Karma

[Xanthippe]

Are there any MMOGs that have used "karma" as an in-game mechanism for determining events or accessibility to towns/npcs/quests?  If so, which, how was it used, and was it dynamic in the sense that one could change the tilt of their karmic debt?

[Malathor]

Lineage 1 and 2. It was, however, primarily a PK noto system, which may not be what you had in mind.

[Soln]

it was used in the PnP Shadowrun game.  It was like experience or luck points to draw from.  Was not karmic in its formal sense.

[Tmon]

Launch UO had a system that was pretty much that.  Do something good and you gained reputation eventually you could become a great lord I think.  Do something bad and you lost reputation, get a bad enough rep and the guards would insta wack you so towns became off limits, and eventually you could become a dread lord.  There were huge problems with the system. For instance giving gold to an NPC was a good deed, so you could clear your name by giving one gold piece at a time to a wandering healer until yoiu hit the rep you wanted.  Being banned from town didn'thurt because you could always make an alt to handle your shopping or you just harvested what you needed from other players.  The best one was if your reputation went far enough negative you rolled over from dread lord to great lord.  UO tried all sorts of variations on the system but people found ways to subvert every fix.

[WindupAtheist]

UO still uses a karma system, albeit different from the old one Tmon is speaking of.

Basically, killing evil creatures, healing other players, and giving gold to an NPC all increase your karma.  Killing good creatures, using necromancy, and summoning daemons all decrease it.  High karma increases the effectiveness of paladin spells, while low karma causes certain good creatures to attack you where they would otherwise leave you alone.

At the same time, you gain "fame" by killing things that are tough, regardless of alignment.  Small amounts of fame can be lost by using the begging skill, but fame is primarily decreased by dying.  So it's basically an index of moster kills versus player deaths.  At the highest level of fame you get Lord or Lady stuck in front of your name, and once in a blue moon an NPC will bow to you.  That's about it, but people really like those Lord/Lady titles.

The game also cross-references your fame and karma and assigns you an appropriate title.  At the highest levels of karma and fame you're titled Glorious Lord.  If you then go out to learn necromancy and kill angels for a while, your title will eventually drop to Dread Lord.  If you die a whole bunch of times after that, and lose all your fame as well, your title will end up as Outcast.

It's mostly fluff, unless you're a paladin or want to walk unmolested through certain good creature spawns, but it adds color to the game.

[Samwise]

SWG's pre-CU "faction" system was close to that - it tracked your "karma" with respect to a particular "faction" (e.g. Hutt, Gungans, Jawas, Tuskens, Imperial, Rebel) based on whether you killed them or their enemies (e.g. killing Tuskens would cause you to gain Jawa faction and lose Tusken faction).  With a sufficiently low faction karma, NPCs of that faction will attack you, and with a sufficiently high faction karma, they'll come to your aid if they see you in trouble.  If the NPCs in question were sufficiently powerful relative to your own combat abilities, that could effectively deny you access to certain areas.

I think the ultimate intent was to make it so that each faction had quests associated with it, like the Hutts did.  That never happened, though, and the faction system was ultimately scrapped for everything except the factions that players could join (Rebel and Imperial), since those faction points could actually be used for stuff.  It was pretty obnoxious grinding faction points anyway.

[Trippy]

Are there any MMOGs that have used "karma" as an in-game mechanism for determining events or accessibility to towns/npcs/quests?  If so, which, how was it used, and was it dynamic in the sense that one could change the tilt of their karmic debt?

EverQuest has a faction system that does that sort of thing. Many if not most "intelligent" NPCs are assigned one or more factions and killing said NPCs might raise or lower your faction standing with one or more factions. If you standing gets low enough you'll be KoS (Kill on sight) to the guards of that faction or all the NPCs of the faction depending and if it's high enough certain ones will grant you quests. E.g. the Velious expansion had a complicated three way faction setup between the Dwarves, Giants, and Dragons which each granting quests for special armor pieces and other special quests if you were high enough faction them. For some factions you could also do quests to raise your faction standing instead of just killing certain NPCs over and over again. For example, in the halfling home area you could give bandages to a halfling in a "hut" outside of the town of Rivervale to raise your faction with them. So even the "evil" races that would normally be KoS to all the halfling guards could easily (with enough money to buy the bandages) raise their faction high enough to allow them to enter the town without being attacked by the guard and even bank inside.

Edit: fixed typos, clarified text

[Pococurante]