Oh.. you want to play a MUSH ? Go ahead. After all that's where you'll find non-combat oriented RP possibilities.
Most muds are games, based on tabletop RPGs. This means they have a means of advancement (exp/levels), and a means to obtain this advancement (RP/killing of monsters). There's nothing uncommon in playing a tabletop RPG, and having precise knowledge of your characters' stats. In fact, in D&D (and AD&D, Call of Cthulhu - which are the games I've played myself), stats are said out loud often during a session.
Even in a live RP situation, stats are obvious to the player.
About realism: If, in a battle oriented game (be it with RP in focus or not) you can't see if your opponent is substantially larger than you, you have no way of
a. acting out RP (since you can't tell by the name if 'A large bull, grazing by the barn' is easy or hard to subdue).
b. brag to your friends about the fantastic deed (emote just killed a huge slabbergast.)
c. making strategic decisions.
Many 'strong RP' muds outthere go about it another way, by hiding the numbers from the players. Instead they give the user some feedback in text form ("You ARE mad!" comes to mind).
This works in the beginning, but at a point, people will learn just how much damage they're doing (ie. barely hit = 4-7 dam, extremely hard hit = 20-24). And then it's back to the drawing board...
The thing is, that since MUD is a battleoriented environment, you can't take away all the battlerelated information. Some has to stay. And obscuring the numbers only works for a while.
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