingon culture, I would try to design the classes around the states / roles / identities of a character. From the movies & shows, some classes might be:

• Esteemed - This character cannot be attacked by anyone without incurring a Disgraced status. (A successful stealth attack will not attribute an identity to an attacker, however.)
  
• Blood Enemy - This character may be freely attacked by any other clan who has a standing Blood Feud
  
• Challenged - This character has been challenged by another in honorable combat, defined by a zone on the map. One must defeat the other before leaving the zone or both will automatically become Disgraced.
  
• Failed - This character has failed a sworn oath or failed in leadership in battle. If the character surrenders, he becomes Disgraced. If he does not, he becomes Blood Enemy.
  
• Disgraced - A character becomes disgraced when it attacks with certain tactics (backstab) or weapons (poison), refuses a challenge to honorable combat, challenges or harms someone weaker, or becomes crippled. Once dead, the class cannot change.
  

... or something like that.. The point would be to try to create a flexible system to capture some of the nuance by creating a sort of mini-state machine and assigning costs to behaviors which make certain social variables rise and fall (and thus drive the state machine).

(Of course, it might be complete garbage because I haven't tried it yet. [rolleyes])

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Original post by Inmate2993 I remember an episode of Star Trek where they went to this planet where once a day, everyone planetwide would just start smashing the nearest objects. I forget what the point was, but I think it could help this conversation is it pertains to Property Damage (i.e. Violence to Property).

Good example. I remember TNG had something similar, a society where there were no laws but you weren't allowed to break certain rules on certain days. Wesley Crusher happens to blunder into a fenced off area for plants on a day when disturbing the plants gets the death penalty.

Interesting concept, even if not realistic.

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Original post by Vopisk I think, to kick the dead horse once again, or maybe it's still alive?, that George Orwell's classic Nineteen-Eighty-Four, must be brought up here.

Heh, I had a snappy comeback to your last 1984 post (I think you'd asked whether I'd read it or not, and I was going to make a joke about "miniplenty"... But I got too busy to keep that thread alive, sorry I couldn't reply...)

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Why? Because the society is so "evolved" that you can be a criminal even for thinking of a criminal act [i.e. ThoughtCrime]. But moreover, criminals are sent to The Ministry of Love [see essay on Double Think for explanation], to be brainwashed into adoring Big Brother as their punishment although serious criminals who are beyond complete reform will find themselves at the wrong end of a bullet to the head after they've been through the brainwashing.

To the point that they'll avow Big Brother's rightness and want a bullet in the head. :( Ugh.

How to portray this in an RPG as a variant to society? The key I think is not to get too anal about this. Capture the highlights, don't choke on the details. What are the classes in a 1984 society? There are the proles, IIRC, and (I forget the name of) those that run the system. There's Emmanuel Goldstein, as an icon for hate. There are definitely differences between men and women, there's supposedly a resistance movement... these could create the starting framework of classes.

What are the actions, and what are the costs to them? At the end of costs I think should be the results, when something is triggered. I think you could come up with a list of actions , such as sedition, or even kissing (provided there was gameplay there, not just an action without results) and assign costs.

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Why I bring this up? I think it's important to note that there are also many different views on what is and is not acceptable punishment for crimes in different societies.

Thanks, this is again what I'm looking for. If you have more examples, I'd be happy to hear them (particularly the triggering conditions... what could get you hanged in some eras, for instance)

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However, how do we model such a grand system, across multiple cultures, without having a super-database containing every type of possible crime along with acceptable, weighted types of punishment.

You're overthinking this. As a game player, you do not get the freedom to perform every possible crime. You only get to perform the crimes the game allows. In many RPGs, this is often limited to taking or killing, although Morrowind includes zone entry (don't go into a tribesman's hut, for instance, or a family vault) and items equipped (Ordinators will kill you if they see you in their brethren's armor).

You could really have fun here without this becoming overbearing. If you wanted to do jaywalking, for instance, you'd have to segment the world into zones. If you wanted to do "No running on the Holy Day" you'd have to be able to perform a conditional on player speed. etc. etc.

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There we have lists of acceptable punishments that go along on the same scale of 1 - 5, perhaps using a fuzzy logic implementation that can be cross-referrenced to the "Civility" score of the culture to decide whether or not they would find that punishment "Acceptable", "Severe" or "Mild".

For pure RPG goodness, I'd also weight this by economic status, class, race, reknown, etc. (I'm thinking of a little trial minigame to handle this).

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Vopisk I think, to kick the dead horse once again, or maybe it's still alive?, that George Orwell's classic Nineteen-Eighty-Four, must be brought up here. Heh, I had a snappy comeback to your last 1984 post (I think you'd asked whether I'd read it or not, and I was going to make a joke about "miniplenty"... But I got too busy to keep that thread alive, sorry I couldn't reply...)

How dare you let fall a chance to keep alive a thread in which I mentioned 1984! Big Brother is watching you! Okay, so enough of that... on to the business...

