Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I like that idea of specifically labelling it feature set.

AFS = Armaggedon Feature Set

That really gets to the core of the issue, and uses a proper noun so there is not really any confusion or reason for other folks to want to use the acronym if it doesn't fit.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

If after 12 years you still think all muds that aren't AFSes are stock muds, then don't expect anyone to give your "experience" any credence. There are 3 month mud n00bs who know more about MUDs than that.

But thank you again for demonstrating the repugnant elitism that pervades and pollutes the whole AFS mud community. "If you aren't one of us, you're a stock mud."

Ridiculous and sad.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

And now we know you aren't even bothering to read anyone else's posts. I don't think anyone has said this, and certainly not "all."

And everyone else wants to be left alone and not attacked because of how they choose to label their muds, or how someone looking for a mud chooses to label his preferences (which is how this current debate got started). You don't have any problem using the even older term "MUD" when your games are nothing like the actual MUD. So get off your high horse.

You don't get to play the "leave us in peace" card when it is your crowd that launches all the offensives.

Again, we see you aren't reading anyone else's posts. How many mud admins here have been arguing this issue because they actually want to use the term for their MUD? My count is zero, though perhaps I missed one.

If you define "best RP" as abusive PK where the small crowd in charge permadeath PKs anyone new who joins into oblivion, then I would agree with you. If you define "best RP" as the small elite crowd in charge forcing everyone new to kiss their butts or have their characters repeatedly deleted via PK, then yes I agree with you. That is not how I define "best RP" though. Some people do definte "best RP" that way, and for them AFS muds are the perfect choice. If they want to bow down and worship 5-10 people for 4+ years so as to not be permadeath PKed, they have a set of AFS muds to choose from and enjoy. But that is a whole other topic entirely, and has nothing to do with this issue. I just didn't want to let you slide in yet another elitist spew without it being challenged.

You say it isn't personal preference, and then your next sentence starts with "For me."

Wake up. That is exactly what it is: personal preference.

As for OOC channels, do you think the other actors and audience members are not occasionally thinking about other things? Their laundry list? The bills they need to pay? That hot guy/chick in row 2? Etc. Every single time you try to argue that one of your PREFERRED FEATURES is inherently and factually "better", someone is able to provide examples of how it is not objectively better, but just your preference.

Preferences are fine. Preferences are great. But please, drop the arrogant belief that your preferences are objectively BETTER than everyone else's.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Dude...again you are off base. By making this wild claim that anything ooc distracts you must get rid of anything non rp in your game. There are no games that are this way. Are you trying to tell me you have no hit point messages, no mail system, no score, nothing that is out of character at all to inform a player of anything?

I'm absolutely sure anyone can go into your game and find a slew of ooc supporting spam that occurs in the game. It is like an actor (and by the way, I've been professionally acting for many years both in as Equity - professional theater and SAG - Professional film) saying that you better get rid of the microphones, lights, camera and even the stage because it isn't real and distracts from being in character.

Come on let's not argue the ooc channel thing again especially when most IRP muds have the option to tune them out thereby giving you a full immersion of Roleplay.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Well I'm done arguing my point over the matter. We all have different point of views, I realize that, and that's why there will never be any middle ground over this issue.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

OK, made sure to send myself an email of the log last time I was on the desktop downstairs so I'd be able to access the list later regardless of where I was. Here are the shared characteristics that were found, by myself over the years 2000-2008 and by others in a group study last month, when examining the original RPI MUDs, the games to which the term was first applied and hence in reference to. This is a very short summary of the list since each has further points and elaboration that I don't have time right now to edit into a longer definition. That will be done soon.

1. Strictly enforced in-character behavior (though this is not limited to RPIs alone as RPEs also by definition possess this).

2. No player-accessible global OOC channels.

3. Descriptive, generalized skill aptitude and attributes which prevent any precision in determinating.

4. Mechanics-based world for things like combat, manufacturing items, or understanding (or not) different languages.

5. Enhanced emote system that extends beyond the basic emote command found even in some stock codes.

6. Use-based advancement instead of "experience" or other point-based systems.

7. No experience points system.

8. No levels.

9. No classes as traditionally employed in MUDs which confine what a character can and can not do and which are used to categorize that character.

10. Permanent death. Not "soft" permadeath or other such concepts.

11. Detailed character creation and staff approval before entering game.

12. World design driven code. Each of the RPIs had code which was redesigned to meet their world design, not a world designed to meet the arcade-oriented code.

