Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

04-15-2004, 12:02 PM

Actually the whole TinyMush, TinyMuck, TinyMage, TinyMuse, TeenyMud came about merely to distinguish a particular implementation and likely as a courtesy to the prior authors. Same reason we have Diku, Circle, ROM, etal. Long before Diku existed and the Tiny people decided to divorce themselves from hack-n-slash play. You can imagine the confusion if the Circle or Merc authors called themselve Diku 2.0 and Diku 3.1. Interestingly enough in LPs just that sort of confusion happened.

MURPE... well AFAIK I think though I'm not sure that Aristotle started that one. hehe. There's a lot of muds calling themselves MURPEs out there today. I've never seen a definition of MURPE either nor have I seen anyone suggest that someone shouldn't be using the term MURPE because they don't meet some criteria. Have you?

I think you just made the argument against how it's (RPI) being treated here. There are no specific criteria defining exactly what PK, HnS or RP muds are, other than what the acronyms themselves suggest. PK for instance is implemented quite differently on WODMush than it is on GodWars.

No I think it's exactly like Curtis's definition of muds. At least Curtis actually published his arbitrary criteria. I've yet to see any published definition of RPI. Yeah I even searched the sites of those muds. So if I missed it, maybe you can point it out.

And you know I've been around long enough and involved in enough different styles of games to know it just isn't a "well-recognized term" in the mud community at large. And it's not simple stubborness and contrariness that I don't use it, because frankly I only see a small handful of people using it. A smaller handful than those using MURPE even.

Now much as I might respect Pavel Curtis, if he'd logged into my mud and said "Hey this ain't a mud, because I can't create any objects and it has a score command", I would have told him to frag off. Same thing goes for RPIers. There are many role-play immersive or intensive games that do have channels and score commands. More to the point it's an extraordinarily poor choice, because I sure as heck ain't going to type out RPI, more than once in a post whether I mean role-play immersive or intensive.

I don't even know the criteria for this RPI, but I do know Mr. Curtis's criteria for muds. So I don't even know whether to reject it or not. What I do know is that whether channels exist or not has very little to do with role-play and immersion and is just as arbitrary as defining muds as those not having a score command. And yes just as obviously it's being used as some sort of proprietary term. And not some friendly distinction for the purposes of discussion. I.E. This thread. Isn't that exactly what's being argued here?

There's a big difference between someone calling their server a new made up name to describe the activity in that game (i.e. MUCK - multi-user chat kingdom) and telling others who happen to use that same acronym to describe something else (for example me using MUCK as multi-user creative killing ... hmm that's a nice one) that they ain't a MUCK and shouldn't use it. Besides as your probably aware, many descendents of MUCK have as little to do with Chat than many MUDs have to do with Dungeons.

Let me try to drive the not so subtle point home. Differentiation is fine. Invent as many acronyms as you want. Call your game a MUD and say it's a multi-user dimension. Great. But don't tell people that someone owns the acronym RPI and it has a well-defined meaning. Or that anyone using RPI differently is trying to intentionally confuse people, because they aren't and it don't have a well-defined meaning. Or more importantly that RPI should PROPERLY be used if your mud meets criteria X, Y, and Z.
Because if you do, your going to have to come up with some precedent for that.

What other term in common use in the mud community has only a specific meaning and not a generalized meaning? No not even Mushes, Mucks, and MOOs have specific criteria in that regard besides simply acknowledging actually formal derivative history or inspiration.

04-15-2004, 12:02 PM	#45
Posts: n/a	Actually the whole TinyMush, TinyMuck, TinyMage, TinyMuse, TeenyMud came about merely to distinguish a particular implementation and likely as a courtesy to the prior authors. Same reason we have Diku, Circle, ROM, etal. Long before Diku existed and the Tiny people decided to divorce themselves from hack-n-slash play. You can imagine the confusion if the Circle or Merc authors called themselve Diku 2.0 and Diku 3.1. Interestingly enough in LPs just that sort of confusion happened. MURPE... well AFAIK I think though I'm not sure that Aristotle started that one. hehe. There's a lot of muds calling themselves MURPEs out there today. I've never seen a definition of MURPE either nor have I seen anyone suggest that someone shouldn't be using the term MURPE because they don't meet some criteria. Have you? I think you just made the argument against how it's (RPI) being treated here. There are no specific criteria defining exactly what PK, HnS or RP muds are, other than what the acronyms themselves suggest. PK for instance is implemented quite differently on WODMush than it is on GodWars. No I think it's exactly like Curtis's definition of muds. At least Curtis actually published his arbitrary criteria. I've yet to see any published definition of RPI. Yeah I even searched the sites of those muds. So if I missed it, maybe you can point it out. And you know I've been around long enough and involved in enough different styles of games to know it just isn't a "well-recognized term" in the mud community at large. And it's not simple stubborness and contrariness that I don't use it, because frankly I only see a small handful of people using it. A smaller handful than those using MURPE even. Now much as I might respect Pavel Curtis, if he'd logged into my mud and said "Hey this ain't a mud, because I can't create any objects and it has a score command", I would have told him to frag off. Same thing goes for RPIers. There are many role-play immersive or intensive games that do have channels and score commands. More to the point it's an extraordinarily poor choice, because I sure as heck ain't going to type out RPI, more than once in a post whether I mean role-play immersive or intensive. I don't even know the criteria for this RPI, but I do know Mr. Curtis's criteria for muds. So I don't even know whether to reject it or not. What I do know is that whether channels exist or not has very little to do with role-play and immersion and is just as arbitrary as defining muds as those not having a score command. And yes just as obviously it's being used as some sort of proprietary term. And not some friendly distinction for the purposes of discussion. I.E. This thread. Isn't that exactly what's being argued here? There's a big difference between someone calling their server a new made up name to describe the activity in that game (i.e. MUCK - multi-user chat kingdom) and telling others who happen to use that same acronym to describe something else (for example me using MUCK as multi-user creative killing ... hmm that's a nice one) that they ain't a MUCK and shouldn't use it. Besides as your probably aware, many descendents of MUCK have as little to do with Chat than many MUDs have to do with Dungeons. Let me try to drive the not so subtle point home. Differentiation is fine. Invent as many acronyms as you want. Call your game a MUD and say it's a multi-user dimension. Great. But don't tell people that someone owns the acronym RPI and it has a well-defined meaning. Or that anyone using RPI differently is trying to intentionally confuse people, because they aren't and it don't have a well-defined meaning. Or more importantly that RPI should PROPERLY be used if your mud meets criteria X, Y, and Z. Because if you do, your going to have to come up with some precedent for that. What other term in common use in the mud community has only a specific meaning and not a generalized meaning? No not even Mushes, Mucks, and MOOs have specific criteria in that regard besides simply acknowledging actually formal derivative history or inspiration.