Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

I didn't even know what they were talking about. I never cared what I see. As long as it looks right for everybody else, I know what I'm emoting and saying. I always use "his" for myself.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Erm what? I can't actually think of any mud that doesn't have emoting. Even my pure PK "16K mud competition" entry had an emote command.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Emphasis on the word "systems," KaVir. I realize most muds have an "act" or "emote" command. But most don't have emoting systems. Many don't even have "sayto" or "tell" (the RP-tell, not the global channel tell), and instead, when your character talks, he's not talking to anyone in particular. He's just talking, out loud. Some games have actual systems developed around emoting, such as RPIs, and a couple of MOOs I know of (among others). Some are more dynamic than others, but they're whole entire systems, rather than simply

emote waves to you.

Sue waves to you.

You wonder if Sue is waving to you, or that other guy who just walked in the room, since there's no way to tell.

Sue corrects herself and waves to Joe.

Joe wonders why he's seeing Sue wave to him, as if he was someone else named Joe. Or, if perhaps, there -is- someone else in the room named Joe, and Sue is waving to -that- Joe, and not him.

Sue gives up, and just waves, because the game her character is in, doesn't have an emoting system, merely an emote command.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Most MUDs have ****ty emote systems, not allowing you to tell your story the way you want.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

I didn't see that word in your post. What I was referring to was the claim that "most muds don't even have any emoting system at all, and rely only on socials". Clearly that's not the case.

Yeah, the typical emote system is pretty basic.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

No.

Yes.

If the term (and the ability to find games that meet one's search criteria) becomes debased, that's more of a problem for the TMS admins than for us, as if their site becomes useless, it won't get used, and ad revenues will taper off.

And besides, why would one individual admin (like myself) be expected to speak for all RPI admins? I'm sure our ideas of what defines RPI are all different (however subtly). I don't feel the need to defend the term because I don't feel that Armageddon is threatened by the existence of other games labeled RPI.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

RPI, in my mind, refers to Armageddon, which inspired Harshlands and those folks who created the RPI Engine. I always repeat this argument, because it's the one that makes the most sense to me - and I've not really seen it refuted. Like SMAUG, or CIRCLE, or any other engine that was built off of DIKU, RPI is a codebase. To me, an RPI MUD would be the game that inspired the codebase (ARM), the MUDs that use that codebase (Atonement, Harshlands, Black Sands and Shadows of Isildur currently) - and any MUDs that build their feature set in meaningful emulation of the RPI Engine.

Arguing semantics and the list of qualifications necessary to brand yourself RPI seems like an impossible, circular debate. If you want to call your MUD an RPI, when it doesn't resemble what RPI players think of when they use the phrase, that's your call. I don't think that it's a very good choice. Why?

It's a codebase. People recognize the codebase. It could potentially be disappointing or confusing to the people who are familiar with the RPI Engine.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Must be another Full Moon out with the regurgitation of this thread. Give me a break people, RPI Engine now? Since when is a modification of DIKU code now a new engine? At least God Wars really created ground up new Engine that is utilized in several games. Please don't call it a MUD Engine if it is really modified Diku. That would be akin to claiming that only a Modified Diku Mud with Intensive roleplay could be called RPI. Who would do that?

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Do you call ROM a codebase? SMAUG? CIRCLE? TMS and TMC recognize them as such, and they all originated from DIKU. If someone advertises their game as a SMAUG MUD, doesn't that have immediate connotations to you? Of course it does. It's the exact same for the RPI Engine - and yes, that is exactly what it is called. :p

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

To be honest if someone says ROM I think of Read Only Memory.

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.

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.

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)?


--matt

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

This is definitely true. Maiden Desmodus is wonderful as a unique experience of its own.

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.

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.

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.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Yep! That's my point. Even if the differences are minor, the branding is not confusing in cases like that. I don't think that definition is just wrapped up in the codebase. I do think that because there is a codebase, you can say that there is a very specific genre/style assumed with that label, in both the case of Godwars and RPI.

