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Old 04-24-2008, 03:55 PM   #206
prof1515
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Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.

OK, made sure to send myself an email of the log last time I was on the desktop downstairs so I'd be able to access the list later regardless of where I was. Here are the shared characteristics that were found, by myself over the years 2000-2008 and by others in a group study last month, when examining the original RPI MUDs, the games to which the term was first applied and hence in reference to. This is a very short summary of the list since each has further points and elaboration that I don't have time right now to edit into a longer definition. That will be done soon.

1. Strictly enforced in-character behavior (though this is not limited to RPIs alone as RPEs also by definition possess this).

2. No player-accessible global OOC channels.

3. Descriptive, generalized skill aptitude and attributes which prevent any precision in determinating.

4. Mechanics-based world for things like combat, manufacturing items, or understanding (or not) different languages.

5. Enhanced emote system that extends beyond the basic emote command found even in some stock codes.

6. Use-based advancement instead of "experience" or other point-based systems.

7. No experience points system.

8. No levels.

9. No classes as traditionally employed in MUDs which confine what a character can and can not do and which are used to categorize that character.

10. Permanent death. Not "soft" permadeath or other such concepts.

11. Detailed character creation and staff approval before entering game.

12. World design driven code. Each of the RPIs had code which was redesigned to meet their world design, not a world designed to meet the arcade-oriented code.

13. Description-based character identities. No names visible.

14. IC conditional PKing only. Killing for OOC reasons or just for fun limited and has consequences.

15. One character per player at a time: this is one of the things that needed refining since use of accounts has since become fairly standard on nearly all RPIs as a means of enforcing this but account systems were not common to all the founding RPIs when the term came into use (though accounts are now used by both the remaining original RPIs).

16. Objects use descriptions to determine quality or identity (no "Sword of Prof1515").

17. Detailed world design including historical, religious, political etc systems.

18. All rooms have descriptions.

19. No detailed who list. Info from a who command was limited to total online or removed entirely.

From my notes on the discussion and analysis, this seemed to the fairly complete list though a couple were derived from an examination of other discussions in the past and the features analyzed to determine if they did indeed match all the original RPIs. #19 was one such example and while the "no accounts" was disproven through such analysis but the "one character per player" aspect of that argument (#15) was proven to be true.

For my part, the list is the product of examining 900-1000+ MUDs including every Role-Play Enforced and even role-play "encouraged" MUD I could find via TMS and TMC over the course of this decade. I've also looked at various discussions by RPI and non-RPI administrators and players over that period as well for insight into feature characteristics. Finally, I compared the original games that the term RPI was applied to and checked each game against the others to see what characteristics were present in each. I also checked features brought up in discussions against those games as well.

Note that numbering of this list does not represent any value assessment of importance.

Take care,

Jason
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