[DonathinFrye]

For what it's worth, Tiamat and I are working on a project that we think the RPI Community will find quite interesting:

It's an RPI/Rogue-like Hybrid, completely modular, designed for players to create long-term permadeath campaigns of 1-4 players in an immersive world that is different with each incarnation.

It features crafting, permanent death, all of the roleplaying tools that we designed for Atonement RPI, but we're building it from the ground up (a brand new RPI Engine) so that we can allow for both hobbyist and professional licensing of the engine for folks interesting in creating their own RPI.

Combat is turn-based and strategic with a matrix-based combat system (think, a MUCH more complex version of Rock-Paper-Scissors), and we've replaced stats/skills with "Traits". For instance, instead of rolling stats, character generation gives you Trait Points, and you buy Traits (ex: "Brute Strength") that have various affects in and out of combat. You can also purchase negative Traits that give you more Trait Points (ex: "Chronic Illness", "One-Eyed", "Clumsiness", etc).

Therefor combat is exciting and strategic, and building your character requires choosing roleplayable Traits for them, instead of merely gaming whatever hidden systems exist in most RPIs. This also means that there is no grinding skills - at all. The focus of the game is on exploration, combat, and roleplay, all of which are only hampered or bolstered by your personal skill in those areas.

The gameworld itself is basically survival/wilderness/fantasy based with a large number of massive, random and highly varying dungeons with modular lore, stories, goals, enemies, dynamic events, puzzles, and (of course) loot, where you are forced to make difficult moral decisions that will impact the dynamic events to come, and (ultimately) how your campaign's story ends. This is all for the sake of replayability and immersion.

In addition to the campaign setting, we feel the combat system is strong enough to allow for a "for fun/for competition" arena mode separate from the rest of the game.

I certainly wouldn't call this project an RPI. With Atonement, my goal was to create an RPI that wouldn't flounder as many inevitably do. I wanted to create a game with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, where the story was a result of the player characters' actions. It was a unique project, which appealed to me, and it was an amazing three year experience for many people - even if it wasn't for everyone.

And while I wouldn't call this current project an RPI, I think that our ability to design it to feel like an RPI, with all of the tools (and more, since we're designing it from the ground up) of an RPI, will make it a lot of fun for folks in the community who want to get a couple of Hardcore Roleplaying friends together to create their own RPI-like story in a challenging, dynamic world.

And that's all the tease you'll get out of me about it, until we're ready for Open Testing.

Until then, ARM and SOI and EOE are probably the most RPI-like options available. Haven, New Worlds, Carrion Fields, and Threshold RPG are options if you feel like exploring something a little beyond the boundaries of a normal RPI, but still with a focus on meshing coded action and a dedication to roleplay.

Best of luck to all. My ghost is still around here, as always.