24 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 1st comment:
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My question is really how the MUDding community feels about the distinction of "RPI" MUDs. I feel as though I should possibly classify my MUD as RPI (it has several features that are classic RPI). However, I feel there's a lot of well-deserved negative stigma attached to RPIs. I would like to classify my MUD as an RPI that is (what I believe to be) free of the negative aspects of some RPIs. While I have things like short descriptions, I have a really neat intro system (I don't buy into that "force players to remember shorts" business), I have an OOC tell command, et cetera et cetra.

I'm trying to get an idea of how the MUDding community feels about the label. While I know people flame a lot over it, I feel like it might just be the super-vocal people who're involved in the flamewars; not exactly a perfect example of the community on the whole.
25 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 2nd comment:
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I voted strongly against RPI; just how I am. Games are a different form of enjoyment for everyone, and for me, that does not include attempting to "act". My character should be an extension of who I am; and that's how I like to be known in the games I play. Sorry, but I'm not going to change my speaking or anything else to fit the mold of a game. Providing outlets for OOC chatter seems counterproductive, to me, since they would be all I'd end up using to avoid being chided for mentioning OOC stuff in casual passing and "disrupting" everyone else's experience.

I think my worst experience that has probably formed a lot of this animosity toward RPI games was one Star Wars based MUD where death was permanent. You could clone yourself, for a high cost (no newbie could afford it), but you'd still only have your name/played time/stats and no money/gear/property on clone revival. Therefore, if you were to PK at all (and I love to PK :) you had to have a very legitimate, imm-vetted reason. Otherwise you really didn't have a lot of recourse against a griefer or someone you just didn't get along with as long as they didn't attempt to steal your ships or other property to warrant attempting to kill them. Very poor system, IMO.

I will tolerate RP-encouraged, though, where I can feel free to mention IC-type things or interact with more full-on RP type folks; as long as I'm not blasted for not doing it 100% of the time. That can actually be fun, as I can RP if I ever feel like it or just disregard otherwise.
25 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Neat. Thanks for the reply/insight. It's a difference in perspective, though. An RPer doesn't feel that they're being forced to "act;" they enjoy the act of RP itself more than they enjoy acting as an extension of themselves.

Why? Well, I think it lends a lot of legitimacy to the game atmosphere. Instead of it just becoming a game, it's a world all its own; when something happens to your character, it's not just a series of numbers and letters in a pfile. It's a sort of a real person (even if they are imaginary).

As a side note, my MUD does not have permdeath because permdeath (as you mentioned above), in my opinion, strongly discourages PK. While I don't want to strongly encourage PK (I feel like it should only be used as a conflict-resolution tool in IC situations that warrant IC death), a game becomes annoying and stagnant without it. With permdeath, everyone's afraid to die, so no one kills anyone else for fear of being killed. When that happens, IC conflict is hardly more than a joke.
25 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 4th comment:
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Oliver said:
Neat. Thanks for the reply/insight. It's a difference in perspective, though. An RPer doesn't feel that they're being forced to "act;" they enjoy the act of RP itself more than they enjoy acting as an extension of themselves.

Why? Well, I think it lends a lot of legitimacy to the game atmosphere. Instead of it just becoming a game, it's a world all its own; when something happens to your character, it's not just a series of numbers and letters in a pfile. It's a sort of a real person (even if they are imaginary).


Certainly welcome :). See, that's a different type of gamer than me, though. I'm sure most of us have all taken the old Bartle test and IIRC, I was a PK/Achiever/Explorer/Socializer or something; pretty much any other goal trumped being social for me. So I never get that enjoyment of RPing as part of myself more than a forced charade to fit into the mold of a game I chose to play. To each their own though, obviously :).
25 Jun, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 5th comment:
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My experience is that players who enjoy RPI style MUDs expect them to conform to certain conventions and implement certain features in particular ways. If your game isn't going to meet those expectations then I don't think you gain anything from marketing it as an RPI, particularly as players who don't enjoy RPIs but might otherwise enjoy your game may be put off, and those that do enjoy RPIs are likely to quit when they realise your game doesn't have feature X, Y or Z that they expect. You're also likely to get flamed on TMS, but you shouldn't worry about that :)
25 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 6th comment:
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Orrin said:
You're also likely to get flamed on TMS, but you shouldn't worry about that :)


Oh, TMS. Heh.
25 Jun, 2010, Idealiad wrote in the 7th comment:
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I chose the cautious option. It seems to me that RPIs define RP in a very narrow and slightly weird way to be honest, while the quality of RP itself is really no better than more relaxed RP muds. That said, if I am playing a game with a coherent story and setting, I do like people to 'stay IC'. When people use oocsay commands or OOC speech in a say command it does make the game less enjoyable. For some reason I don't mind OOC channels, tells, etc. in the same way.
25 Jun, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 8th comment:
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The RPI people remind me somewhat of MUSH people, snobby little pricks who act like they're better than the rest, with a demeanor that screams latent homosexual. Now any of these taken individually aren't that big of a problem, but the whole package somehow rubs me the wrong way.

For me it's not so much the RPI aspect, which in itself has a decent appeal, but the crowd it attracts.
25 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 9th comment:
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I think if you could offer a way to make it scalable it would help things, a lot. FlagRSP2 for WoW would let players not only have further description options than usual (not a problem per your MUD, you can write that in as standard) but to also flag themselves IC/OOC. Perhaps sometimes people just want to "cut loose" if they're having an off day, or for whatever reason? Giving a least a toggle option with a culture of "please don't live entirely OOC" may be beneficial, so people can still progress their characters while not disrupting the experience for everyone else since they will be flagged OOC and people can choose to avoid interacting with them, then.
25 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 10th comment:
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Scandum said:
The RPI people remind me somewhat of MUSH people, snobby little pricks who act like they're better than the rest, with a demeanor that screams latent homosexual.


lol'd. Anyway, though, I know exactly what you mean. It's one reason I'm afraid to market under the RPI label; people are afraid of that crowd (because they're annoying) and I think will tend to shy away from my game.

