Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

I'll just quibble with this detail, and maybe someone can educate me as to how other muds get around this problem. Most RPIs (and muds for that matter) have various languages. One of the powerful aspects of the ability to emote within says is that it takes language code into account.

Sorry to nitpick, but this stood out because, on Armageddon, newbies sometimes use emotes like the above example as a means of conveying speech. Unfortunately, they don't realize that in doing so, they're circumventing the language code. As such, it's considered a "twinky" (probably not a good word, as they aren't doing it on purpose) action. Are there muds that look for the "say" and maybe other signs of speech such as quotations and commas in an emote and run it through a language scrambler in order to get around this problem?

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

The example I posted was a straight emote. If you copied and pasted it to many games I've played, it would come out as would any emote with speech imbedded. Granted, it's a little more work, and looks junky if the person typing it doesn't punctuate well, but that sure seems like an exercise in hair-splitting.

Not that it's relevant, but I've used such emotes even in a game that had commands for say, sayto, address, recite, sing, orate, proclaim, whisper, groupwhisper, intone, yell and chant, all of which were coded speech modes. I did it because no matter how encoded the verblist is, nor how modified, emote is the only truly customizable way to do this.
[Edited to add] In fact, the game I played for ten years had a 'possessive emote' coding, so you could truly customize the emote.
>emote 's voice trembles as he asserts, "You own these grasses?"
Or you could modify the speech verb with an adverb, such as >say shakily. >say fearfully (cautiously, etc.)
No matter how encoded emotes are, or speech is, it's been my experience that such things only make typing easier, and do very little measurably to upgrade the quality of emotes. (With the acknowledgement that the example used earlier does allow sentences to start with something other than the character's name.)

I'm a little amused that this is considered somehow 'twinkish'. 'Circumventing the language code' seems sort of...I don't know...an excuse to view someone as twinkish. I could see that being a legit beef if the character in question was hard-coded to be mute or stuttered, or emoted speaking in a code-supported language he didn't know, or did so to circumvent coding for a magic spell that silences an AoE. I could definitely see someone's thong in a noose if said emote exactly emulated a spell's prep words or feigned a special attack battlecry, although I'm sure in some cases, such an emote might be perfectly reasonable.

In that -very- specific example, I -might- see that someone would object, since the emote indicated a posture change (rising from a crouch), if postures are hard-coded, but that would be the case in both an "RPI" or a "non-RPI", unless there's some really complex emote codes out there I'm not aware of. In such cases, most people would just type 'stand' right after the emote, to take care of the mechanics of posture, or re-word the emote to 'begins to rise from a crouch', for the genuine purist who says, "He stood up twice! Twink!"

Most games I've ever played had pretty well-defined rules on emote abuse, and most people understand intuitively these boundaries, but I'd never heard that emplacing speech within an action for facilitating a better sentence was some borderline violation.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Speech in emotes would work great, if the emote code is robust enough to know to convert whatever is inside quoted text into speech, and make necessary translations based on language.

If I know elvish, and I do emote smiles and says "Hi, friend.", then two things can happen:
1. In the presence of a smart emote code, the code takes "Hi, friend.", determines how well I speak the language I am speaking and how well listeners understand it, and translates or garbles the text as needed. This is great if the MUD supports that.
2. In the presence of an emote code that doesn't account for language, "Hi, friend." is sent to everyone who can hear regardless of if they don't understand the language, or even if they are deaf, or if the speaker is muted. This is circumventing the code, and is bad.

I think the second case is what Bakha was talking about, as speech-embedded emotes aren't possible on Armageddon. However, you CAN do the reverse and embed emotes in speech:
say (rising from his crouch amidst the grass, his lips turning into a deep frown) Best not be huntin' my food, traveler.
==> Rising from his crouch amidst the grass, his lips turning into a deep frown, Jherlen says: "Best not be huntin' my food, traveler."
The output is slightly different as we're using different verb tenses, but the affect is the same.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

You're missing the point. Person A may not speak the language that Person B speaks. If Person A emotes out their pose with a say included, then Person B suddenly speaks their language. It negates the whole purpose of a language code.

