[Bogre]

Alright, here's my definitive list so far.

Armageddon: The RPI with the largest playerbase. Set in a desert themed world reminiscent of Dark Sun and Dune. Player death can be very high out in the wilds, and the learning curve can be steep. However, it's a huge world, with a huge history and a lot of secrets, and the intrigue and scope of the mud makes it amazing. I've been playing it the longest and most consistently.



Shadows of Isildur: A LoTR-themed mud, probably the second most populated RPI until it went on hiatus. A favorite bit of this RPI was feeling immersed in a larger-scale environment- standing on the walls of Osgiliath or fighting through the streets of foreign fortresses. Currently languishing in beta.

ParallelRPI: The spiritual continuation of the sci-fi-horror episodic mud Atonement. Parallel takes place on a blasted and post-apocalyptic moon settlement. ARPI generated some of the most intense and harrowing scenes that I have seen and I loved it. PRPI is still trying to find its place, but it's a fun mud nonetheless. Pretty survivable until **** hits the fan IG, and runs an SOIesque codebase.



Harshlands: The original RPI- you'll note that HL, SoI, PRPI and Black Sands all have a similar feel codewise, because I believe they are all based on Traithe's RPI engine. Harshlands is much slower and less on the PC death than any other RPI I've played, seemingly tending towards more social-class RP than the others. A very detailed world/history, tons of unique religions, and lots of interesting concepts (if only there were people to fill them).

Black Sands: A small-scale RPI set in a besieged city. It feels very similar to Armageddon as far as class/guilds go, and is at a very early stage. I've enjoyed the characters I've played there, but it's very situational to find interactions/goals in game.

Evolution of Esos: A very neat, if niche RPI, codebase more similar to Armageddon. The imms will jump in and animate lots of stuff, but it's a very small population, and afaik all the PCs are elves. It didn't have that much to actually do in game, but is very admin-supported.


Disclaimer: I have played all the above, but I mostly 'play' Arm, SoI, and Atonement/PRPI.

Others that are less typical, more OOC channels, more XP oriented gameplay:

Sindome MOO: Cyberpunk MOO. Pretty fun. I'm not that familiar with MOOs, though.

Haven: MOOish? Interesting concept- Lovecraftian Horror meets Vampire the Masquerade meets Twin Peaks...but there's a lot of sexually-centric content (it can seem like a lot of the characters are vehicles for mudsex) and I never really liked the grind/combat system.

Accursed Lands: Big, interesting, lots to do. Really empty, and suuuuuuper grindy. Not very good documentation/instructions on how to do stuff. But you can totally sit and do stuff all day.

Echoes of Albion: I'm not sure this exists anymore.

Dark Isles/The Inquisition/Burning Post: I can never keep these straight, having dabbled in most. They're fun, but I could never really be happy with the emote-for-xp and/or use emote-code-words-in-coded combat kind of stuff. I prefer typing 'kill soldier' and letting the code take it from there, mixed in with free form emotes and focusing on the group dynamics.




I'd also check out FutureMud, a codebase in development for RPIs.