I'm not against the list established by Prof either; it's a pretty solid list of features. Still, the fact that there is an open-source engine helps to anchor that branding. You know what you get, generally, when you try to play a Godwars MUD. You know what you get, generally, when you try to play an RPI MUD.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Do I really have to respond to your lack of intellect? Yes, I suppose I do. And I will use your words to do so. If you spent a few seconds actually CHECKING the games you listed (like you seem to do with every RPI game you claim is active), you would find that 90% of the games you listed are no longer active AND no longer even have webpages. Not to mention that 2 of the few that are active are what you claim to be RPI's not RPE's. My goodness man, do yourself and us a service and research before you continue your ignorant non facts.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

You mean WEEDING through them? ;)

You two are just determined to not get along, not agree, and fight at every turn.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Wrong again as usual.

The RPMUD Network's Operating Committee did indeed check all 360+ RP MUDs for which we could find a contact address. Each was checked to see if they were operating and open for players. So, you're wrong there.

For the record there are 553 RP-enforced MU*s listed on TMS, TMC along with a few that were found by searching the web. Of them, over 360 had email addresses listed but a couple of them were not RP-enforced leaving just a tad over 360. Those without an email address were excluded from our check since we could not contact them and the purpose at the time was to email them about our elections (At a future date we will check the 200 or so that did not have email addresses listed before we put them into our database). Of those 360+ with email addresses, 225 of them are open for play. That's just over 60% of them and just a tad under 50% of all the RPEs in existance. Not 10% as you claim. So, wrong yet again.

Of the 58 I listed there through a simple cut-and-paste, 21 of them are still active. I didn't have my USB drive handy to pull the list of open games with email addresses so I simply cut-and-pasted the first page (ie, the letter A) of the file that was on the computer I was sitting at. That file happened to be the raw list of games with email addresses from which we checked each and every one. The portion I pasted to my post was just those starting with the letter A.

So, wrong again.

However, if you want me to post 10% of the open games, here's that plus some extra just for kicks. As of December 2009, all of these games were running and open for play.

Aabahran: The Forsaken Lands
Aalynor’s Nexus
Abandoned Realms
Accursed Lands
After…
Age of Legends: Tales of the Lance
Age of the Throne
Akarian Dawn
Aldria OpenMush
Alveus: Hollow World
Angel City MUSH
Angelic Layer
Ark of Fools MUX
Armageddon
Arqueth
Arthenia: The Scarlet Dawn
Avendar: Crucible of Legends
Ashirion: The Broken Sphere
AtlantisMUX
Atonement
Avendar: The Crucible of Legends
Beleriand
Between Darkness and Light
Big Damn MUSH
Black Sands
BlackMUD
Blademaster: The Age of Darkness
Bleach MUSH: The Beginning
Blood of Dragons
Bloody Roar
BrMUD
BSG: Kharon (BSG: Resistance)
Buffy MUD
By Right of Blood
Carrion Fields
Castle D’Image
Castle Marrach
CastleMUD
Celathryan: The Uncharted
Chiaroscuro
ChronoMuck
The City By The Bay
Colorado Dreams
Corporate Expanse: From the Cradle
The Cortex
Cosmic Cuttlefish
Cruentus Apocalypsis
Crystal
Cult of Man: Southern Cross
CyberMUSH
CyberSphere
Daedal Macabre
Dark Age of Cybertron
Dark and Shattered Lands
Dark Isles
Dark Metal
Dark Mists
Dark Risings
The Darkening Sun
DartMud
DBZ Cataclysm
DC: 52
DCU: Legacies of Justice
Deckeon
Denver: Dark Alliance

That's just those with names beginning with A, B, C or D. So, again, your claim that I couldn't name 10% of them is wrong.

You need to think before you open your mouth. RPIs are a type of RPE. Hence, the list of RPEs would include the RPIs which his why two were on the list I posted.

Thus you're wrong yet again.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Just for the record, the list of characteristics was the result of a group of four people, three of whom had a collective 30+ years of experience playing and staffing RPIs (and as it's been several years since the list was compiled, it would be approaching near to 40 years of collective experience with RPIs).

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Yes yes, I suppose I am terribly wrong. Just for kicks I randomly grabbed 5 names of your fantastically accurate list and found the following:
1 was open and running.
3 could not be found TMS Mud Database.
1 had a website and was listed as closed.

Yep, I'm wrong.:cool:

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

I'm just going to break this down, to see if I have it right. I'm trying to follow this argument, but maybe I'm missing something.

