tbaMUD Continued development of the CircleMUD core

Quote:

This is really an announcement rather than a promotion.

Back in December 2006, I made a post about some new legislation that was being drawn up in Bavaria and Lower Saxony, designed to punish "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" inside games, with infringers facing up to 12 months' in jail for promoting or enacting in-game violence - you can read about the legislation here:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,452419,00.html (German only)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/dec/12/news.germany

http://gamepolitics.com/2006/12/06/in-wake-of-rampage-german-minister-wants-jail-time-for-violent-game-creators-and-distributors

And here's the TMS thread where the issue was discussed:

http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/legal-issues/555-jail-time-virtual-violence.html

Everyone thought the law would get shot down, but to the surprise (and horror) of many, it's just been passed - not for players at least, but for distributors and developers. As I live in the capital of Bavaria, this puts me under a lot of pressure.

I've contacted the Scherzamt (the department responsible) to see if the law also applies to text games, and they've said they'll investigate. However their officials don't speak English, so I've been told I need to translate my mud into German for them. I've already started doing this, but it's going to take a while to translate fully.

Hopefully the Scherzamt will say that the mud is okay, because there are no graphics, but it could go either way - so I've asked my players to try and tone down the violence (eg no rampages through the starting village, etc). If the wurst comes to the wurst I may even need to strip out the combat system entirely, and focus on other activites such as quests and roleplaying.

Thus for the time being, at least, I'm afraid the mud is no longer available in English - and while new players are still welcome, I would ask you to show some restraint in combat. It's okay to kill a few animals for their pelts, but please don't go around ripping the arms and legs off villagers.