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Old 03-09-2010, 05:21 PM   #161
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Actually, GodWars is based on Merc, which in turn is a Diku derivative.

God Wars II is created from the ground up, but it's not a public codebase - the engine is only used by one game.
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Old 03-09-2010, 08:25 PM   #162
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

I'm not trying to get involved in most of this discussion (it's a dead horse, IMHO), but from what I remember the term RPI for "Role-Play Intensive" MUD did indeed originate at the time that these three games were generally considered to be "the" role-playing MUDs out there. That's not to say that there weren't others as dominated by RP rather than H/S, questing, etc., but these three were the key ones of the era.

Armageddon was the eldest, and Harshlands was created largely in its image with the intent to improve upon what Arm had done and continue the tradition of being a MUD focused on role-play first, everything else second. A year or two into HL, the term RPI began to be used by those of us who were involved in it at that point to refer to the standards of Arm and HL. When I left Harshlands to found Forever's End, I carried those same standards over to it. That trio of games operated for many years from there on without any other "RPI" games really coming forth (although there were a few who began development never to surface) using their other codebases (Rassilon did not want the HL code to get spread around, he gave it to me for FEM due to my long-time involvement with HL).

After Traithe was involved with HL for awhile, he had so heavily modified the code that he took it with him to create Shadows of Isildur. So much work was done on it there, that he eventually released it... We all know the rest.

I don't really follow the forums, so I can't speak about what was on TMS at the time. My site was RPIMUD.com actually, and later I registered RPIMUD.net as well. I did "define" the terms RPI/RPO as to how they would be categorized on THAT site. I can dig that up and post it if anyone actually cares.

It's long been debated by the "RPI Puritans" as I call them, as to what defines a RPI and what doesn't. Personally I don't see why it matters (again, a dead horse here). It was said above that "the term is usable by ANY MUD that the players feel is Role-Play Intensive" and with this I agree.

"RPI" is a subjective term. It always will be.

I see nothing wrong those involved with the "RPI Community" trying to set standards for the term, but its kind of like trying to categorize "a good MUD" based on what features it does or doesn't have. The RPIMUD Network (RPIMUD.com) was intended to bring together groups of people with SIMILAR gaming tastes, not SPECIFIC ones, to help form a "friendly" community and pool of resources for an already small niche.
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Old 03-09-2010, 08:26 PM   #163
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Similarly, the acronym MUD came from two people (Bartle and Trubshaw) and was the name of a particular game, not just a type of game. You're now using the title of that specific game to describe a whole category of games, most of which bear very little resemblance to the original MUDs. And yet, I've never heard Dr. Bartle complaining.

How is RPI any different, except that it's a generic term rather than a specific game name (ie it's not as if someone is running around calling a bunch of games 'Harshlands' as a generic term)?


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Old 03-10-2010, 02:25 PM   #164
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

So, after posting this, I thought about it some more, and wanted to add those thoughts to the mix.

Armageddon has the luxury of not caring how debased the term gets because Arm has enough momentum to keep it in the top 10 most of the time. Newer and/or smaller RPI MUDs don't have that advantage; they are more reliant on the search function being useful. So, just because it isn't a problem for us, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

But defining RPI here in the forums is a useless exercise unless the TMS admins choose to verify that the way a game admin chooses to describe their MU* has some resemblance to reality. And quite frankly, TMS strikes me as a site in stasis; there doesn't seem to be anything new that wasn't here 5 years ago, and in fact it has declined in usefulness in two ways. One, reviews have been disabled, rather than finding a way they could be better implemented. And two, the forums are much less active than they once were - there is less of a sense of community, likely because people were driven away by all the flamewars. Both seem to be indicative of an admin/staff that wants a low-maintenance site. So, I doubt that they're going to enforce the definition of RPI, even if we could agree on what that definition was.
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Old 03-10-2010, 06:01 PM   #165
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Agreed. It would be nice if the RPI genre/engine could be added as an option for admins to plug into their game, so that it could be searched for. I'll poke Lasher about this and see what he thinks. It would do a lot, maybe (hopefully) to kill some of the animosity between different types of RP-focused games. I really see it as unnecessary and not helpful to anyone to constantly fight over this subject.
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Old 03-10-2010, 10:17 PM   #166
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

I doubt it would. Instead of merely misusing the term in the description of their game, they'd just list it inaccurately with the option. Look at the number of games that call their code "custom" and when you play them you find out it's really just a slightly-modified Diku, Circle, Smaug, etc. Hence the problem would still exist only then they're be yet another route for deceit. The only real way it could work would be if the listings were checked for accuracy and violators were punished (ie, removed and, for multiple violations, banned).

