[prof1515]

The "points" were not outlined by my group, if by "group" you are referring to the RPMUD Operating Committee (although many of the people present in the round table discussion to discern the characteristics to which the original application of the term applied do sit on the Committee).

As I said, there's a distinct lack of archiving for the formative years of the term. My own exposure to the term use was in 2000. Others can attest to it as far back as 1997. While some never gave much thought as to what it means, they could at least attest to what were RPIs and what weren't. I didn't take a serious interest in the origin, use and misuse of the term until preparing a presentation on MU*s for a role-playing and gaming group I formed back in college. Based on those games which had consensus as RPI, I and some others were able to discern shared characteristics possessed by all of those games for which there was consensus in calling RPI.

Agreed, there are varying disputes over the term. That's why in most cases I prefer the term MU* although not everyone uses that term (and in some instances it's therefore better to say MUD and avoid confusion).

The 19 characteristics were all in place at the time that the term RPI was used to describe the group of games to which there is consensus that they are RPI. The games have changed, but those 19 characteristics have remained. All 19 characteristics were present when the term was in use as far back as 1996 (for which earlier evidence of its use is at present non-existent). There are many other characteristics that were brought up in the analysis which did not apply to all of the first RPIs. One such example was player accounts. While player accounts are almost universal in RPIs today (aside from Southlands they all use them), this is due to the spread in use of the RPI Engine. Harshlands originally did not employ accounts nor did FEM or FE2. As a result, despite its common use today, use of player accounts was not included in the 19 characterstics (and hence why Southlands is considered RPI despite being the odd-man out without them).

Another example of a characteristics which some felt was necessary for RPI was the existence of ranged weapon code. Again, Armageddon had this but Harshlands, FEM and many other RPIs did not. It was only with the spread of the SoI RPI Engine that this feature again spread in use.

There are variations on how the RPIs enforce the policy characteristics. For example, citing their setting, Armageddon has far less emphasis on RP in the deserts outside of the cities. This, however, is also subject to interpretation as I have seen examples of the staff taking deliberate action to enforce RP in those areas when players do disregard the setting. Such variations are therefore more the case of staff diligence and time than they are examples of non-RP policies. Also, as has been pointed out, there are disagreements over what constitutes "role-play" and thus such variations are also subject to the differences in the interpretation of role-play rather than a lack of a RP-enforcement policy.

On Harshlands, there are areas which are not described but that's because those areas of the game were never completed and were locked off for some time. At some point they unlocked the gates allowing access in but as it's on the extreme edge of the game world, very few players ever go there. Likewise, in 2002 they allowed alternate characters for a single event to allow players without characters in that particular region the ability to participate in the major battle that was to occur. However, these characters were only on the game for that event and never again. They also opened a separate and isolated area of the game for "alternate characters" but these characters do not have contact with the rest of the game making this area function as a separate miniature game unto itself. The same could apply to the OOC arena in SoI's Guest Lounge.

For code variations beyond the 19 characteristics, I do think it's possible to further distinguish particular sub-types of RPI MUDs though in many cases it's rather unnecessary. Still, a breakdown of RPI MUDs tends to reveal several sub-types.

1. Armageddon-type RPI: Armageddon is the sole representative.*
2. Harshlands-type RPI: Dark Horizon seems to be the sole remaining representative.
3. SoI-type RPI: A variation on the Harshlands-type, most of the RPIs presently in existence conform with this game.
4. Southlands-type RPI: It appears Southlands is the only remaining operating game of this type.

*Black Sands uses the SoI RPI Engine but is changing their code mechanics to more closely resemble the way in which Armageddon displays some information. As such, it could be argued that it's either Arm-type or SoI-type. However, as they're still in open beta the final result remains to be seen.

There are also several other projects in development which are creating new RPI-useable codebases and thus may also be handling the code mechanics in ways which would warrant labeling as a new type of RPI. My own project would fall under this category as we'll still possess the 19 characteristics but in other ways will be doing things differently than any of the other RPIs.

I think that the because that term has a historical context relating back to its earliest use in the MU* community to describe a small number of games sharing a particular set of characteristics, its use should be confined to referring to that particular group of games. For people who played those games then, it served a distinct purpose by identifying games which were similar and still does today. The "guidelines" are not such; they are characteristics shared by those games to which the term's use originally applied.

For games which do not possess these 19 characteristics, I tend to use the terms Role-Play Oriented (RPO) and Role-Play Enforced (RPE). Another person on the forums here used Role-Play Focused. Role-Play Enforced is fairly easy to define as the only characteristic of such games is the existence of a required RP policy. I coined the term Role-Play Oriented (RPO) as a catch all to describe games which weren't simply RPE but didn't necessarily have all 19 characteristics of RPI. Coming up with a clearer definition than that is difficult because of the number of variations possible. With some of those 19 characteristics, you could get nine games with 17 characteristics but each could be missing two completely different ones! Sure, names and acronyms could be devised for each different variation but without a significant number of games conforming to this variation, it becomes a bit unnecessary. Hence the catch-all term of RPO, a term with the RPMUD Operating Committee also uses.

Please understand that while some people may associate RPI with "higher quality RP", such a conclusion is subjective and such association is therefore not accurate. If anything, it's been my observation that the RPIs have suffered an overall decline in the quality of the RP typically found on them in the decade since I first started playing them. On one hand, one could simply suggest that this is due to the greater number of RPIs open and the increased playerbase size on the older ones but it appears to be more than just that. In any regard, the term RPI is not a reference to the quality of role-play.

Finally, I appreciate your more civil tone of your last post. Thank you very much.

Take care,

Jason