10 Apr, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Given my MUSH roleplayer's background, I certainly understand the concept of enforced roleplay. I also have experienced the effect of good coding (ie, 'realistic behavior') in computer games providing an immersive experience. So, I've watched with interest the emergence of the RPI MUD genre.

Thing is, I've never agreed with their approach to many "problems" with the IC/OOC interface. So I'm wondering if those games that have no player names, no 'who', or no channels, etc., are prospering? My feeling has always been that players, especially newbies, would feel lost without a connection to other players.

Note that I'm not looking to bash or criticize other's games or playing style here. I'm sort of hoping to be proven wrong. I didn't get many hits searching for RPI on TMC - most hits were MUSHes that had "RPing" in the description.
10 Apr, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Wasn't RPI this thing invented by three muds, who had their 19 golden rules of RPI, that all other RPI muds should follow in order to be RPI?

It looked more like a form of self promotion and elitism than anything else to me, as equally laughable as if I was to start a 'Hack and Slash Intensive' (HSI) group of Muds that were all modeled after my mud's HSI paradigm.

It felt like a random list of features piled together with no research whatsoever in their feasibility or impact on gameplay, which probably means the games aren't thriving, unless it happens to be a particularly good formula.

I used my almost supernatural google skills and came up with the following 'true' rpi muds: Armageddon, Harshlands, Forever's End. Forever's End looks to be dead, but Armageddon seems to be doing quite alright.
10 Apr, 2009, ShadowsDawn wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
The list of things that 'made up' an RPI were taken from the common things that the original games shared. From what I have seen it is generally accepted by those who play that type of game that an RPI will have those things in common.

I'll admit the games are not my cup of tea, but I like the idea of what they try for.. just not the method.

There are quite a few RPIs out there, the two big ones are Armageddon and Shadows of Isildur. Those seem to be the big boys of the RPI. Harshlands too from what I hear, but I have never played it. Forever's End is indeed gone. The guy who ran it closed it, started a few other projects, open FE2, closed it.. more projects, and is now working with a new game that has been mentioned here, and should be getting ready to release.

From what I have seen the big boys of the RPI genre thrive just as well as any established MUD, granted likely smaller numbers due to the structure of the game not appealing to everyone… but they still do well enough.
10 Apr, 2009, Parhelion wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
So, there's two things I want to respond to here.

First, to the OP, Sandi:

This is an excellent question, in my opinion, that should be directed towards any game's overall design. If a game can't retain new players, it will eventually die – even if that death is only postponed by a few loyal players. The answer to how these games (at least, the old "big name" ones mentioned by Scandum) have survived without any sort of IC/OOC interface lies in the desires of the players that these types of games typically draw. It's been my experience that many of the players on these games simply do not want the extra layer of interaction. While it's true that most games offer channels that can be switched on and off, they provide a distraction, which becomes irritating and unwelcome in certain environments even when they are not on (but other people have them on). It's also important to remember that these games don't COMPLETELY cut players off from one another; the last time I checked, both ArmageddonMUD and Shadows of Isildur had active forums. I also know that fans of Armageddon MUD have access to an "unofficial" IRC channel, which, while I played, always had someone in it. Other forms of OOC player interaction can also be encouraged through the submission of art, stories, articles, and competitions, which not only works to raise morale among the playerbase but it also helps the game overall.

And of course, there's other ways to keep players connected without introducing traditional channels. Just what those ways are is the innovative question that will determine how any of the new up-and-coming RPIs will fare.


Now, to Scandum:

Snarky replies are not intelligent.

"RPI" is a legitimate label that can be applied to, yes, the '19 golden rules'. I'll admit that even I don't like it, because it can create the illusion that games that do fit these exact 19 rules are somehow inferior or are doing something wrong, which simply is not the case. However, the label exists as a way for players who enjoy playing within those "19 golden rules," whether they be elitist or not in your mind, to find more games that THEY enjoy. Someone who wants to trade their channels for permadeath and nameless, flowery descriptions is not going to want to play a game that offers only half their features but still wants to call itself an 'RPI'. The features are not random because they are factual implementations shared by a handful of games that in the mid to late 90's were VERY popular for what they were; the fact that other games have tried to emulate these rules or even borrow the label without fully implementing the features just shows that they are entitled to their own genre, even if a narrow one.

