Long-lost post: Unwritten Rules

[Berendol]

This is an excerpt from a post made to the old MAngband mailing list in January 2000, which can be read in its entirety at http://www.crud.net/Lists-Archives/mang ... 00068.html (I even recommend you read it. There's a good Q&A session afterwards and many useful replies.) Some of this is no longer necessary because mentalities have changed, and server policies have also changed radically to prevent some things covered by these rules.

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Unwritten Rules FAQ V 1.0

Q: What are the unwritten rules?
A: Since they are unwritten, there is no exact definition. Here is how I would
define them:

1. You will not give any object that is "excessivly powerful" to
any player, except under very rare circumstances. What is "exessivly powerful"
depends on the players level. This also applys to selling objects, make sure
that you make the other guy pay at least what the object is 'worth'. Note that
this is not what the object sells for in stores, but what it is considered to be
worth by many of the experienced players. An example of this would be agreeing
not to sell Raal's Tome of Destruction for 100k to another player, even though
this is what the shop sells it for. A player following "the unwritten rules"
would not sell it for less than 800k or so.

2. You should avoid partying with players much less powerful than
you, as this will provide them with with a free ride. Conversly, you should
avoid partying with people significantly more powerful than you.

3. You should only ressurect a "reasonable" number of times. This
generally means a max of 3 or so. It is more acceptable to ressurect when you
died do to something "unfair" like "lag spike" or "instadeath" than to
something like "hit the wrong macro".

4. You should never, ever use "storage characters". If you want to
store stuff, you will only use houses. When you finally decide not to ressurect
your ghost, you will let your house key, and all the stuff in your houses,
dissapear.

5. When you find an artifact, and it is not useful to you now or in
the foreseeable future, you should sooner than later either sell it or drop it on
an unstatic dungeon level and then leave the level.

6. You will not scum too much for vaults on lower levels when you have
ESP. (I follow this, I don't know if anyone else does. Of course I scum a
little now and then, but not a lot.)

7. You usually avoid buying powerfull stuff, including stat potions,
from other players, especially significantly more powerful characters.
(I think just Warrior and I follow this)

8. When starting out, you will avoid taking gifts from more powerful
characters. You will also avoid using or selling drops from obvious level one
characters that can be easily found in or next to town.

9. You will not attack or kill other players without good cause. A
possible exception to this is if a player is much more powerful than you and not
afk.
10. If you are high level, you will avoid killing low level uniques.

11. You will avoid staticing dungeon levels, especially the upper
dungeon levels.
/
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I'm doing something else these days. Good luck, everyone!

[Big_Juan_Teh_Furby]

See, that's where I'm still confused.

If a shop will buy an item from me for 5k, can I sell that same item to another player for 5k, even though other players sell the same thing for 15k, and the shops themselves sell it for 30k?  

Why not help someone else out who's just trying to get a foothold in the game?

I'm pretty sure we've all been helped by another player.

[Crimson]

Part of what you're not accounting for is rarity.  Certain items, even if they cost only 5k, will vary rarely ever appear in a shop.  While it may seem harmless to sell this to another player at shop price,  the other character isn't supposed to have been able to find it yet (wild chance aside, but the RNG rules us all.)

I hope that clarifies it a bit.

[Big_Juan_Teh_Furby]

Yes, that helps, thanks.

Now, what can we do about figuring out fair prices?  I, for one, don't want to charge what everyone else charges for items.  I like competition, but, by the same tolken, I don't want to practically give something away.  I want to sell stat pots for just above or at what's "legal", but I don't also want to sell them for 10k, which seems to be the going rate.  I'm out to help other players, not make heaps of money.  If I was just after money I'd sell to the shops, 'cos they're always buying.

(Oh, FYI, I'm not selling anything at the moment, I'm still trying to get myself a good set of back-up gear)

[Warrior]

I just spent a little while stickying a few of the **KING** posts and making a couple of other posts announcements, the rules and especially the unwritten rules are kinda outdated now but it's a nice history lesson, in a way. The unwritten rules were (written!) by Alex Dingle.

[Ace]

Well some of those unwritten rules are understandable some are unwritten and should be forgotten

Like the :
Do not scum
or
resurect reasonable number of times
or
Scum too much for vaults with telepathy

This game is for fun, if thresurecting makes the player happy (as if someone lieks to die? - There are severe penalties for dying already). And is also not game play breaking for other players.

So I dont get really the point here. If someone of course can identify himself with such ruels for better "roleplaying" or similar purposes it's fine for him to follow these guidelines, fine

But hopefully this set of rules is not seen as the ultimate tome of mangband netiquette