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Quote: Why? Because the society is so "evolved" that you can be a criminal even for thinking of a criminal act [i.e. ThoughtCrime]. But moreover, criminals are sent to The Ministry of Love [see essay on Double Think for explanation], to be brainwashed into adoring Big Brother as their punishment although serious criminals who are beyond complete reform will find themselves at the wrong end of a bullet to the head after they've been through the brainwashing. To the point that they'll avow Big Brother's rightness and want a bullet in the head. :( Ugh. How to portray this in an RPG as a variant to society? The key I think is not to get too anal about this. Capture the highlights, don't choke on the details. What are the classes in a 1984 society? There are the proles, IIRC, and (I forget the name of) those that run the system. There's Emmanuel Goldstein, as an icon for hate. There are definitely differences between men and women, there's supposedly a resistance movement... these could create the starting framework of classes. What are the actions, and what are the costs to them? At the end of costs I think should be the results, when something is triggered. I think you could come up with a list of actions , such as sedition, or even kissing (provided there was gameplay there, not just an action without results) and assign costs.

Here is where you run the problem though, of what actions are available in game, and what are considered crimes by any given society? How do you dynamically decide what one society would consider a crime over another? True you can keep it as simple as killing and theft, but, if you're putting all this effort into the system, perhaps you should seek more anal-ness and depth, rather than let the hard work go to waste in another bland "justice" system.

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Quote: Why I bring this up? I think it's important to note that there are also many different views on what is and is not acceptable punishment for crimes in different societies. Thanks, this is again what I'm looking for. If you have more examples, I'd be happy to hear them (particularly the triggering conditions... what could get you hanged in some eras, for instance)

Being a witch? Being jewish? The possibilities are truly endless and would play directly into your existing class system. A la the Nazi movement, people that had dark hair, dark eyes, were deformed or crippled in some manner, ad naseum would be worthy of the death penalty (or at least life in a labor camp) therefore, the triggering system could be created psuedo-randomly perhaps based upon the type and a fuzzy-logic value of the government/society within any given culture.

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Quote: However, how do we model such a grand system, across multiple cultures, without having a super-database containing every type of possible crime along with acceptable, weighted types of punishment. You're overthinking this. As a game player, you do not get the freedom to perform every possible crime. You only get to perform the crimes the game allows. In many RPGs, this is often limited to taking or killing, although Morrowind includes zone entry (don't go into a tribesman's hut, for instance, or a family vault) and items equipped (Ordinators will kill you if they see you in their brethren's armor). You could really have fun here without this becoming overbearing. If you wanted to do jaywalking, for instance, you'd have to segment the world into zones. If you wanted to do "No running on the Holy Day" you'd have to be able to perform a conditional on player speed. etc. etc.

You're right in my original post, I did talk in the grand scheme, but of course, no game is fun if you're going to get speeding tickets or fined for not tipping your waitress. However, I think that it would be nice to see an RPG (or any game for that matter) with a more complex justice system, rather than merely you killed someone and now you go to jail. What about public indecency? You get sent to the can for a few hours if you're caught walking around in public without your clothes on? Or public drunkeness, go to the drunk tank until you sober up if you're wandering around drunk off your butt? Or perhaps the society is a bit more hard-line and thinks that a week in the labor camp is worthy of anyone who would disgrace themselves by becoming drunk? You can have fun with it without getting too complex like you said, but that does not mean you have to limit yourself to a simple 2-3 laws that can be broken, just make sure there is some documentation in place to let players know what is and is not against the law so that they can't claim ignorance as an excuse. It would be a rude awakening to find that you had broken a law you were not aware existed and would probably throw players off of the game.

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Quote: There we have lists of acceptable punishments that go along on the same scale of 1 - 5, perhaps using a fuzzy logic implementation that can be cross-referrenced to the "Civility" score of the culture to decide whether or not they would find that punishment "Acceptable", "Severe" or "Mild". For pure RPG goodness, I'd also weight this by economic status, class, race, reknown, etc. (I'm thinking of a little trial minigame to handle this).

I think that this idea goes beyond just "RPG Goodness" and transcends to a whole new level, is the system clean or corrupt? Yes that's right, based upon said values, perhaps even judges can be bribed! Or the rich and famous always get off because of their notariety(sp?). A minigame trial would be rather interesting too, perhaps with the ability to offer an alibi and refute any "evidence" collected against you.

I believe it was in the previous justice thread that I talked about ways that you could implement the justice system without having a "psionic" connection with all other NPCs in the game, and I think using a fuzzy logic generator, you could "harvest evidence" in a similar fashion. So the character is 6'4" which equates to "very tall" in our fuzzy language system, so now the authorities are out looking for a "Very tall elf with brown eyes" and you just happen to fit the bill and get hauled away to face trial for a crime you didn't commit, go to court and present your side of the story (or pay the judge enough hehe) and maybe you'll walk away and maybe you'll hang? Oh the joy!

Vopisk

Edit: Look! I finally figured out how to work the darn quote blocks properly! Yay! Gold star for me!