Right now by running a keyword search (via Description) on the term "RPI" you turn up twenty-one games. Three of these are open RPIs (the other three RPIs are in the database but don't use the term in their description). Nine of these games turn up as a result of the term being part of another word (such as RPing) or mentioned without attempting to describe themselves as RPI. Four others are RPIs which are no longer open. The remaining five are games inaccurately calling themselves RPI.

The three RPIs which don't include that term in their description and the five non-RPIs which do illustrate the problem of games either not taking advantage of the term (funny enough Arm and HL, the two for which the term was coined, don't use it in their description) or of games inaccurately using it.
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Old 03-11-2010, 08:11 PM   #167
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

... if people here, who are already so involved in MUD communities, can't decide on what RPI means, can we really expect players to think of that term when searching?

Honestly, I'd never heard the phrase RPI until arriving at this forum. I thought about it for a moment, and gussed it must mean "Role Play Intensive" or maybe "Role Play Interactions" - either way, a MUD that's centered around roleplay.

So if I could guess it from the get-go, it seems like a good term. But there was no way I could have known it referred to a specific feature set. From further posts that I later read, that became obvious. But by the time I knew that, I had a fair idea who the different posters here were, what games they run, etc. - so why would I be doing a search for "RPI"? I'd go straight to their game.

New acronyms are useful, but only if they make sense to the people using them. If we're talking code or game design, I now have another term to use when discussing feature sets (but I've also seen the phrase "ARM feature set" which seems more appropriate...) - if I'm a player, I probably already either know the game I want, or wouldn't be searching for the RPI term.

So it seems a pretty moot point, really...

Unless I'm mistaken about how common the term RPI is.
It'd be interesting to see some statistics on what is searched for by players.
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Old 03-11-2010, 09:15 PM   #168
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Being involved in the MUD community doesn't necessarily give one knowledge of terminology or the history of a term. Plus, disagreement over classifications are common in plenty of fields. Just ask an astronomer if Pluto is a planet or not. ;-)

For people within the RPI community, it served as a way to find similar games. I myself found Armageddon and Southlands many, many years ago by searching for the term after being introduced to it while playing Harshlands. Since then, I've been able to find several other RPIs over the years by using the term but only after sorting through twice as many games that weren't RPI but were using the term.

The acronym RPI has been around for about 16-18 years. The exact date of its first use is hard to determine since Armageddon's and Harshlands' old forums from that period are no longer around (at least not relevant postings in regard to the term).

Role-Playing Intensive or RPI is really more of a combination of code and policy philosophies. Use-based skill advancement is an example of a code characteristic while IC/OOC separation is an example of a policy philosophy of RPIs.

It's actually highly inaccurate to describe most RPIs since they don't all share the exact features of Armageddon. Armageddon, for example, does not show any generalized skill aptitude while RPIs using the HL/SoI code lineage (with the exception of Black Sands which modified the RPI Engine to resemble Arm's) show a very generalized (novice, familiar, adroit/adept, master) aptitude. "Armageddon Feature Set" or "Armageddon Type RPI" is good to futher delineate the type of RPI a game is but as a term to describe them all, it's not as good (some RPI players prefer the HL/SoI code approach while others prefer the Arm).

Not all RPIs are very diligent about advertising. If you check through these forums you'll see that some do attempt to advertise and recruit players while others don't make any effort whatsoever. When the term was coined back in the early to mid 90s, word of mouth was a far more effective means of finding a new game and the term RPI helped convey that information fairly effectively (as I said, it's how I found two of them when I went about searching for others).

It presently applies to 5-6 open games and another 3-4 in development. Additionally, there are approximately 18 (I might be forgetting one but I think that's all of them) other RPIs that are either no longer open or never did open before shutting down permanently.

However, there are at least 6-7 other games using the term (as many as over a dozen) which don't share any set of characteristics that would separate them from the approximately 350 other Role-Playing Enforced (RPE) games out there which don't use the term.

Nowadays you get varying use of the term without any real standardized extended definition. In other words, it's inappropriate use is really dependant upon the user's interests (ie, some say permadeath required, others it's not; some say no global OOC channels are prohibited, others don't). The only real standardized use, that is to say a clearly-defined mutual sense of what they're looking for, continues to be the original definition.

