[prof1515]

Crafting isn't really promoted as something that's required. It's a feature but I'd like to know which RPIs promoted crafting as required. The closest I've seen is RPIs encouraging players to assume roles as crafters rather than all going for the same kind. This is meant more as a means of creating diversity in the IC community and of recycling capital (NPC merchants don't spend it) through patronage of PC shops.

The difference between killborg and craftborg would be that the first is destructive to setting and an irrational means of role-playing anything but a psychopath. Craftborg, which I will repeat isn't something RPIs promote, is less destructive and usually undertaken to generate money. As a result, it can be made so unprofitable that players are more likely to abandon it. Players don't go around killing things merely as a means of generating income. That makes it harder to regulate. This is why you see MUDs devoted entirely to PK and H&S but not MUDs devoted entirely to crafting. Regardless, neither is the focus of RPIs which leads me to wonder if you've ever played an RPI. If so, which?

As for the code, most of the original MUD code was designed with the goal of hack-and-slash. Kill to gain experience points in order to level and gain more skills/spells so that you can go out and kill more mobs. Mob-killing to advance, experience points, levels. These are role-play. They point to the purpose of the code design and its purpose is fairly clear.

Also, attributing player behavior to the MUD itself is not accurate. The policy of RPIs doesn't support botting and skill spamming (which is why there are some checks built into the code to make it unsuccessful). H&S MUDs are designed with the intention of going around killing things. If similar behavior exists in an RPI, it's due to player actions, not the MUD itself.

You're attributing an intent. I can't say as to the intent of the person who coined the term. I can however recognize to what they were referring when they used the term by examining the targets for similarities (as it was more than one game with more than one code development). Were they attempting to classify themselves? Yes, they were. Were they classifying themselves as "higher"? That's where there is no evidence to that point. In later years, it may have been so but only after the term had been bastardized by use to describe MUDs ranging across the spectrum in features.

I'm starting to wonder if you bother to read what I've said or simply resorting to straw man arguments to bolster your position. The term RPI is about code design and policy centered around the needs for role-play without consideration for traditional MUD goals of killing, leveling, training, and repeating the process.

There's no "joining a group". There is no "club" mentality within RPIs. Hell, some of them can't stand one another.

Again, fabricating an argument. RPIs don't claim an monopoly on quality role-play and if they do, certainly no more than just about any other MUD does.

Yes, that's why all RPIs are RPEs, but that doesn't mean the reverse is true. RPIs are Role-Play Enforced MUDs sharing a common set of design and policy characteristics. That's it. Everything else is pretty much a stick up other people's ass because a small group of games share similar traits and a term (the origin of which is not clearly attributed) was adopted to describe those games. OTHERS PERCEIVED this term as something describing the quality of RP, which may have been of a higher quality on the three RPIs but again that's not what the term referred to, and hence they began using it despite not being similar to the games to which the term originally applied. That's the story in a nutshell.

Also, you mean RPE as in Role-Play Enforced and not Role-Play Encouraged, right? To be RPE(nforced), you would need to fulfill the requirement of having a policy of enforced role-play. It's not about the role-play itself. It's about the policy.

Jason