[Milawe]

Originally Posted by prof1515 However, if you prefer, I'll post some points on Delerak's thread. I have noted a couple things which don't completely jive.

Not that you should live your life by my preferences, but I do prefer it.

I feel like this discussion has actually made progress, and that seems to be pretty rare on internet forums. It's a beautiful thing!

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by prof1515 RPI, on the other hand, is more accurate if one looks at the shared features found in the three original games to which the term was applied.

RPI is no more accurate a term than the proposed RPEI. Both are discriptively innacurate and based on preferences derived by style of code. At best, they are propoganda for a certain gaming style.

Originally Posted by prof1515 It wouldn't be fair to classify them alongside games which were nothing more than H&S code with an enforced-RP policy as they were clearly different.

You use that term alot. Hack and Slash code. I defined this before and will again more directly with this comment: Players define whether a game is H&S devoted or RP devoted (be it RPI, RPO, RPEI, etc.) Unless your game is a MUSH without any combat code, a player can hack and slash (aka borg) all night and day and do not have to roleplay at all.

Furthermore, I found crafting to be something promoted by RPIMUDS. What is the difference between killborg and craftborg? They both require a player to do monotanous keystrokes for some skill increase (even on leveless systems).

I do not understand why it is so hard just to admit that the RPIMUD group were attempting to classify themselves as a "higher standard" of roleplay. If you scan the website this becomes clear. I am not saying this is a bad thing. The only thing bad about it is trying to claim otherwise.

There is nothing wrong with attempting to have a better world for roleplay. The problem arrives when you take a few game styles and say that this is the definition of more authentic roleplay based on that style. Similar to saying your Picante sauce is more authentic because it was made in El Paso Texas vs. New York City.

As with Mina, NW would never join a group based on a narrow (codebased) style of definition regardless if NW fell into that category. The same way NW would not claim to have a monopoly on quality roleplay despite the attempt to promote good, quality roleplay. Why? Good, immersive/intense roleplay is created by the players, not the game. The only thing the game needs is promotion of such and enforcement to stay in character. And that, only on an RPE. There are several games not even RPE classified that have good, immersive/intense, roleplay.

[prof1515]

Originally Posted by Newworlds You use that term alot. Hack and Slash code. I defined this before and will again more directly with this comment: Players define whether a game is H&S devoted or RP devoted (be it RPI, RPO, RPEI, etc.) Unless your game is a MUSH without any combat code, a player can hack and slash (aka borg) all night and day and do not have to roleplay at all. Furthermore, I found crafting to be something promoted by RPIMUDS. What is the difference between killborg and craftborg? They both require a player to do monotanous keystrokes for some skill increase (even on leveless systems).

Crafting isn't really promoted as something that's required. It's a feature but I'd like to know which RPIs promoted crafting as required. The closest I've seen is RPIs encouraging players to assume roles as crafters rather than all going for the same kind. This is meant more as a means of creating diversity in the IC community and of recycling capital (NPC merchants don't spend it) through patronage of PC shops.

The difference between killborg and craftborg would be that the first is destructive to setting and an irrational means of role-playing anything but a psychopath. Craftborg, which I will repeat isn't something RPIs promote, is less destructive and usually undertaken to generate money. As a result, it can be made so unprofitable that players are more likely to abandon it. Players don't go around killing things merely as a means of generating income. That makes it harder to regulate. This is why you see MUDs devoted entirely to PK and H&S but not MUDs devoted entirely to crafting. Regardless, neither is the focus of RPIs which leads me to wonder if you've ever played an RPI. If so, which?

As for the code, most of the original MUD code was designed with the goal of hack-and-slash. Kill to gain experience points in order to level and gain more skills/spells so that you can go out and kill more mobs. Mob-killing to advance, experience points, levels. These are role-play. They point to the purpose of the code design and its purpose is fairly clear.

Also, attributing player behavior to the MUD itself is not accurate. The policy of RPIs doesn't support botting and skill spamming (which is why there are some checks built into the code to make it unsuccessful). H&S MUDs are designed with the intention of going around killing things. If similar behavior exists in an RPI, it's due to player actions, not the MUD itself.

I do not understand why it is so hard just to admit that the RPIMUD group were attempting to classify themselves as a "higher standard" of roleplay. If you scan the website this becomes clear. I am not saying this is a bad thing. The only thing bad about it is trying to claim otherwise.

You're attributing an intent. I can't say as to the intent of the person who coined the term. I can however recognize to what they were referring when they used the term by examining the targets for similarities (as it was more than one game with more than one code development). Were they attempting to classify themselves? Yes, they were. Were they classifying themselves as "higher"? That's where there is no evidence to that point. In later years, it may have been so but only after the term had been bastardized by use to describe MUDs ranging across the spectrum in features.