Of course, just to make things more difficult, the meaning of the term never formally defined until recently out other than by comparison to the original RPIs. The definition that was derived a few years ago was made by examining the games to which the term first applied and determining the list of similarities which were not uniformly shared by other RPEs.
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Old 03-12-2010, 02:09 AM   #169
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Silvarilon,

I think many share your confusion and disregard of the term. Far more than some would care to admit. I myself continue to consider any game with Armeggedon-like functionality as an ARM MUD. Harshlands, SOI, and Atonement included, mainly because the proponants of RPI can't even agree themselves what it means and roleplay intensive no matter how you acronym, is roleplay intensive. *shrug*

Some wonder why the animosity/negativity toward those of us who disregard the term. The answer is in the previous post but defined in this snippet:
Are you seriously claiming that there are 350 RPE's out there that someone has to weed through to find the game they want that is Roleplay Enforced? I'd be suprised if you could name a 10th of that.

Someone said recently that it would be nice of the community could come together and not have such animosity between RPE/RPI games. Sorry to say, it won't happen when this kind of continual bs on stats, information, and unfounded elitism rears its RPI head.
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Old 03-12-2010, 02:55 AM   #170
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

I think that everyone is way too sensitive on this issue. Again, I gently put forth the notion that RPI is literally a codebase, an engine, which most RPIs use; the RPIs that do not use this codebase are older than the codebase itself and have inspired the codebase (ARM). I really don't see why it should be anymore confusing than that. You can argue about semantics, but it's difficult to argue about a the definition of a codebase. Nobody argues about the definition of Smaug or Circle on these forums.

DIKU ---> Merc, Circle, Rom, Godwars, Smaug, RPI, etc, etc.
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Old 03-12-2010, 02:56 AM   #171
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Just listing those games starting with the letter A produces more than a tenth of that figure....

At some point you really should stop embarassing yourself by making comments so easy to refute just by spending a few seconds doing a search of "Roleplay: Mandatory" games on this site.

The animosity is completely owing to ignorance like that which you continually demonstrate. By the way, I'm still waiting to hear your evidence to support your claims regarding the term RPI. You asked for evidence to the historical definition and it was provided but you still have yet to do the same to support your view. So, who's the one with the continual BS?
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Old 03-12-2010, 03:00 AM   #172
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

The term is older than the RPI Engine therefore it's not accurate to claim it relates to a specific codebase. Someone could scratch-build or modify any other codebase (like TSOY plans to do with NakedMud) and yield the same results.
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Old 03-12-2010, 03:08 AM   #173
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Emulating an existing codebase from scratch is a lot easier of a parallel to draw than attempting to claim to be equivalent to a specific codebase without supporting the same features. Again, I don't overly care about what games do, or do not claim to be an RPI.

I think that if your game's features are very different from the codebase's features then you are potentially confusing anyone familiar with the codebase itself. I understand the reasons why this might be beneficial to you for marketing reasons, but I don't generally think it's a good idea. If I created a game called Ascension: Godwars, and it was an LPMud not resembling the Godwars codebase at all, it would likely confuse people familiar with the assumed features and style of a Godwars game.

Branding for other people's games is not really my concern, though. I just worry about mine.
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Old 03-12-2010, 03:19 AM   #174
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

The problem is that the RPIs don't resemble the codebase from which they mutually were derived. Armageddon is radically different from Diku. Harshlands is radically different from Diku. SoI is radically different from Diku.

Last year someone made accusations against Maiden Desmodus to the effect that it was not giving credit to the Diku, HL, and SoI teams for its code. MD didn't have to because it was built from NakedMud and simply made to emulate the feel of the RPI Engine. They proved that it's entirely possible to take one codebase and make it similar to another, or in the case of MD make it similar to code that no longer represents its original codebase either.
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Old 03-12-2010, 03:35 AM   #175
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

I remember the Maiden Desmodus accusation made by Bristlecone (I believe?); it was unfortunate and quickly withdrawn on the SOI forum. My point isn't that you must label your game an RPI if it uses RPI-engine-like features, but that it is less confusing of a branding venture if your NakedMUD "RPI" resembles the features of the engine. Of course, ARM doesn't use the RPI Engine and out-dates the engine. Never-the-less, ARM originated the term which later became a codebase, and most "RPIs" now are created with some version of this open-source engine.