I'm not sure why there is so much emphasis on overgeneralizing the MUD genre pool by trying to pile in different types of games together when they are obviously not what players are looking for. The fact that this argument has been going on for so long and across several forums proves that there are enough people out there who CARE about the subject that there IS an audience that just wants those 19 golden rules. And well, the truth is, they claimed the title first. If you want to make a MUD that's like them but not, make your own unambiguous label.

Now, as to calling any set of players elitist, well… I just got done listening to two people bicker about which of them was more elitist… the hard-core WoW raider or the esoteric EverQuest player. People just know what they want, and wanting THAT and nothing less is not elitist. It's just natural.

:) As for your supernatural google skills, you better work on those some more. I get the overwhelming suspicion that you're 'true' RPI mud list is rather incomplete.
10 Apr, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Removing channels or such is really not useful at all. If players want to communicate then they'll just use out-of-game means (IM, Ventrilo, whatever). It's also silly to think that you need to remove channels to have RP. "bad" players might abuse channels and such, but good players will not. In the end, the only way to get a good RP environment is to attract good RPers, not to try to come up with a million rules and code limitations to try to force bad players to RP.

I also strongly feel that trying to go for a pure-descriptive environment (no names) is a wholly broken concept for a text-only MUD. It works in novels in many cases, sure, but a MUD is not in even remote way like a novel, other than that both use text as their information delivery mechanism. Not to mention that most novels do still use names. An author writing a fixed story can do all sorts of things with descriptions that a MUD can never do. A graphical game could actually go for a pure-descriptive environment much easier these days because they have the technology to do truly unique faces and appearances for every player. The human brain is actually wired for vision, not text, and we humans can far more efficiently notice that two very similar looking people are in fact not the same person (even if we saw the one months after seeing the first) than we can notice that "the large, muscular man with the chiseled chin, and long, wavy, brown hair, and a thick beard" is not the same person as "the large, muscular man with the chiseled cheeks, and long, wavy, black hair, and a thick beard," especially if you're not looking at the descriptions side-by-side. It actually takes about the same amount of work for our eyes and brains to distinguish two faces as it does to distinguish two letters (much less words). Text gaming is both a very powerful and a very limiting medium. Good MUD design requires taking advantage of the medium and its properties, but pure-descriptive environments both fail to take advantage of text's strengths (concise delivery of non-sensory information; time compression of actions) and blunder right into its weaknesses (is relatively difficult and slow for the human brain to process even small amounts of descriptive text).

It's like trying to make a large-unit total-control RTS with a first-person display. Trying to control the units would be a complete nightmare. For all the advantages that a first-person view brings, those advantages are totally nullified by the view's disadvantages for the target game. Likewise, if you want to go for a pure-descriptive environment, text's advantages are near useless and its weaknesses really screw things up.

Totally irrelevant to your question, I know.
10 Apr, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Parhelion said:
"RPI" is a legitimate label that can be applied to, yes, the '19 golden rules'. I'll admit that even I don't like it, because it can create the illusion that games that do fit these exact 19 rules are somehow inferior or are doing something wrong, which simply is not the case. However, the label exists as a way for players who enjoy playing within those "19 golden rules," whether they be elitist or not in your mind, to find more games that THEY enjoy.

Some kind of dedicated page might be helpful to more clearly define the genre because right now it seems every mud claiming to be RPI makes up its own definition. Perhaps the 19 rules are more silly than elitist because they are randomly put together and describe symptoms, rather than define what a RPI mud truly is. From what I've gathered even the 19 rules aren't official, so it'd make sense to use a RFC to describe the essence of a RPI mud more clearly and get rid of silly rules, like that a RPI mud must be classless.
10 Apr, 2009, Parhelion wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
Removing channels or such is really not useful at all. If players want to communicate then they'll just use out-of-game means (IM, Ventrilo, whatever). It's also silly to think that you need to remove channels to have RP. "bad" players might abuse channels and such, but good players will not. In the end, the only way to get a good RP environment is to attract good RPers, not to try to come up with a million rules and code limitations to try to force bad players to RP.

