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It seems that every hack and slash out there now goes by the title of roleplay encouraged. Yes they provide histories, and perhaps general guidelines, but does this really count as encouraging a player to roleplay?
If you give a woman a toolbox and let her loose, expecting a Cistine Chapel out of it, is that encouraging her to build it, or just giving the opprotunity to do so? To encourage her to build it would be to offer some incentive for it. But I find in many RPE muds that there is no incentive, merely a toolbox, then administrators slap the label of RPE on the mud to attract the widest possible playerbase.
Note that I admire the skill and tenacity of IRE, but Im going to use their games for this example.
Their system does not reward roleplay, but is designed to encourage hack and slash styled powergaming, by making the only tangibles in the game purely dependant on mechanics oriented gameplay. A scholarly mage who spends their life studying the intricasies of their magicks wont learn anything, due to the hardcoded nature of the game. However a hack and slash character who does nothing but pwn mobs for leet lewt and expie will bloom into a far more adept magick user than the scholar. In this specific case, roleplay is not encouraged, but rather discouraged. There are no tangible incentives to roleplayers, but there are tangible incentives for powergamers who play for everquestlike gameplay. I can understand the appeal of the style, and how well that style sells, but I really find objections to its advertisement as a roleplay encouraged MUD.
IRE is not alone in this phenomenon, merely perhaps the best known example. What has this phenomenon done to the state of roleplay in MUD's and specifically, how can it be fixed? (assuming that the proprietors of claimed RPE's want to fix it)
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