To re-use the Godwars comparison, to note is that Godwars does not particularly resemble DIKU either. Godwars2 does not resemble Godwars, but KaVir's re-imagined PK MUD was inspired by his original work on the Godwars codebase and uses the familiar branding. If Mihaly created an MMORPG Pay-for-Perks Godwars3 with furry creatures and a focus on PVE as opposed to PVP, I'm sure that any zealous Godwars fans who tried it out would be sorely confused by the branding. Still, that is a choice that he could very well make, and it would be his game.

Ultimately though, a list of features that dictate whether or not an RPI is a "true RPI" is a lot easier to nit-pick against than to say that RPI refers (in most cases) to games designed with the RPI Engine, as well as other games that have emulated or inspired the design of this engine. The same features are key in both arguments, but as I've said before, it's really impossible to argue with the fact that RPI is an actual codebase.
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Old 03-12-2010, 04:49 AM   #176
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

Maiden Desmodus was certainly not made to emulate the feel of the RPI engine. There are some similarities of course given Wade's RPI background but the game itself was never intended to be an RPI and we've never described it or marketed it as such.
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Old 03-12-2010, 04:52 AM   #177
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

This is definitely true. Maiden Desmodus is wonderful as a unique experience of its own.
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Old 03-12-2010, 07:13 AM   #178
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

I didn't say that you described or marketed MD as RPI. However, my apologies on my wording. I should have said that when you created the code for MD using NakedMud you did so in a manner which gave the user a similar feeling to the RPI Engine even if that was not the intent of the design.

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Old 03-12-2010, 07:39 AM   #179
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

But most RPIs to open have not used the RPI Engine. In fact, there has been no RPI Engine for half the very existance of RPIs. To define a term off something which didn't come into existance until nearly a decade later and even then was slightly different from anything before it is a very confusing means of identification.

And what if a game chose not to use the features found in the RPI Engine? Harshlands doesn't use the left/right hand feature and until 2004 didn't use an accounts system. Southlands still doesn't use an account system or the stars and bars health and movement feature. At what point do you say that a game which uses or doesn't use the RPI Engine is indeed a RPI? The answer is when you look at the features possessed by all RPIs regardless of their codebase.

This is a massively flawed definition. Arm did not inspire the RPI Engine, it inspired Harshlands. The RPI Engine was derived from Harshlands and borrowed some features from Arm as well as other games while retaining the same core features as Arm, Harshlands and FEM. Southlands neither emulated nor inspired the RPI Engine.

But you're just talking code and there's more to RPI than code. Role-play is not code. RPIs are focused on role-play and yet what if someone used the RPI Engine to make a H&S?

It's a codebase but that doesn't mean anything relevant to defining RPI because it doesn't mean that any game using it is RPI. As I've already pointed out, for half the existance of the term RPI, there was no RPI Engine. Arm doesn't use it. Harshlands didn't use it until 2004. Southlands doesn't use it. FEM didn't use it. FE2 didn't use it. Chronicles of Ritnarium didn't use it. Dark Horizon doesn't/didn't use it.

What's more, there have been games that were not RPI that did use the codebase. A few years back there was a PvP game that used the RPI Engine (I don't remember the game as I wasn't interested in playing it but it was a witches and wizards like Harry Potter type game). Back when I was on SoI's staff, I remember Zapata musing about using the RPI Engine to make a pure PvP game though I don't know if he ever did. There was also at least one other non-RP game that used the RPI Engine. By your definition, they're all RPI because of the code they used even though there was or would have been no RP found on them.

However, the 19 characteristics really can't be picked apart because they're derived from an analysis of the original RPIs themselves.

How many of those characteristics did Armageddon possess?

All 19.

How many of those characteristics did Harshlands possess?

All 19.

How many of those characteristics did Forever's End possess?

All 19.

What about other games from that period that weren't called nor did they call themselves RPI? Some had quite a few but none had all 19 of those characteristics.

But what about later RPIs that still exist today? Let's see.

How many of those characteristics did Shadows of Isildur possess?

All 19.

How many of those characteristics did Southlands possess?

All 19.

So what about the other 350+ Role-Play Enforced games out there? What about the handful of other games that call themselves RPI today but whose use of the term is disputed? Run them down the list and you'll find that they do not possess all 19.

That gives us evidence from which to derive a clear definition of the term.

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Old 03-12-2010, 08:25 AM   #180
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Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay

There are a few other muds out there that categorise themselves as "GodWars" style muds, and offer very similar gameplay, but claim not to be derived from the GodWars code. So the label doesn't just represent a codebase, it's also used to refer to a subgenre and general style of gameplay.
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