On the other hand, I want my game to have immersive roleplay and serious roleplayers. If I classify my game as rp-enforced, they might not try it out (let's face it; rp-enforced is a very vague and loophole-filled classification). If I classify as RPI, the kind of players I really want (the sort that aren't annoying pricks) might not try it out (for fear of annoying pricks).
25 Jun, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 11th comment:
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Oliver said:
On the other hand, I want my game to have immersive roleplay and serious roleplayers. If I classify my game as rp-enforced, they might not try it out (let's face it; rp-enforced is a very vague and loophole-filled classification). If I classify as RPI, the kind of players I really want (the sort that aren't annoying pricks) might not try it out (for fear of annoying pricks).

The only unexplored niche I can think of is an immersive roleplaying world, which is easiest to do if you use dynamic descriptions combined with some game physics, though this'll require a pretty competent programmer to pull off. Upside is that you only need one good builder, a catchy term for promoting your 'immersive roleplaying environment' (aka IRE MUD (possible lawsuit there)), and some nazis who'll harass any mud that uses the term while not in compliance with the exact definition.

I've got no statistical evidence however that an immersive world encourages a good roleplaying environment.
25 Jun, 2010, Lobotomy wrote in the 12th comment:
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It would be helpful (to me, at least) if someone could actually explain, for clarity, what "RPI" stands for. I'm aware of the RP-Enforced paradigm, but I don't see how RolePlay-Enforced would end up with the acronym of RPI instead of RPE.
25 Jun, 2010, Davion wrote in the 13th comment:
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I believe RPI stands for Roleplay Intensive, or Immersive. I believe it has to do with the environment you're in.

Just a little more: An RPE is actively enforced (by code, or people) so that you actually cannot advance if you do not RP. Take for example A Dark Portal. We're RP Encouraged, meaning if you RP, leveling is easier, access to skills earlier, etc. If we were to set it up so that advanced -stopped- if you didn't have enough RP, we'd be then RP Enforced.

An RPI, you are pretty much forced to roleplay via the mechanics of the game. There would be little to no OOC commands/interactions in the game itself.
25 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 14th comment:
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Davion said:
I believe RPI stands for Roleplay Intensive, or Immersive. I believe it has to do with the environment you're in.

Just a little more: An RPE is actively enforced (by code, or people) so that you actually cannot advance if you do not RP. Take for example A Dark Portal. We're RP Encouraged, meaning if you RP, leveling is easier, access to skills earlier, etc. If we were to set it up so that advanced -stopped- if you didn't have enough RP, we'd be then RP Enforced.

An RPI, you are pretty much forced to roleplay via the mechanics of the game. There would be little to no OOC commands/interactions in the game itself.


I wouldn't say that's exactly true. On every RPE MUD that I've ever played, you could "advance" to max level or whatever without roleplaying at all. It's just against the rules to behave in an OOC fashion, and repeat instances of doing so with no attempt to change behavior will result in denies/bans/etc.
25 Jun, 2010, Davion wrote in the 15th comment:
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I don't really think that's enforced then, as you can enjoy the game (everything but the RP) without ever actually RPing. As long as you don't interfere with the RP.
25 Jun, 2010, Idealiad wrote in the 16th comment:
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I've always thought the term RP-enforced was pretty retarded, but Davion, although you're technically right, in practice the phrase is used as Oliver says, basically no OOC in the game is allowed (though OOC channels and so on usually are abundant).

Most mushes are 'RP-enforced', though if you used that term on a mush you'd be laughed off the game. There's no RP-enforced on a mush – you just RP. RP-enforced came about as a reaction to the typical goal-oriented play of dikuesque muds.

Despite constant bickering about it on TMS, I think it's fairly settled that RPI as a term was coined by players of Armageddon, Harshlands, and (I'm not sure about this) Shadows of Isildur, and subsequently games with similar features, as a way of divorcing themselves from the RP-encouraged pack, much as mushes, moos, mucks and so on took on the term 'mu*' to separate themselves from dikuratives and the like. It's all pretty senseless but it's kind of a moving train at this point.
25 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 17th comment:
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Davion said:
I don't really think that's enforced then, as you can enjoy the game (everything but the RP) without ever actually RPing. As long as you don't interfere with the RP.


I guess that's true. What's the point, though? If you refused to RP, you could never interact with anyone. That would exclude PK, end-game large mob fights, et cetera.
25 Jun, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 18th comment:
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Lobotomy said:
It would be helpful (to me, at least) if someone could actually explain, for clarity, what "RPI" stands for. I'm aware of the RP-Enforced paradigm, but I don't see how RolePlay-Enforced would end up with the acronym of RPI instead of RPE.

There's a comprehensive definition of the term RPI here. The usage is controversial though and you'll find quite a lot of arguing about it on TMS for example.

Idealiad said:
I've always thought the term RP-enforced was pretty retarded, but Davion, although you're technically right, in practice the phrase is used as Oliver says, basically no OOC in the game is allowed (though OOC channels and so on usually are abundant).

I think IC-enforced would be a better term to describe what is commonly meant by RP-enforced, but people have been using these terms for so long they have kind of stuck.
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