There is nothing wrong with attempting to have a better world for roleplay. The problem arrives when you take a few game styles and say that this is the definition of more authentic roleplay based on that style.

I'm starting to wonder if you bother to read what I've said or simply resorting to straw man arguments to bolster your position. The term RPI is about code design and policy centered around the needs for role-play without consideration for traditional MUD goals of killing, leveling, training, and repeating the process.

As with Mina, NW would never join a group based on a narrow (codebased) style of definition regardless if NW fell into that category.

There's no "joining a group". There is no "club" mentality within RPIs. Hell, some of them can't stand one another.

The same way NW would not claim to have a monopoly on quality roleplay despite the attempt to promote good, quality roleplay.

Again, fabricating an argument. RPIs don't claim an monopoly on quality role-play and if they do, certainly no more than just about any other MUD does.

Good, immersive/intense roleplay is created by the players, not the game. The only thing the game needs is promotion of such and enforcement to stay in character. And that, only on an RPE. There are several games not even RPE classified that have good, immersive/intense, roleplay.

Yes, that's why all RPIs are RPEs, but that doesn't mean the reverse is true. RPIs are Role-Play Enforced MUDs sharing a common set of design and policy characteristics. That's it. Everything else is pretty much a stick up other people's ass because a small group of games share similar traits and a term (the origin of which is not clearly attributed) was adopted to describe those games. OTHERS PERCEIVED this term as something describing the quality of RP, which may have been of a higher quality on the three RPIs but again that's not what the term referred to, and hence they began using it despite not being similar to the games to which the term originally applied. That's the story in a nutshell.

Also, you mean RPE as in Role-Play Enforced and not Role-Play Encouraged, right? To be RPE(nforced), you would need to fulfill the requirement of having a policy of enforced role-play. It's not about the role-play itself. It's about the policy.

Jason

[Newworlds]

I won't quote your entire post because already it becomes convoluted. I will say that again the argument of "stickman" comes up and I will respond to that. All of my comments came directly from the RPIMUD site and from your posts throughout the threads related to this. My main argument was that you "seem" to subtly put down Hack and Slash games in your arguments such as:

It wouldn't be fair to classify them alongside games which were nothing more than H&S code.

While this doesn't affect NW at all, I see no reason to use a baseline of H&S as if they are somehow less than other games.

As for the rest. I can certainly quote the mud site for your answers. But the bigger issue is the issue you dodged which is the entire basis for this thread. To it:

RPI is no more accurate a term than the proposed RPEI. Both are discriptively innacurate and based on preferences derived by style of code. At best, they are propoganda for a certain gaming style.

[prof1515]

Originally Posted by Newworlds I won't quote your entire post because already it becomes convoluted. I will say that again the argument of "stickman" comes up and I will respond to that. All of my comments came directly from the RPIMUD site and from your posts throughout the threads related to this. My main argument was that you "seem" to subtly put down Hack and Slash games in your arguments....

The quote from me that you cite is not a put down of H&S. It's a factual statement that MUDs which are attempting to create RP-centric code are not aiming for the same type of features and policies that H&S MUDs employ.

I see no reason to use a baseline of H&S as if they are somehow less than other games.

They are less if the focus of debate is role-play alone. While you might find good RP on a H&S, you won't find consistent RP because unless everyone is required to RP, the guy you run into in the village may meet your emotes by spelling up and leveling every mob in sight, then marching on without so much as a nod to find the next zone and wipe out everything in it.

Likewise, an RPI is less if the focus of the discussion is mob-killing for experience points. Setting aside the lack of experience points in RPI code, they have RP-centric policies which do not support going around killing everything in sight. Hence, RPIs along with other RP* MUDs would constitute "less" in terms of comparison with H&S games.

RPI is no more accurate a term than the proposed RPEI. Both are discriptively innacurate and based on preferences derived by style of code. At best, they are propoganda for a certain gaming style.

RPI was very accurate as it referred to three games. Those three games were all designed in terms of code and policy around role-play. In other words they were role-play centric or role-play intensive. Other MUDs may be centered on role-play in policy but their code still retains the design originally intended for slicing through everything in sight to advance in skill use. Their code is not role-play centric but their policy is. They're Role-Play Enforced.

The term RPI was created to describe three different games utilizing two different code developments yet which shared a large number of similarities not shared with any other games at the time. The term RPEI is an abbreviation for a mish-mash of words chosen as propaganda by a single MUD. There is a distinction. One provides a means of identifying a group of MUDs sharing like features. The other is a term for a single MUD, redundant as that game already has a term to describe the exact feature set of that particular game. The term is the name "New Worlds".

