Infinity LPMud: Rules for Wizards
The following are a revised set of rules for Wizards to abide by on Infinity. Some of them may not be familiar; the previous set of rules that was posted had been up for about 2 years (or more), and were rather outdated.The rules all center around the non-interference principle. As wizards, we should remain outside the game. Players should be able to continue to play the same way, regardless of the existence of Wizards. If you do have any questions, feel free to ask.
We consider these rules to be quite important. All of them define how Infinity works, and we expect the wizards to follow them. Don't make us turn into police to run this game; it makes us lose a lot of the fun of the game, and fun is really what Infinity is for.
- Wizards shouldn't be interfering with players. This includes:
- No healing of players. Wizards shouldn't heal anything save the monsters they are testing by themselves. If you think you are in a situation where a player or a monster should be healed, contact an arch or leave them mail. Do not take it upon yourself to decide who gets healed, and who doesn't.
- No helping of players. Wizards shouldn't hold equipment for players, give them money, or give them hints on quests. You are no longer part of the game.
- Don't alter player information. This includes setting titles, alignments, altering stats, etc. This isn't some second-rate mud where players expect to be harrassed by the wizards. Don't turn it into one.
- Don't force players. The only players you should be forcing are your own test characters, which we'll cover in a moment. The players on this game shouldn't feel as if they need to leave this game on account of a few wizards.
- Don't kill players. This is a rather obvious one. Likewise, don't let them attack you, either. Don't destruct players. While this does no hp damage, it does cause them to lose their place in the game, and can screw up a quest.
- Don't "trans" them up to your workroom from anywhere other than the town. While it's fun to bring up a player to talk, it's not a good idea to do this when they're engaged in mortal combat, or stuck in a certain tomb somewhere. This would fall under the category of helping players.
- Don't give the players any information they cannot get on their own. This includes the email addresses of other players, where they're logging in from, and if a wizard is invis. For example, if I'm invis, the last thing I want is a player mailing me from the post office, or shouting, "MUTARA?? I KNOW YOU'RE HERE; XXX TOLD ME." Let them deal.
- Don't shout_curse a player. If you think a player has been shouting profanity, quest hints, or something similar, let an arch know; don't toss a shout_curse on the player. If an arch is not on, feel free to mail the arches, pointing out what time the shouts occurred. If you nail someone with a shout curse for personal reasons, it won't be looked on too favorably.
- No quest hints are allowed. Even if a player asks you for directions to a quest, the best you can do is direct them to the Advertisement Room. This minimizes the risk of any information being given to the players by accident.
- Don't enter other wizard's areas. Unless you have been given explicit permission by the wizard, and have read through the source code, you have no clue if you entering the area will screw up a quest or a plan for another player. Too many times, a wizard will enter an area to talk to a player, and will get nailed by the aggressive monster in the room. The wizard kills the monster, and the player is out of a quest. If you want to talk to a player, wait until they leave someone's castle.
Likewise, don't go poking through another wizard's castle without permission. If you have a question about their area, ask them. Don't take the chance of altering or disrupting something you don't know about.
Other rooms to avoid are north of the Shop, and north of Leo's workroom. These rooms are both extremely important, and should not be entered. If you do find yourself in the rooms, leave immediately, and don't touch anything.
- Don't clone objects you do not have permission to clone. A good rule of thumb is to check to see if you have read permission on the file. If you don't, it's not a good idea to clone it. Without that knowledge, you don't know what damage you can cause. If you _do_ have read permission, look at the header of the file to see if it can be cloned or not. If it's a dangerous item, we'll let you know in huge block letters. This goes for both game files, and files that wizards have in their directories.
- Don't destruct objects you do not have permission to destruct. There are certain objects on the game that will go haywire if you destruct them. Sometimes the haywire-ty is severe enough that players will die. Don't take the chance of this, and make _sure_ you know what will happen when you destruct something. If you don't know, and you must get rid of it, move it to /room/void.
- Use a test character to test your creations, not players. It's quite possible that even though a wizard has the best intentions, the "easy" monster you're asking a player to test will decimate the poor bastard, leaving him with 2/3 his normal experience, less stats, and a really bad attitude. Rather than subject any players (worse, any admins that have to fix the player back up) to this, create a test character for your testing.
To do this, log in a new character with whatever name you choose. Set the session message, alignment, or title to read "Yourname's test character", so we know what the nature of the character is. Then, call set_test_player("yourname") in the character. This comes in quite handy after we've noticed a test character being slain 12 times.
- Don't snoop a player to harrass them. Those Wizards who have been granted the snooping ability to observe players in their quests and/or guilds should use the information seen only for their work. Private conversations between that player and someone else should not be monitored.
- Don't echoall or shout. Lately, there have been a lot of echoalls and shouts. The echoall isn't there for your amusement. It's there for an emergency warning that will be heard by all users, regardless of which timezone they are in, and regardless of if they are in a no-telepathy zone. Use it for emergencies only.
As for shouts, keep a lid on these, as well. It's not fair for players to listen to a wizard shout, since all of us can literally shout until our faces turn blue, heal ourselves, and then shout another 6 times. This isn't some second-class mud where wizards shout annoying shit back at players; don't shout unless it's an emergency. I don't care how "cute" you think it sounds.
With respect to the 'echo' and 'echoto' commands, if you must use these, don't use them to impersonate someone. Enough idiots have tried 'echoto idiotplayer Mutara tells you: Get off the game. You're banished.' for us to get annoyed by people who can't regulate their own use of this command. Don't annoy us more.
- Don't create dozens of little "toys" for players. While it's nice to make a small trinket for a player that lets them do some action, I highly recommend _against_ it. If every player had a neato trinket that could do something, we would have a serious bug; after a player has too many autoloading items, the game runs into bugs when trying to save all of the autoloading information at quit time. We're trying to trim down the number of autoloading objects as it is; don't make our work be in vain by introducing a bunch of garbage into the game.
- Be careful what objects and gold you carry around. It might seem cool to run around with a high weapon class weapon and loads of money, but they're both things that can easily get dropped, or get stuck in your corpse if a fellow wizard decides to break rule 1), and toss you into semi-death. You can halt this problem at the root by making sure you destruct all objects you carry before wandering through town, and keeping a minimum of gold on you.
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