[Malifax]

If you enjoy roleplay, complex, balanced mechanics and a large world with a detailed history, Inferno is for you. Weekly GM-run events. Auctions. Gladitorial games. Costume balls. Large-scale story arcs and live epic quests. Want to own your own house or place of business? How about a wedding? It's all in-character and it's all free. There are no hidden costs or perks to pay for. Just high-quality role-play all the time.

[KaVir]

Any relation to the late pay-to-play mud of the same name?

[Malifax]

Yeah. It's the same game with new history (pushed forward 100 years to reflect the war and its effects). We shut down for a year anda half or so because I burned out. Now we're back up up and 100% free.

Donathin suggested that I should try to affiliate Inferno with the RPI sector of the community. The game IS role-play intensive. But we don't disallow PvP as it'sa natural part of RP. No permadeath either, and levels are unlimited. After 10 years, we had a couple characters pushing level 500.

Anyway...

[Jazuela]

I played Inferno for a few years, and it was a lot of fun. But, it isn't even remotely an RPI (according to the "usual definition" accepted and acknowledged here in this forum).

It is now free, so that's awesome and I really urge anyone who wants a refreshing change from the usual hack-n-slash, or something less hard-core than an RPI, to give it a try.

It isn't permadeath. It has levels, and experience, and builds (similar to some extent to training points). The emote system is extremely limited. Last time I played they had -just- added the ability to talk -to- someone specific, instead of just "saying" to no one in particular. They have an ENORMOUS "verb list" which, to most folks, are socials, which most players use instead of emotes, so after the 200th "wave at Sue" it gets a bit stale. They also default with the numbers showing in combat - the dice rolls. Those can be briefed though, so you can hunt without seeing all those numbers. There are no sdescs - people read your name on their monitor, just as in most non-RPIs. However unlike most non-RPIs, it is assumed you haven't actually learned someone's name, unless you've heard it mentioned either in introduction or in passing. They also have a global chat channel, but that is also expected to be roleplayed as IC.

One nice thing that I loved about it was the OOC area of the game, which is where all account-holders "show up" before stepping through an arch, and into the game itself. There, you can yap about stuff with each other, meet a staff member for help, have OOC meetings, etc. etc. etc. All of that occurs while you are your "account name" and *not* as your character.

So - according to the very strict criteria of an RPI, it isn't. At all. It misses the mark on every criteria except one: roleplay is required and expected.

I think Inferno might appeal most to people who normally play RPIs, but are looking for a "distraction" from the intensity that an RPI demands. It would also appeal greatly to people who are accustomed to most of the current popular pay-to-play text games, especially now since Inferno is free.

[Malifax]

[DonathinFrye]

What makes an RPI an RPI? Who knows, we could argue on forever about it. I did suggest, though, that he consider looking into joining Wade's network if Wade'd go for it(since he has a more forgiving definition than some of what can constitute as an RPI).

If not, it's understandable, and either way - good luck to Inferno. It's looking nice.

[KaVir]

Inferno, Gemstone, Avalon, etc - they are all classified as MUDs, just like Diku, MUSH, GodWars, Ilyrias, EverQuest, etc, etc, etc.

[Jazuela]

[Malifax]

[KaVir]

Yet many (most?) of todays commercial MUDs started off as hobbyest MUDs - not many people can afford to dedicate themselves full-time to a mud for a few years, with no other income, until such time that that their MUD starts paying for itself.

And if you're applying that classification to MUDs which have later turned commercial, that would mean that MUD (the game from which the entire genre draws its name) wouldn't be classified as a MUD :P

My approach is:

emote @andy looks across the dune to you, waving to you as she approaches

Which would show me:

Your character looks across the dune to Andy, waving to him as she approaches.

Without specifying a target, it'd work the same as your 'act'.

I made the same decision.  Without that, people could make it look like someone else had performed the emote.  You could colour the emoter's name differently, or place it in brackets after the emote, or do something similar, but IMO that makes the emote look ugly.

Like many things, I guess it really comes down to personal preference - where do you draw the line between added flexibility and potential abuse?  Personally I don't even let players write their own descriptions, but I know most people wouldn't take it that far...

[Malifax]

We let people write them but we clean them up before they're applied. You choose descriptors for eye/hair/skin color, hair length, etc, at character creation, and then when you make echelon two in your guild (because we aren't going to spend that ammt of time on someone who will quit tomorrow), you can get a four-line custom desc.

[WarHound]

Interesting chargen, but the interface seemed a little confusing to me.

Hoping to play more tonight, but looks good so far. Inferno always seemed solid to me, but I never bothered before, since it was pay to play.

[DonathinFrye]

There was a time in Clandestine's ancient history, where it had a lot more of a roleplaying feel. During this time, they set up a system of various ways to edit how you say things, how you look in a room, and even afforded characters the ability to use linebreaks to further the "narrative abilities" of roleplay.

As a young player, I pretty much abused that system to the point of no return - using emotes and linebreaks to make it look like I had dispelled spells that I hadn't, heal when I hadn't, left the room when I hadn't, died when I hadn't, and always to abuse the triggers of other players in order to force them into a trap and die(this was before the typical wise PKer would use unabusable trigger scripts).

After I did this for about six months, cumulating in me abusing a dormant "pursue" script on one of the coders to make him reincarnate, they decided to put in some changes. Now, looking at it from the standpoint of one who is trying to help positively effect the gameplay of the MUD(years later, and a few years calmer for the most part), I would say that many tools used by various MUDs for roleplaying are actually very abusable by those who are crafty enough to do so. I still use the emote system to "fake PKers out" to this day, on nearly every MUD I PK on - I just don't have access to linebreaks on Clandestine anymore, so it requires a little more work.

My guess is that RPIs would certainly not let this kind of behavior fly, since they are so focused on protecting the roleplay of the MUD - and therefor trust that their players will not abuse such things.

[Jazuela]