13. Description-based character identities. No names visible.

14. IC conditional PKing only. Killing for OOC reasons or just for fun limited and has consequences.

15. One character per player at a time: this is one of the things that needed refining since use of accounts has since become fairly standard on nearly all RPIs as a means of enforcing this but account systems were not common to all the founding RPIs when the term came into use (though accounts are now used by both the remaining original RPIs).

16. Objects use descriptions to determine quality or identity (no "Sword of Prof1515").

17. Detailed world design including historical, religious, political etc systems.

18. All rooms have descriptions.

19. No detailed who list. Info from a who command was limited to total online or removed entirely.

From my notes on the discussion and analysis, this seemed to the fairly complete list though a couple were derived from an examination of other discussions in the past and the features analyzed to determine if they did indeed match all the original RPIs. #19 was one such example and while the "no accounts" was disproven through such analysis but the "one character per player" aspect of that argument (#15) was proven to be true.

For my part, the list is the product of examining 900-1000+ MUDs including every Role-Play Enforced and even role-play "encouraged" MUD I could find via TMS and TMC over the course of this decade. I've also looked at various discussions by RPI and non-RPI administrators and players over that period as well for insight into feature characteristics. Finally, I compared the original games that the term RPI was applied to and checked each game against the others to see what characteristics were present in each. I also checked features brought up in discussions against those games as well.

Note that numbering of this list does not represent any value assessment of importance.

Take care,

Jason

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

That's a good list. Better then mine. :eek:

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Good job. You have just rewound this this thread back to the beginning.

Let the insanity begin!

(Helpful Hint: Those of you interested in posting while saving time and frustration might just go back to page one or two, copy your posts from there, and post them back here again).:D

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

No I think we're all done arguing here at TMS. These discussions will most likely be archived and re-posted at other sites such as rpimud.com, mudconnector, or even the RPI muds forums so we can get a take on other perspectives and point of views from different forums.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

In the spirit of having too much time on my hands I've posted a few videos on the topic of RPI muds. You can view them at my youtube site.



thanks.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I'd originally skipped this because I don't spend a lot of time on YouTube. Then I had someone who actually plays Threshold as well as other roleplay enforced games tell me about it because he was offended by the manner in which this video was made.

Delerak, I didn't think badly of you until I saw this video. You really should be ashamed of yourself.

For anyone who sees this video or who doesn't, you'll see Delerek, who has such an obviously biased agenda that he cannot even begin to make an objective video, try to log onto Threshold and "fail miserably".

Then, he logs on to an RPI mud he obviously knows very well (oops, it's his mud) in order to introduce us to the "depth" of RPI gaming. He goes on to discuss how wonderful this RPI is because it's got 6 races and 3 PC restricted races. (A total of 9 just in case anyone has trouble with math.) Then he goes on to proclaim that Threshold has 20 races. Threshold has 10 races; that would be 1, yes 1, more than his beloved RPI. Considering he JUST tried to create on Threshold less than 10 minutes before he goes to create the races, he's either really bad at math, can't count, has a horrible memory, or is a liar of the worst sort. The rest of the video is pretty boring but funny as all heck as he continues to make assumptions about a game he spent less than 5 minutes on and couldn't get past the first room of creation.

Okay, so basically, I get the message. In order to prove how elite and wonderful RPI muds are, you have to go to a non-RPI mud that doesn't even want to be touched with the term RPI, get to screen 1 of character creation, and then make a video to lie about said mud. If all RPI players are like you (thankfully, they're not), I hope the stay the hell away from any mud I ever work on or play on.

You obviously missed out on the fact that Threshold is description based character interaction. Too bad you never got that far since you couldn't manage to get out of room 1 of creation.

Okay, now that I've got that flame out of the way, I've got to also say thank you.

After I got over the initial outrage due to your flat out lies and propaganda, I just had to laugh... a lot. You managed to show that Threshold was easy to use. Your video showed that you weren't expecting a lot of the things you found, which caused long pauses when you were reading to yourself instead of out loud. And ultimately, I haven't seen a video this pathetically funny since "Pharoah Out".

In the end, you made AFS muds look like they cater to a bunch of lying, disrespectful, anal retentive morons who are so biased and ignorant that they can't remember how many races they saw on a screen not even ten minutes prior. I feel bad for them that this video is out there representing them, but I'm adding it to my bookmark so that I have something to entertain myself with when I run into twinks who actually manage to make it onto my mud.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Delerak,

First off.. I will admit, I do play Threshold, and have played it for a number of years off and on.