Prof was arguing for RPI as a way to further delineate between different muds to make it easier for people to find the type of mud they're seeking. He made a claim that there were 350 RP-enforced muds out there that someone would have to sift through.

NewWorlds then laughed at his claim and said that was a ridiculous number. No one would have to "weed" out that many muds in order to find one they liked.

Prof then produced a list from a search of TMS that indicated that his number of 350 was at least close. That list was indicative of what a newbie would experience if they searched "rp mandatory" muds on TMS.

NewWorlds then said the list was bunk because once you start weeding (my use of the word now) out the muds that are no longer open and such, the number drops drastically.


Now here's my question. Isn't that the exact point? A newbie would do the search then have to start going to the muds (weeding) to find one that was open.


NewWorlds... this just seems like a silly line of argument you're making. I just don't get it. What are you trying to prove with it? How does it fit your agenda? Are you just trying to show that prof is wrong and that's it? I don't see how this point (were it even valid) really helps you out one way or the other.

Please enlighten me as to your motives here.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

No. I didn't mean to say a person wouldn't have to weed through 100's if not 1000's of games to find the RPE or whatever other type of game they are looking for. My point was that there are not that many active, quaility, RPE's in existance. Maybe 20 at last count. My point was that Prof was trying to establish 100's of RPE's with relatively few RPI's and I found that a bit skewed. There aren't that many of either genre.

Obviously a bad argument if I confused you with it and likely shouldn't have said anything.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Ahh, I get your point, now. Sorry, as I was just trying to keep tabs. You know that you and prof do keep me entertained, but I like to keep the argument sorted out and straight in my head. ;)

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

Yes you are wrong. Read what I wrote again. Here, I'll repeat the relevant parts:

The first list I put up was from the wrong file. It was the raw list of games from which we verified open status. It was made by looking at TMC's listings as well as TMS and by running searches on google using keyword combinations like "enforced role-playing", "enforced roleplaying", "role-play is enforced", "role-playing is enforced", "role-playing is required", etc. to try and find every game that might have such policy requirement.

Collectively, just putting together the list took somewhere in the realm of 40-50 hours of work (checking those with webpages for contact info, etc). The list totalled 553 games. A second list was then made of those games with an email address. This list consisted of 360+ games (I could say 363 but originally it had a few more which were found to not be role-playing enforced but rather PK MUDs that had mislabeled themselves either on TMS or TMC). From that list, the 7 members of the Committee divided up the list and checked each one to see if we could connect. This took three weeks of anywhere from 4 to all 7 of us checking for about 3-5 hours each Monday when we hold our meetings. Thus the verification of those 360+ games took the group approximately 40-50 more hours of checking. If we could log into the game and verify that it was open for play then that game was put on a third list. This final list comprised 225 games that were role-play enforced, were open for play and had an email address that we could contact. A portion of this list was the second one I posted consisting of the games starting with A, B, C and D. As of the 1st of December 2009, the list was completely accurate.

There were 225 Role-Play Enforced (RPE) games that were open and which had a published email address in existance as of December 1, 2009. On that list, there were 6 RPIs. Of those, one (Black Sands) is no longer open for play while they fix some problems they had with their code, another (Dark Horizon) has since closed and their website is no longer running. However another (Atonement) has since opened for play leaving the total at five (six when Black Sands reopens following their code work). But 225 is "hundreds" (plural), especially when you factor in that there were 180+ (553-365=188) games we did not check because they provided no contact information and hence for our purposes at the time (contacting them about participation in our site) were of no use to us.

"Quality" is a subjective statement and I made nor do I make any judgement as to how many of them are "quality". Activity is something that depends on a variety of factors not the least of which is the timing during which one logs on. I never made such distinctions, I simply presented the number of games verified by the Committee. It's far, far, far more than 20.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

LOL. You aren't the only one entertained. Seriously though, I agree with some that say it is bad for business on all sides and should probably just ignore whatever comes up regarding RPI.

Re: RPI, RPE, and Roleplay
 

As one of the people on said Committee, Newworlds, I can fully vouch for the lists that Prof speaks of. It was annoying as **** having to go through all them, but he is quite correct. You should know by now that you can contact me to get the inside scoop on those things, lol.