[prof1515]

I was talking about MUDs to a non-MUDder the other day and used the term PK. They asked what I meant. Suddenly, I realized, there's a term that is used to describe MUDs that seems to have little or no confusion whatsoever and yet it's totally inaccurate. Player-Killing is not an accurate description of what goes on. No player is killed. No player has ever been killed by another on a PK MUD, a H&S MUD, or any type of RP MUD. Their character may be killed, but the player isn't. If one tried to argue that it stands for Player-Character Killing, that might work except the abbreviation should therefore be PCK.

And yet this inaccurate term is accepted by the community to define a specific type of game. PK, after all, takes place on many types of MUDs, most of which aren't referred to as PK MUDs. And yet when you say PK MUD, there's a generally-accepted type that is noted. This isn't, as noted by others, the only terminology which has a name not very accurate in its description of what it applies to. How then is this different from RPI?

Is RPI completely accurate? No, it can be misinterpreted. English is a horrid language because words can have different meanings depending upon how you read them. RPI is accurate but can be interpreted in a completely different way by different individuals. Even within the RPI community we've seen that there are various views on what constitutes a core feature. That's why an examination of what the term originally referred to is critical to understanding how the term was intended. Those features shared at the term's origination provide a guideline for defining the core features that the term applied to. Subjective interpretations of RP are just that: subjective. It must be the unchanging features which were without variation that need be discerned. Only in that way can you avoid the "but we do it this way" or "why can't we do it this way?" arguments.

Take care,

Jason