However, I can honestly say that your video was utterly.. disgusting.
You did not even begin to actually pay attention to the character creation Threshold had, or even give it a chance. You stopped before you even actually got started.

The 'approve me' is not a jump into game. It's a run through of making sure you have the basic idea of what the game is, and then you enter a brief writeup of the character you wish to create, or at least a overview of the general type of characters you usually enjoy playing. This is to ensure that you understand that the MUD is focused on RP.

After you get past that.. *then* you are allowed to create your character. Those 'stats' you saw.. really they are only there to measure that category to determine guild eligibility. Everything else.. skill base.. which you'd know if you had actually gone through with things, instead of half-assing it.

All the character creation things you have, are present in Threshold.. age. height.. weight... special features.. Okay, only difference is, to my knowledge you have to wait until you are in game to set up your full on full description.. which has the same requirements as yours does.

I actually went to your game, and looked around. I started making a character, up until the entering the BG, mainly because I was just taking a stroll through it myself. I must say, there are several things that I see as being a rather big no-no in my book. Mainly, providing a player with the appearance of a choice he/she can't make. Races you can't be right now.. hmm not exactly hard to take those, do some coding, and have them only displayed to the people who have the 'points' to play them. Then there's the part of choosing schools.. it says to use 'help school' to find out more.. then what.. no help?

The no help thing is *exactly* why there needs to be some ooc channels, and the player 'in the game' as fast as possible. That way they do have access to people who can help them, and discuss questions they may have.

Now you may be saying that I'm anti-RPI muds. Absolutely wrong. Take a look over at RPIMud. You will see that I am a member there, and have posted about the games. You honestly are the one that I mentioned over there that made me concerned to even be associated with the website/forum. Your elitist attitude is sickening... and I had to fight to keep from dying laughing where you pointed to RPIMuds as a definitive source of what an RPI mud is. None of the things you say are required are mentioned there.. in forums yes.. by a few.. but the main site, where it talks about who can join and all.. nope. Just a few things that are generally seen on them, but that the main intent is that it be a true RP focused game. Course I had to laugh harder still about the fact that the original owner of the Site, left it because of destructive attitudes like yours.

i also find it amusing that you have a video about your being called a 'bad player' and having been banned from Armageddon. You make claims about how you only had one account or didn't do something.. and then a few minutes later go on to say wait.. maybe you did.. can't remember and such. You admitted that you broke the rules there.. and then when you are trying out Threhsold, you break their rules.

Now I am all for things that enhance Roleplay. I am an avid roleplayer. I adore LARP.. because I can costume, I can actually act.. I can make my props.. I get hours.. and sometimes entire weekends of uninterrupted RP with no OOC. But those things that enhance roleplay are generally considered features... not a playstyle. Roleplaying is a playstyle.. Hack&Slash is a playstyle.. Questing is a playstyle.

Oh, another reason to have ooc channels. You even admitted in one of your videos that players *do* break character to share information like emails and IM's. WTF? Why the hubub about having no ooc channels when you do it without them? Provide the channels for those cases.. plus.. hey.. it is a powerful tools for building comraderie amongst all your players. Oh, wait, you calimed that as an actor it is hard for you to act with chatter milling about. Hmm you *do* realize that actors deal with chatter that breaks character *constantly*.. right? Director shouting orders.. giving advice.. lighting crew. OOC chatter is normal.. which.. oh wait.. you have admitted in one of your videos.

You really did a number on yourself with those videos. You just showed that you cannot hold to your stories about anything. Say one thing one moment, and then another the next. Oh, and I love the part of your parents coming in and pretty much thinking your nuts. Oh and.. for the cipes sake.. keep your shirt on.


Oh, I will admit that this is a bit of a rambling mess, but well, there was a lot to talk about, and got to it as I recalled it.

Edit: Oh, and don't say you didn't want to start this thing back up again. You knew what would happen when you made the video and then posted it.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Oh man. Where do I begin? :)

Once again, this is proof you do not read other people's posts. I never said this, and I do not know anyone who did. You are perfectly free to use the term RPI, but due to its incredibly generic nature, so are other people. If you want exclusive control over a term, proper nouns and specific terminology are better.

I will let people imagine for themselves why are you totally unable to grasp this very simple concept.

LOL! Emo much?

You find a clean, easy to use interface confusing? That explains a lot.

I think what you mean is you don't want to give us any more good PR.