And just in case you think this is all "simulationist" nonsense, imagine the possibilities here of the proposed scenario:

The disputed animal is an ox. A human and an elf are the two characters in question. The human stumbles upon the elf about to kill the ox and says something, in a language the elf doesn't understand, while emoting a rapid gesture. The human was actually saying, "I'll be off." The elf saw, "M'iI ow kee" with a rapid gesture. The elf decides that the human is trying to kill him and glances up saying (in the human's eyes), 'With an angry slam of fist into palm, the lean elf says, "Mi Lie ite ielos liesoit.'" The human now decides that the elf is trying to start a fight and he becomes more and more aggressive. Woah! Suddenly we have something very real, possible, and deep: racial and cultural misunderstandings playing out before our eyes. Something very... narrativist in my opinion.

Much better than the human doing:

emote with a rapid gesture, the swarthy human says, "I'll be off!"
And suddenly all the language and racial barriers are instantly cured via the emote code.

Edit: Firstly, this post was made under the influence of Cinco de Mayo margaritas. Secondly, I looked back and saw that you acknowledged the language barrier issue in your post. I guess that on the muds I play, this is much, much larger of an issue and much more important than on the muds you play. As it's not something to just dismiss flippantly as no big deal. Once again, it just shows the wide range of roleplaying experiences we all seek.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

I'm not disagreeing that language get-arounds are not legit use.

Conversely, I've run into scenarios where the language-coding was implemented, and 20 reps of the identical phrase, "Hello, how are you?" will have 20 permutations. Even if the 'simulation' of language is there, it just doesn't account for the lack of realism inherent in just about any simulationist situation.

I'm not anti-simulationist. Those types of game have definite perks. But when someone takes the time to sit down and make a list of must-haves to 'qualify' to be an "RPI", it just seems futile and in some of the cases made for simulationist RPIs, more sizzle than steak.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

I get you. I was thinking about this earlier today while on a run (help me, please, I'm thinking of discussions on TMS during my day). The real problem here, in my opinion, is that the people in this discussion are approaching the issue from two different directions.


The RPI crowd (Jason, Delerak, Jazuela, etc...) don't really care that their acronym stands for "role play intensive" (well, maybe Delerak does, he doesn't really speak for the community, though). They care that their acronym stands for a specific type of game which, over time, has been assigned the label of RPI. In another thread, I posted a usenet post dating back to 1998 that shows this was the way, historically, RPI was used.

The other crowd, on the other hand, cares only about the meaning of the acronym, "Role Playing Intensive." They see this and think, "My game has roleplaying. My game is intense. I'm RPI." It's just people approaching the issue from two different sides of the fence.

Edit: In looking back at this post and considering what's been said on this and other threads already, I have to say that this was a "duh" post. Other people have articulated the same thing, but I guess I just needed to type it out for myself.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

LOD:

That is a great example. Stellar.

It pretty much comes down to 'do you prefer first person or third person narrative?'

Steven brust or stephen donaldson? Anyone?

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Oh god, here comes a Cinco de Mayo, Margarita-fueled analogy from Bakha:

I recently read the Omnivore's Dilemma. This debate reminds me of the trend Pollan outlines with organic food. Back in the 60s, during the initial heyday of organic, the term meant some very specific, but unarticulated things. It was about an entire mindframe of growing food. Not only did one need to not use pesticides, but one needed to grow small, cleave to polyculture over monoculture, depend on local suppliers as much as possible, strive to maintain as "natural" (whatever that means) of a growing environment as one was capable of obtaining, and basically try to work harmoniously with nature in the production of food. Nowadays, however, organic has become a marketable commodity. As such, all of the other, unspoken, considerations of what organic means have fallen by the wayside for the literalist interpretation of the term. If you don't use chemicals, you're organic. The "new organic" growers have adopted mass-production models and abandoned all of the unspoken rules of organic in favor of mass production and great efficiency. Now, all of those who "stayed true" to the initial unspoken code of the movement are decrying the interlopers who have turned the business model into a successful, albeit not necessarily totally inline with the original model, industry. Now, after the fact, the original organic crowd is seeking to distinguish themselves from the "new organic" by calling themselves "beyond organic" to designate that they're actually the ones who still carry the torch for the original intention of the term. The newcomers, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with their procuring of the organic term because they are, technically, organic.

I guess what this points to, as the anti-RPI crowd has recommended, is that the RPI crowd needs to come up with a new term. The original term of RPI has already been diluted to be, basically, meaningless. You can sit around and fight the subcultural flow, or you can buck up, do something practical, and put forth something new.

