[Verbannon]

Point taken. Which is to say I have read your comment and you have managed to convince me to side with your opinion and I believe you. So I am making this post here to tell you that you have convinced me rather then not responding in any way at all which would be rude and inconsiderate.

[Ghostcat]

This sounds extremely familiar. :-P

[Ide]

I don't think 'non-RPI' muds (for example, Threshold or New Worlds) ever really advertise as RPIs. What they do claim is that their RP is as 'good' as muds that call themselves RPIs (Armageddon, etcetera), and perhaps respond to LFMs that say 'I want an RPI'. It's like if I said 'I want vanilla ice cream' and someone says, 'well, I have vanilla with oreos, how about that'.

[dark acacia]

Everywhere I go, there's this sense of pride and superiority, as if the game I'm in is the only game out there that does things right (or exists), and each time it's just the same game as the previous dozen. I buy SnowTroll's comment because there are plenty of games MU* which are basically trying to claim that they invented role play.

I can tell you right now that Ateraan, Threshold, OtherSpace, and perhaps a bajillion other games aren't so special from any other game.

[Jazuela]

Well that's because none of those games are muds. In fact, the term mud no longer exists, it was created by some guys from Denmark who are all in their 60's now. All these games are just text games, obsolete and pointless. You should go play Ultima Online instead, that's a REAL game. Muds aren't even really games. Just call them - chat rooms with atmosphere.

Since we're diluting the meaning of terms because we don't want to be left out of the in-crowd, or because we think the RPI crowd thinks they're so special but they're really not -

I mean honestly - it's the people who have something against the RPIs that are attracting the most attention, by demanding that the RPI crowd stop calling themselves RPIs, or allowing everyone else to call themselves RPIs too.

An RPI, as stated in a MYRIAD of other threads, is nothing more or less than a text game that includes certain criteria - among which are permanent death, no global ooc channel, RP required, and around a dozen other very specific criteria. There are only 5 of these games, mostly because the vast majority of gamers have no interest in playing them. If they did, there'd probably be a lot more of them. They are ONLY of interest to a very small number of people; out of the tens of thousands of mudders on the planet earth, perhaps only a thousand of them are attracted to RPIs.

It's not because they're elite, or special, or better than anyone else. It's for the same reason there are only a very few games about outer space, or star trek - because most people just don't really care about gaming about outer space or star trek. There's nothing innately superior about either, compared to any other type of game.

So all y'all quit with the ridiculous bashing of people who try to keep the RPI label limited to the traditional meaning of RPIs. All you're doing is diluting YOUR game's place in the mudding world, and muddying up the players who are looking for RPIs - and looking for anything BUT RPIs - by insisting that your game, which isn't an RPI, is. If you keep doing that, then we might as well just all proclaim everyone's mud to be an outer space mud because technically, you access it through the internet, which is just space, which is outside your house, therefore it's outer space.

[dark acacia]

What's wrong with classifying a MU* based on whether it mandates RP on the grid, and then further narrowing it down based on what kind of setting, genre, level of PK, whether it is permadeath, and so forth? While we're at it, let's further classify games based on whether you "get 2.key" or "get key 2".

Nothing makes your five or so games particularly worthy of being regarded as more "intense" than any other enforced game.

I don't know what games you are talking about, but I think I can guess one: Black Sands, right? It has permadeath, no global OOC channel (or area), and RP on the grid at all times.

[Fifi]

No one has ever said that some muds are better or worse. Or that RP on one mud is less good than on another. (I mean people say things like that all the time, but those are subjective assessments. Objectively, there's no better or worse when deciding between RPI RPE or H-n-S.) Someone came up with an ancronym that was not in wide use (at the time) to abbreviate in a way that was reasonable a big long list of criteria. RPI. No one says other muds are less intense.