I also strongly feel that trying to go for a pure-descriptive environment (no names) is a wholly broken concept for a text-only MUD. It works in novels in many cases, sure, but a MUD is not in even remote way like a novel, other than that both use text as their information delivery mechanism. Not to mention that most novels do still use names. An author writing a fixed story can do all sorts of things with descriptions that a MUD can never do. A graphical game could actually go for a pure-descriptive environment much easier these days because they have the technology to do truly unique faces and appearances for every player. The human brain is actually wired for vision, not text, and we humans can far more efficiently notice that two very similar looking people are in fact not the same person (even if we saw the one months after seeing the first) than we can notice that "the large, muscular man with the chiseled chin, and long, wavy, brown hair, and a thick beard" is not the same person as "the large, muscular man with the chiseled cheeks, and long, wavy, black hair, and a thick beard," especially if you're not looking at the descriptions side-by-side. It actually takes about the same amount of work for our eyes and brains to distinguish two faces as it does to distinguish two letters (much less words). Text gaming is both a very powerful and a very limiting medium. Good MUD design requires taking advantage of the medium and its properties, but pure-descriptive environments both fail to take advantage of text's strengths (concise delivery of non-sensory information; time compression of actions) and blunder right into its weaknesses (is relatively difficult and slow for the human brain to process even small amounts of descriptive text).

It's like trying to make a large-unit total-control RTS with a first-person display. Trying to control the units would be a complete nightmare. For all the advantages that a first-person view brings, those advantages are totally nullified by the view's disadvantages for the target game. Likewise, if you want to go for a pure-descriptive environment, text's advantages are near useless and its weaknesses really screw things up.

Totally irrelevant to your question, I know.


I generally agree with you, but it comes back to audience.

The type of people who are going to go after full-description environments, COLORLESS ones that, are not interested in brain-processing speed; they are interested in roleplaying and writing. Their style of gameplay is not trigger- or reaction-based, as would be the case in many other forms of play (including competitive PvP, infamous H&S, or anything that would just be better with visual or auditory cues). People learn and process information in different ways. As someone who still occasionally roleplays, I still prefer to enter a full-description environment and slowly play out scenarios than log onto a graphical game that limits what I can do (we just don't have the technology yet to "replace" RP-heavy games).

Not having channels is not a code limitation; its a feature decision.
10 Apr, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
An actual Role Playing MUD shouldn't be based around the kind of combat mechanics we're used to in a typical DikuMUD. I'd actually suggest that a turn-based combat system would be far better for such an environment. Just like playing pen-and-paper RPG's, the players can argue about who wants to try what, ask the DM for clues, and generally set their own pace. Of course, if there is no DM to moderate events, you'd probably want some timeouts to avoid people walking away from the keyboard and spoiling the fight for everyone else.

The thing that graphical games still cannot do, is allow the player to evoke their own reactions to the material being presented. If I describe a room in text, I can try to set the mood by my choice of words, but ultimately it's YOUR brain that will fill in the details and make the image successful. If I try to do the same graphically, it simply won't have the same impact because I can't afford to hire a full team of artists, musicians, and everyone else needed to put anything of any scale together.

I point to Age of Conan as an example. That was a beautiful MMO, and the introductory area was extremely detailed and evocative. Yet, it still wasn't as immersive or powerful as some text games out there, nor as the times I've played AD&D live. That game cost millions to make and was in development for over 5 years.

Text games are still alive because it's possible for a handful of people to make something really immersive and enjoyable, without needing huge amounts of venture capital. The trick is to focus on the goal. If you want a combat-oriented game, you can do pretty nice descriptions, but you DO have to keep them short and not spend so much effort on them that you neglect the mechanics. If the setting, enviornment, and puzzle solving is your thing, then make sure combat is not the central technology you're working with, and reward players who figure things out, rather than blunt-forcing through everything.

Personally, I've always liked the idea of giving players rich environments and removing many of the OOC features (no common language, no global chat, no "tells" across the universe). However, if you do that, IMHO, you are expecting and requiring the kind of player who will enjoy and respect those limits. If that's not clear from the beginning, you'll just find teams of munchkins using ventrilo or teamspeak to coordinate and farm your game out of existence.
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