Edit: I realize that I've probably passed some value judgements with my analogy. For that I am sorry, but I am part of the RPI crowd, so it's natural that my sympathies are going to align with them.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

I can't really agree that it comes down to narrative POV, simply because POV changes in almost any feature set.

A third-person feature set would get annoying pretty quickly in my opinion. Are there even any third-person formats out there?
In every game I've ever played, the POV changed, depending on whether you were using code-supported verbs, or just emoting, but is done to emulate a first-person experience as much as possible.

>smile broadly
You see: YOU smile broadly.
Others see: YOURNAME smiles broadly.

>emote rubs HIS salt-and-pepper temples.
YOU emote: YOURNAME rubs HIS salt-and-pepper temples, and glances at OTHERGUY.
You and others all see the same output as the emoter, even the OTHERGUY target, who should technically be seeing 'glances at YOU', instead of his name.

The POV changes within the same sentence, and this is true even in some "RPI" feature sets.

My one-line catchall stance for this discussion is that assigning a very strict set of "RPI" features will marginalize some games that lack perhaps 1 or 1.5 of the features on the list, and in that light, is misleading, both to me and others. I know of one game that has this set of issues:
1. No mandated permadeath (although permadeath can be enacted on a character by admins for IC consequences, and more importantly, CHOSEN AT ANY TIME by a player, for any reason.)
2. Global channels, although each and every one of them may be toggled off, including adding the off-toggle as login output with most clients, so getting rid of globals is a one-time effort.
3. Stats for combat, although it has a customizable output to ditch the numbers if you don't want them.
4. Names, instead of descripts. I grant that this can be jarring for some, and I'm not advocating whether names or descripts are more or less conducive to RP, but this is the only solid feature at this particular MUD example you can point to that isn't on this list of must-haves. And yet, nothing prevents a RPer from pretending he doesn't know someone's name that he doesn't know. I overcame that pretty easily with colored highlights, which seems no more or less cumbersome than a coded introduction system.

A game like this wouldn't qualify as an "RPI" by "definition", although 90% of the salient features of RPIs are there, and it has the added quality of making the personal playing experience customizable by player choice, in every case except one.

By the proposed definition of "RPI" following a specific feature set, I'm certain most of the RPI-advocates would say "Not an RPI", and it wouldn't be, because that will have been defined by a preferential (and somewhat malleable) feature set. This 'miss-by-a-millimeter' demographic of games are the ones that would be hurt by such a narrow distinction, despite the very high quality of RP that can be found there (which really is NOT the focus of this debate), and perhaps for no more reason than the term "RPI" has seen its day come and go, having never been truly defined from the beginning.

Retroactive attempts to exemplify RPI-alikes as more conducive to RP, and therefore more deserving of what seems like an elitist distinction.

That's my opinion.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Like I've said before, I play on MUSHes/MUXes, and all the "emoting" is very free form. In fact, we can essentially dictate the complete output that others see, which includes poses that do not identify the speaker or emitter. There's not a lot of concern about people spoofing things.

As for language, some games have a language system. Here's one that I've seen:

+speak
+speak <language>
+say <text>

The first command, '+speak' checks to see what language you have set and which you know (if any). To reset your present language, '+speak <language>'. To use that language, '+say <text>'. NOTE: One can use : or ; in there (EG: +say :waves, "Hello!"), and | can be used to attempt an emit.

EXAMPLES: (where you're speaking Gaelic, which Bob doesn't know)

+say I'm the plumber. I'm here to fix the sink.
To Bob> Anton says "<..something brief in Gaelic..>"
To You> Anton says "I'm the plumber. I'm here to fix the sink." <Speaking in Gaelic>

+say :walks in, "I'm the plumber. I'm here to fix the sink"
To Bob> Anton walks in, "<..something brief in Gaelic..>"
To You> Anton walks in, "I'm the plumber. I'm here to fix the sink" <Speaking in Gaelic>

+say ;'s in a plumber's uniform, "Yo." The sink is soon fixed.
To Bob> Anton's in a plumber's uniform, "<..a single word in Gaelic..>" The sink is soon fixed.
To You> Anton's in a plumber's uniform, "Yo." The sink is soon fixed. <Speaking in Gaelic>

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Despite the fact that I've been informed by the OP that I have nothing of value to contribute to the thread, and should immediately exit it:

