That said, how on earth could this be fixed? I've seen far more RP-centric games still have trouble with low-level serial killers, or else become so restrictive that appropriate PK is stopped. When an offender can easily create a new character, how can you effectively punish him?

Yup. I've seen games go so far as to demand a written reason before you initiate. This of course leads to the problem of players submitting crappy written reasons to justify their behavior, just as they will have crappy answers available if you pull them aside for a chat.

We're not interested in going down that road. We have the role command to explain each character, and if you don't fill it in, you're basically telling me that your character's RP will be obvious from observation. (And if it isn't, don't be surprised if bad things happen to your character.) And if you do write a role which basically says "I'm a crazy guy who will try to kill anyone! Raaah!", it doesn't excuse paper-thin behavioral RP.

Once I'm done with my current project, I'm going to go back to doing primarily low-level (1-20) oriented tweaking. Some more tools for the immstaff (and possibly players) to use might be on that agenda, but I'm not convinced the problem is nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I might have to challenge Droky to another calculator duel over the distention formulae, but there are other directions we can go.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com