Jason

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by prof1515 RPI was very accurate as it referred to three games. Those three games were all designed in terms of code and policy around role-play. In other words they were role-play centric or role-play intensive. Other MUDs may be centered on role-play in policy but their code still retains the design originally intended for slicing through everything in sight to advance in skill use. Their code is not role-play centric but their policy is. They're Role-Play Enforced.

Sorry but three games that have similar code and two that use the same library/engine is no different than establishing RPEI with features that few could be a subset of, hence the joke. And yes, more then NW could fall under the RPEI standard as set forth here.

Originally Posted by prof1515 The term RPI was created to describe three different games utilizing two different code developments yet which shared a large number of similarities not shared with any other games at the time. The term RPEI is an abbreviation for a mish-mash of words chosen as propaganda by a single MUD. There is a distinction. One provides a means of identifying a group of MUDs sharing like features. The other is a term for a single MUD, redundant as that game already has a term to describe the exact feature set of that particular game. The term is the name "New Worlds".

Again, this is a wild claim as your mish-mash of words is the same style as being described in the RPI thread discussing what makes an RPI according to Delerak.

And the argument has now come full circle. Claiming you are an RPI because you are leveless is as assanine as claiming you are an RPEI because you have levels.

[prof1515]

Originally Posted by Newworlds Sorry but three games that have similar code and two that use the same library/engine is no different than establishing RPEI with features that few could be a subset of, hence the joke. And yes, more then NW could fall under the RPEI standard as set forth here.

No, it's not because the differences between those three MUDs and the rest of the MUD community at the time were far greater than the differences between EVERY OTHER Role-Play Enforced MUD and the standard H&S.

If one didn't know the policy of the any of them, just looking at the vast majority of role-play enforced MUDs would have been insufficient to differentiate them from most H&S MUDs. But looking at the three RPIs, one would have noticed great differences that only a couple other MUDs could come anywhere near to resembling.

Again, this is a wild claim as your mish-mash of words is the same style as being described in the RPI thread discussing what makes an RPI according to Delerak.

That thread is attempting to list the characteristics that those three MUDs shared which would therefore have constituted the criteria for other MUDs to be grouped with them.

Claiming you are an RPI because you are leveless is as assanine as claiming you are an RPEI because you have levels.

There's a lot more to the definition of RPI than the absence of levels, but that is one of the characteristics to which the term was applied. Ten years ago, if you went looking for a RPI MUD, you were looking for a game without levels. The term was only applied to games without levels, experience points, etc. Looking for an RPI would have yielded those meagre results. Five years ago, the term is applied to games with levels, experience points, and even games without a policy that requires role-play!

Since then, the RPI family has not been limited to just those three. Another codebase was developed which resembled the original RPIs and off-shoots of one of the three resulted in more than tripling the number of RPIs open and in development. And through it all, they have continued to maintain a set of characteristics that first applied and apply still. That's as good of proof of a particular sub-set as you're likely to find in any situation.

Jason

[Delerak]

Didn't realy want to return to this thread. But to clarify I'm not lumping all other muds into a stock category. RPI's are a rarity really, so there's stock muds, RPI muds, and then there's muds that are more established and can call themselves whatever they want. The fact remains that RPI's have certain characteristics and the acronym was designed for the players that want to try out these types of muds, not ones that DON'T have those charactistics, period.

[Voidrider]

Ten years ago, when I would look for RPI muds to try, the primary factor I was concerned with was roleplay *enforcement*. Outside of that I was pretty much open and simply happily surprised to see any other special features.

[Delerak]

Originally Posted by Newworlds Okay, now I have to say that was completely lame. Here you are quoting what is an RPI as if you had the authoritative position on it and now I come to find out you were talking out of your freaking hiney?! What the heck? This entire thread I created to prove that anyone could decide at anytime to make a personal tag for their own mud and call it "Roleplay Whatever" as long as it sounded better than just Roleplay Mud. The point was clear before, and remains clear RPI is a id tag to define one or two games that have features unlike others. The comments about "Run of the Mill" likely is the cause for other Admin calling you on the carpet about your silly definitions.

This is a mudding community, and a forums, and it's the internet -- anyone has the authority to do whatever they want. I'm not even a very respected figure in the RPI community. The point is I created the thread to lay out some guidelines that everyone in all these other threads are so confused about. Also, I don't think anyone who plays an RPI will disagree with them.

[Maelgrim]

This deflectory argument is all well and good, Newworlds, but I'm sorry, 6 of your eleven points have absolutely NOTHING to do with roleplay whatsoever.

