Re: RPEI, The New RP Standard
No, it's not because the differences between those three MUDs and the rest of the MUD community at the time were far greater than the differences between EVERY OTHER Role-Play Enforced MUD and the standard H&S.
If one didn't know the policy of the any of them, just looking at the vast majority of role-play enforced MUDs would have been insufficient to differentiate them from most H&S MUDs. But looking at the three RPIs, one would have noticed great differences that only a couple other MUDs could come anywhere near to resembling.
That thread is attempting to list the characteristics that those three MUDs shared which would therefore have constituted the criteria for other MUDs to be grouped with them.
There's a lot more to the definition of RPI than the absence of levels, but that is one of the characteristics to which the term was applied. Ten years ago, if you went looking for a RPI MUD, you were looking for a game without levels. The term was only applied to games without levels, experience points, etc. Looking for an RPI would have yielded those meagre results. Five years ago, the term is applied to games with levels, experience points, and even games without a policy that requires role-play!
Since then, the RPI family has not been limited to just those three. Another codebase was developed which resembled the original RPIs and off-shoots of one of the three resulted in more than tripling the number of RPIs open and in development. And through it all, they have continued to maintain a set of characteristics that first applied and apply still. That's as good of proof of a particular sub-set as you're likely to find in any situation.
Jason
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