Death -- a how-to guide
The Death of a Character
There's a few ways characters can die.
The most obvious way is the player doesn't log them in for 42 days and the character expires. In that case, the object is destroyed, ownership of all the objects and rooms goes to Chown_Char and that's that. This is called death by Expiration.
Sometimes, in the course of RP a character chooses to be killed or die. The player should annotate the character's description to indicate that the character is dead and the extent of the injuries. For instance, "Willy's head is no longer attached; he is assuredly dead."
This doesn't destroy the object. In fact, the player may want to stay on and active -- but it means the player can't bring that character into the IC realm as an IC character again. Why would they stay? They may be a builder, or have alts and own a bunch of land, or any other reasons.
By marking the character as dead in the description, the rest of the players will know to safely RP with that character as dead. If the player changes their mind ... that's too bad. They marked the character as dead, so dead it stays. If the player's character was hacked, an investigation in the logs will reveal it and the player will be allowed to correct the RL false results.
If a character is just abandoned (or if the player says "I'm dead!" and logs out) there's no certainty that the player won't return. Often, players leave in anger or in the heat of some real-life issue and when they cool off or things change they want to step back to where they were.
For this reason, a character who hasn't taken the effort of marking themselves as dead is not considered dead. It's not about logs or "what they said" so much as it's about positive action that makes an irrevocable change.
So, what should be done ICly when there's "probably cause" to believe a character is abandoned by the player and won't be back?
The simplest thing is just to RP as if the character "left." Or, you can RP that they went into a coma if you're into the melodramatic flair. If you claim a coma, you need to have the means to support them (or it won't make sense that they come back in 30 days not having been force-fed and given water and kept clean).
The problem for staff and management comes in with likely abandonment. We can't do an IC funeral because that is twinking (it's declaring the character dead without the owner having done so). We can't remove them from lists, clear permissions, etc., for the same reasons. To the staff, death is ONLY a factor when the object expires (thus closing the account) or the character is annotated as dead using the description.
So, if you want to have your character die, change the description to be dead and that's that. Otherwise, it's not dead until it expires.