If an attempt is to be made to enforce a new 'standard' of roleplay, perhaps the criteria should actually focus around roleplay? (Seriously, what in the name of raptor jesus do levels, enforced classes, and channels have to do with anything?)

This seems like a great big 'I'm going to make my own club, and it's going to be cooler than yours, and have a tree house and ice cream and caek!', in response to some people's disagreement with how you classify your game.

In short, why are you even bothering?

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Maelgrim This deflectory argument is all well and good, Newworlds, but I'm sorry, 6 of your eleven points have absolutely NOTHING to do with roleplay whatsoever. If an attempt is to be made to enforce a new 'standard' of roleplay, perhaps the criteria should actually focus around roleplay? (Seriously, what in the name of raptor jesus do levels, enforced classes, and channels have to do with anything?) This seems like a great big 'I'm going to make my own club, and it's going to be cooler than yours, and have a tree house and ice cream and caek!', in response to some people's disagreement with how you classify your game. In short, why are you even bothering?

Wow, you must have missed the point of the thread so I'll repeat it. None of the RPEI module items which are functionary of the games related to them have any more weight to what true roleplay is than any of the RPI module items which are functionary of the RPI games. In other words, RPEI is no more or less accurate than RPI for a tag on a mud. Example Permadeath vs. Resurrection death, Skilless vs. skills, no guilds vs. guilds, no channels vs. channels.

All of these things are "preferences" and do not relate to whether a game in Roleplay enforced intensively or just Roleplay Inforced.

In short I was making a parody for the sake of clarity.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Maelgrim This seems like a great big 'I'm going to make my own club, and it's going to be cooler than yours, and have a tree house and ice cream and caek!', in response to some people's disagreement with how you classify your game. In short, why are you even bothering?

Hey, Maelgrim! Miss you!

This post was made after a heated debate in another thread that started when a player was requesting an RPI only to be told (quite brutally) that what he wanted was NOT an RPI. So, the definition of RPI came under fire, and in the process, some people believed that the "standards" of what makes an RPI really was more of a list of preferences with a misleading name than anything else. In other words, some people believed that the RPI designation seemed more of a "club" than an industry standard.

Thus, New Worlds made his own list of preferences to illustrate this point. That's why he bothered.

[Maelgrim]

Aha! Obviously I did miss said point. My apologies Newworlds.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Maelgrim Aha! Obviously I did miss said point. My apologies Newworlds.

None needed!

[Throttle]

The OP seems more like a regular MUD advertisement than anything else. NW has always fought tooth and nail to proclaim themselves an RPIMUD despite the fact that they differ from such in practically all aspects other than requiring that the players act in-character. Virtually none of the staple RPI mechanics and ideals exist on that MUD, and this RPEI standard's criteria make little sense beyond "this is what our MUD has to offer". Between this and NW's habit of recommending their MUD to every single help-me-find-a-MUD poster, even ones that never mention a desire for roleplay, I'm left questioning the integrity of this MUD.

[Rathik]

Originally Posted by Throttle The OP seems more like a regular MUD advertisement than anything else. NW has always fought tooth and nail to proclaim themselves an RPIMUD despite the fact that they differ from such in practically all aspects other than requiring that the players act in-character. Virtually none of the staple RPI mechanics and ideals exist on that MUD, and this RPEI standard's criteria make little sense beyond "this is what our MUD has to offer". Between this and NW's habit of recommending their MUD to every single help-me-find-a-MUD poster, even ones that never mention a desire for roleplay, I'm left questioning the integrity of this MUD.

Thanks for digging this old thread up. I missed reading it the first time around, and it's rather humorous on a couple levels

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Throttle The OP seems more like a regular MUD advertisement than anything else. NW has always fought tooth and nail to proclaim themselves an RPIMUD despite the fact that they differ from such in practically all aspects other than requiring that the players act in-character. Virtually none of the staple RPI mechanics and ideals exist on that MUD, and this RPEI standard's criteria make little sense beyond "this is what our MUD has to offer". Between this and NW's habit of recommending their MUD to every single help-me-find-a-MUD poster, even ones that never mention a desire for roleplay, I'm left questioning the integrity of this MUD.

I say hang 'em high!

(Iincidently NW only recommends NW on posts that are specifically close to their style of game. NW also recommends other MUDS when they are not. NW nearly always recommends a few other games even when recommending themselves. If you want examples of this I can research them all if you disbelieve this).

And since Throttle didn't get the purpose of this whole thread, is was a spoof on RPI. Clue in, Throttle.

Because Proph1515 is trying really hard to be more mature about the whole RP Organization he is creating and building with the team, I respect what he is doing and would rather encourage his success than banter about silly threads of the past here.

[Delerak]

Silence! There is no need for this petty argument to continue here. Both sides have valid opinions.