Languages:
REALISM:
JRR Tolkien devised for his novels entire languages for elvish and dwarvish, with smatterings of others. If such a translator could be hard-coded, that would be spiffy. Every time an elf says "Pal, buddy, friend, amigo, compadre, chum", etc...this code invariably translates the word to "Mellon." This jars no one.
SIMULATIONISM:
Language barriers are emulated, often by letter-combo substitutions with some racial 'flavoring', so same said elf saying the word "Friend" in elvish ten times will produce "Fiend, Find Frouand, Freud, Fraud, Fragglerock". (Or worse, by substituting letters with unpronounceable or highly unlikely combos.) This is jarring to the suspension of disbelief to those who are able to realize that the word should come out the same each time, even if you don't understand it. It can also be jarring to those who realize languages/words aren't learned by percents, so that someone with some time spent learning them understands 84% of each word, but rather learns words a few at a time, and then assimilates context. Some games do a relatively decent job of avoiding this annoying syndrome, either by making it such that a character with X skill knows 84% of all words spoken, instead of 84% of -each- word spoken, but then we run afoul of those people who are suddenly knowing exact meanings of words they've never heard or read that cannot be assimilated by context. Ah well, we say, it's a shortcoming of the coding, and we move on, because we like it.
OTHER:
Roleplayer A emotes, and within it, in common, he imbeds, "Hi, Friend!"
Player B is suddenly (mushroom cloud) -forced- to know the language, even if it's common, and this is jarring to his suspension of disbelief.
To me, this little hiccup -isn't- a big deal. As an actor, I know that my character doesn't know Common, so, I get to do a little --->RP<---.
"Hay found?"
"Ho, Fraud?"
"Pi, Pythagoras?"
I agree with every poster that says it's a matter of preference, but this wouldn't suddenly catapult me back to dreary reality any faster or more resoundingly than, "Hgxl, Fpyrabjd!" Nor would I think that an imbedded emote, so long as Player A actually spoke Common, was in any way twinkish.

Now, I confess a bias. I've RPed in some of the games mentioned as "RPI"s. At no point will I say they are not good games. They are, in most cases. At no point would I say their RP-enhancing environment is inferior. It is not, in most cases. Personally, for some of them, I've felt like my edge for RP was dulled, because so much of the work is done FOR me, or in some cases, IN SPITE of me, that some of them left me with a taste I didn't care for. But mainly, what I did catch (but not exclusively at RPIs) was the elitism attitude that somehow a game feature set makes for better roleplaying, roleplayers etc. It is an attitude that rankles me.
The less experienced players who encounter it are almost inevitably alienated or marginalized. I'm not saying every poster who advocates AFS games is anything like that, but it's undeniable that some of the most outspoken proponents -are-. I don't see these inexperienced people as 'twinks', 'n00bs' etc. They're people, and respond much better to good attitudes, openmindedness, and a willingness to patiently teach.
Mostly, people learn by good examples set, although a small and petty case can be made that some people will improve if you just criticize them enough.

The RPI distinction is meaningless, and made even MORE so by denying that the focus is on the 'intensive' part of the acronym, but continually asserting that very thing in example after example.
This is why I posted the Simulationist/Narrativist/Gamist link.
While not definitive, it's certainly a more intuitive distinction if labels are going to be slapped around, and the author of the article makes a compelling and rational case for it.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Jumping into this discussion pretty late since I only check these forums every few months, but I thought I'd give my input on the term "RPI".

The 19 "conditions", as they were laid out by the original poster, seem pretty accurate. They make up what I consider a requirment in order for a mud to qualify as RPI. There can be some deviation and room for alternate features, but if your mud varies greatly from a number of these, chances are that it'll be considered an RPI only by yourself and those who are not established players on any of the "original RPIs", for lack of better term. So, these 19 ideals make up the base that fosters roleplay of a high enough quality that it should be considered RPI, and they each contribute to it in their own way, though ultimately they achieve the same goal.