People on both sides of this argument should practice polite discourse. Maybe in a mirror until we can get it right. We've all said the same things over and over. Let's move it along. It's just silly that this argument comes up over and over. I've never been at a urinal, but I imagine the only people who are measuring there are the ones who place way too much importance on the size of their equipment. I think we should all just pee and zip up now.

Apparently on some games you take turns emoting? Does this happen on muds or is it sort of a mush phenomenon?

[SnowTroll]

Primarily mushes, though I've played a couple of muds where, if not outright required, turn taking is strongly encouraged, i.e., "Hey, you skipped me! It was my turn to post next!" It's not that incompatible of a concept with muds as people seem to think it is. People already take turns in roleplaying muds when you say or emote something, then wait for the other guy to respond before you say something else. In crowded rooms in a mud, it's just polite to let some other people do things between your actions rather than trample all over the scene, and in a couple of muds I tried in the past (that may or may not be "RPIs," but the primary gameplay revolved around speaking and acting in front of other players rather than traditional advancement mechanics), I've seen players deliberately organize a room into "round-robin" pose order once people started arriving. I've seen looser muds where turn taking is preferred, but with the understanding that a room can often include several ongoing small groups and conversations, and people in those small groups can have their own turn order with each other, independent of what's going on in the larger room as a whole.

I guess the bigger question/distinction would be whether there are (m)any muds where turn order is outright required by rules, which I imagine would be a rare thing. Every mud is going to inherently have a bias toward some type of turn taking, but it's normally too much of a pain in the butt to keep track of who's turn it is to roleplay and ask players to sit on their hands if they have something to contribute.

[dark acacia]

I've seen MU* with table-rooms for a private conversation, and an inn with a bar room, a cafe room, and a lounge. One MU* had a town square with nine rooms, and there was a system of fountains with the major fountain in the center room and a small fountain in each of the other eight (so you could get free water in each room), and all nine rooms also had benches. Since this game featured eight movement directions (plus up and down), you could peer into other rooms to see who was where.

In these games people took the initiative on their own to move sidebar conversations into one of these alternatives to avoid the issue of people speaking over each other in the same room. It's not so much of a problem in the field when groups tend to be small and intimate.

[Ghostcat]

UL doesn't have any turn taking rule, but people tend to take their conversations elsewhere when places get crowded.
When that's not possible (Perhaps for an event or such), people are pretty good about not overwhelming a scene. Mostly. People that are attention hogs tend to get ostracized.

There are a lot of bars, inns, tea rooms, etc. There are even more outdoor areas that are nice to hang around. Parks with benches, forest glades, ruined temples, etc. Like the poster above me mentioned, some of the larger areas are split up to allow people to keep separate and still peer around.

[Squeegy]

Pretty much; it's a popular thing in the MUD I run for people to split off into small groups and go somewhere more secluded when things get too crowded in the main speaking areas. Some people prefer to avoid groups entirely. Some of the areas are designed with that in mind, and include isolated spots to hang out, some intentionally hidden.

[Hadoryu]

"I may not have half a dozen games to rub together for this all but obsolete label, but gosh darn it, I will derail actual newbie questions from actual people with aggressive elitist rhetoric every damn time!"

Seriously though, nobody cares about "RPI" except the people labeling themselves "RPI". To the rest of the world, "RPI" means RPI, which is kind of more 'traditional', being the basic definition of the words.

The "MUD community" just keeps trying to shoot its leg off in these ugly attempts at division and one-up-manship. The vast majority of the games do not have the playerbase to basically sustain themselves and we keep getting this Golden Age BS on the airwaves.

[dark acacia]

I'm still waiting for Jazuela to name the five games that are so far above role play-enforced that they get their very own classification (and a crappy one for just five games, to boot).

This is what I'm guessing will be in her list of games:
FiranMUX (oy vey)
Black Sands
OtherSpace

[Newworlds]

Not to be argumentative (and I usually am argumentative), but didn't we hash this out to the nth degree several years ago? I'm suprised there's even a discussion on it. I'm even more suprised anyone cares.