So. There I was, being crucified by a crazed drow vampire and her MIGHTY companion when a thought occured to me:
Normally, players get XP for murdering monsters. That's all well and good, but to my knowledge we don't have XP for murdering other PCs, even if they are vampires. This is ironic in a way because the murder of an AMPC is usually more difficult, dramatic, and of greater significance than anything you're going to accomplish poking around the terg ruins. On the other hand, you don't necessarily want to encourage people to red-dead AMPCs either. An idea thus occurred to me.
What if AMPCs were in some way tweaked that they dramatically, noticeably increased RP for players around them? The mechanical incentive then becomes interacting with the AMPC in text rather than just trying to immediately murder them -- and you actively make the AMPC a thing that there is a benefit for engaging with. This is especially nice given how much encounters with an AMPC can cost in terms of losing coin, resources, and so on.
You could even do one better and key some of the AMPC experience gain to a similar system, giving them some kind of boost that is keyed to typing around players similar to the RP xp system. Some of the AMPCs I've met have been awesome from the ground up. Others have been almost as bad as the gank-happy players they encounter, in terms of ganking first RPing later. Such a system then also provides AMPCs a mechanical incentive to go engage with players with more of a role-play focus as well -- which is, after all, what AMPCs are theoretically about.
My two coppers.
Having now played an AMPC, I find it very much a privilege and that DMs are enormously generous and supportive of them in my experience. I don't think AMPCs need more in the way of incentives
from the Team because it's simply a blast as it is
More and improved tools from Devs, more monstrous templates...those would be nice enhancements, but to me the application process presumes that players should seek this with an RP focus. When NCE isn't going it may be less true, but I have the sense that generally DMs are looking over the shoulders of AMPCs even more than they do regular PCs to observe and referee. I doubt a gank-happy AMPC would be tolerated, or that the player would be approved for another AMPC subsequently.
You've made a very good suggestion about AMPC's giving "environmental" RP boosts, if possible mechanically, although here again I think interacting and RPing with AMPCs does serve as its own reward. Always the most fun I have here is good, intense RP with players, be that ad hoc or through events, including those run by DMs. Still, anything that would reinforce for players that AMPCs have value as something other than a trophy kill/notch on the PC's belt is something to consider.
Playing an AMPC, I also have had almost uniformly high-quality interactions with other players. This has been a truly memorable week for me, thanks to many of you. But I do see now much more the truth of the argument that we, the players, have a lot more responsibility for ensuring the quality of these interactions than even DMs do. Whereas I feel DMs support AMPCs very much and try to help them succeed, players, even in their opposition to an AMPC's IC role, should make sure they're being supportive of the AMPC's OOC desire to bring the terror that is essential to our shared setting. In that, at least, we're all on the same team (or should be).
If giving regular PCs an RP boost for being around AMPCs would discourage "gank happy" behavior on their part, that might be something to pursue.