Permadeath, apart from the inherent realism, makes sure that players weigh their actions carefully and play their characters in a way that as closely as possible resembles the behaviour of real people in that game's world. When death becomes just a setback rather than the end, as is the case in games without permadeath, it's obvious to see that it changes how players will have their characters act. Likewise, the staff-approved character application system makes sure that every character that is let into the game meets the standards of the mud, both for the sake of the character's player and for those around them. If a new player who knows nothing about the mud and its game world can log in and create a character who meets the standards of that mud and its roleplay, I have my doubts about those standards. Once in a while you get a player who got it just right the first time around because they read the documentation extensively, because they're already experienced roleplayers or because they just happened to "get it" without having to try several times first. As a player of an RPI mud who is in a position to review first-time player applications, I'll say that the applications that are approved the first time without need for adjustments and revision make up a tiny percentage. Most need to be rejected between one and four times before it meets the standards of the game. If these players wouldn't have to go through this admittedly stringent and often discouraging process, the game would be full of characters who are extremely jarring and impossible to consider a part of the environment. Each of the 19 points on that list serve similar purposes, providing the building blocks for a game that can be considered the among best roleplaying experiences in the world of text-based gaming, and for each point that deviates from the "recipe", the quality is lessened somewhat.

How the individual mud achieves the goal of each of these points is up to them; it doesn't have to be identical to Armageddon, but the further you stray from the idea that it should improve roleplay, the less likely that the average RPI-player will consider it to be such. It's an inherently selfish and elitist concept because it is indeed subjective whether or not a mud qualifies to be ranked among "the best" in regards to its quality of roleplay. I will venture to claim that, provided that the players play within the confines of its ideals, the structure of the mud itself has much more to do with the quality of roleplay than the playerbase. If the mud doesn't have the necessary "restrictions", as that is essentially what they are, then the players can't be expected to conduct the manner of roleplay that the established RPI muds consider necessary in order to qualify as an RPI. Add levels and experience points and the overall roleplay diminishes a little. Add global chat channels and it detracts a bit. Remove permadeath and the players' actions become a little less consistent and believable - not necessarily everybody, but enough that the end result is a roleplaying environment that is less complete. To make a real-world example, you cannot expect a professional soccer team to consider another team a "real soccer team" if that team plays with twelve players on the field and disregards the off-side rule. Such things may be acceptable elsewhere but it is inevitably a whole different level of the game. It's an elitist concept, but I find it to be true and valid.

So why are these "real RPI" muds so opposed to other muds calling themselves RPI without meeting the proverbial requirments? Isn't that selfish? Why do they care what others do? Well, part of it is the innate human nature of wanting to protect what you have from being sullied by others who don't meet your ideals. That's the more selfish part, the part where you just don't want your own mud to be associated with others that you view as being of lesser quality. It is absolutely omnipresent, everywhere and particularly in online gaming when considering the context. WoW players get fiercely defensive about the class they play whenever someone else tries to impose their opinions and request changes for their own benefit. Counter-Strike clans will hold their particular style of play in high regard while debasing that of others, accusing opponents of cheating and so on. Players of RPI muds will scoff whenever another mud proclaims the status of RPI simply because they've tagged their mud as such and made a few adjustments to their game. I believe much of this has to do with the fact that RPI is a relatively small niche that has always been struggling for players, with each and every one of these muds unable to reach a size of playerbase that is required to fill all of the game's needs. When an interloper then comes along, claiming to be RPI while offering something that isn't (in the former's opinion), the "real RPI" runs a very real risk of not gaining the amount of players they feel they deserve. It's fairly logical. There's great contesting for players in this sub-genre because they're all suffering from a lack of players, and they don't want a perceived poser to cost them any. It's much easier to accept the loss of players to other muds of similar quality, and there's not nearly as much bad blood between "real RPIs" as there is between them and these self-proclaimed RPIs who do not attempt to meet the 19 commandments, as it were.

I don't believe that the RPI muds should have to come up with a new term for their genre of muds just because others have started to use it without meeting those standards. It's not their job to keep themselves separated from other types of muds, it's the would-be RPIs' job to build their muds to meet the standards for which the original RPIs have coined their term. If they won't, calling themselves RPI is inaccurate, and it's as much a question of vanity as it is the very real issue of there not being nearly enough players to go around and the RPIs not wanting the virtual market to be stretched any more thin than it already is.

R.I.P.
 

R.I.P would be a more proper term for this thread.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Any particular reason you copied my post as well as Disillusionist's entire post without adding anything yourself? Did your comments get snipped off? If so, that's because there's a buffer on how long a post can be.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

In case you missed the 954 other posts it replied to, that was the bottiest bot that ever botted.

Re: Determining the Origin and Meaning of RPI
 

Heh, no, I didn't notice actually. Just saw the "response to a thread" email in my inbox, went to the link, and posted.