I really appreciate you making this nice video that shows how easy it is to use the Threshold character creation interface. That version of character creation was written in 2004 (though it has received minor tweaks here and there over time). I am a perfectionist and I am intensely critical of my own work. I frequently wish I could find time to write a new creation system from scratch. I often worry it is not easy and user friendly enough. Thank you for demonstrating that it is still quite easy to use - even by someone who is doing everything he can to make it look as bad as possible.

Would you send me a copy of your video so I can use it for promotional purposes?

I am so shocked! :)

So you have 9 races. Threshold has 10 races. Your point? Is 9 the magic number? Is this like the Priest in Monty Python's Holy Grail?

BROTHER: "And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou make they mud. Then, shalt thou create nine races, no more, no less. Nine shalt be the number thou shalt create, and the number of the creating shalt be nine. Ten shalt thou not create, nor either create thou eight, excepting that thou then proceed to nine. Eleven is right out. Once the number nine, being the ninth number, be reached, then release thou thy Holy RPI of Antioch towards thy foes, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff them and steal their players.'"

Huh? People have been keeping track of this for thousands of years. You can read about it in the Old Testament. Is Dark Sun pre-speech and pre-mathematics? Like, Cro-magnons?

Do you read books or study history at all? Should you even be making or commenting on muds if your understanding of basic history is this flawed?

I think it is strange that of all the features of your mud you could have demonstrated, this is what you chose. Is this the most unique and "interesting" feature that sets your mud apart from others? Hiding character age? REALLY? That's it? That's your ? I find that perplexing.

Well, obviously you cut short your creation on Threshold specifically so you could avoid all the other steps. I find it amusing and impossibly coincidental that you stopped RIGHT before the step where you have to write a character outline and get it approved before you can enter the game. You started mumbling under your breath and quickly said something to the effect of: "oh yeah um, we'll stop right now... yeah, that's the ticket!"

After that, you would do things like create your description, eye color, hair color, and pick your general height and weight category (for example: very short, short, average, tall, very tall... sound familiar?). Then you could establish the background heritage for your character, which represents your character's childhood, upbringing, etc.

And those are the parts that determine your short description. So when you are in a room, someone sees "Male elf with dark brown hair" not "Oguma."

In other words, the creation process is actually quite detailed and addresses a lot of role play oriented features. But you deliberately and conveniently stopped before those steps.


You think brevity is a big word and claim to play on role play heavy games?

Are language skills this lacking on the games you play and make?

Yeah, nobody ever says they are Staff Sergant Smith, right? Oh wait. They do. Ooops.

In competitive gymnastics in the US, kids are specifically divided up by level. They literally call it levels. I believe the levels are 1 through 10. To attain different levels, you have to be able to perform certain types of gymnastic maneuvers. So one is literally a "level 8 gymnast", and they refer to themselves in such a manner. This method of classification goes all the way up to competing for the National team.

I have never said level systems are the best or only way to do things. But to claim the concept of levels are "OOC" is simply ignorant of reality. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your rant.

--------------------------------------------------

Delerak, you are a sad, sad, sad, hilarious man. :)

I have never seen a more unintentionally hilarious backfire of a flame attempt. If I were not the target of this video, I would think this was an elaborate scam to give Threshold more publicity and positive press. Please do not EVER, EVER, EVER take that video down.

As funny as this failed flame was, absolutely nothing touches the awesomeness of your other videos, like this one:



I am not sure what my favorite part was.... It is hard to decide between you doing pushups, your random lack of a shirt in the final 30 seconds, or when you parents walk in to ask you to do some kind of chore, ask you what you are doing, and you have to lie to them and say you are doing an interview with Microsoft. Hahahahahahaha. Ok, its the parents coming it. That is just awesome.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Most of the videos aren't meant to get my point across, a lot of you have failed to realize that they're supposed to be funny/spoof videos. It's hard enough to get your point across on a forums, trying to do it in a video is 10 times harder, if you think you can do better, please go ahead. The videos aren't meant to be taken seriously, I posted the link hoping to alleviate some of the seriousness behind RPI's but yet again I've failed it seems to even do that, with what is blatantly not a collection of serious thoughts at all. Every single video from start to finish is improvisation, not a thing is written down or collected as a whole thought-- which is the whole point.

I mean come on, in the middle of the videos I even put the dumbest stuff (the world of warcraft bit) that has nothing to do with the video at all. If that's not enough to prove that the videos are not meant to be taken serious I don't know what is.

I really wish people didn't take things so serious, although at least SOME people on these forums did laugh at them, which is the POINT of the videos.

But whatever, people can believe whatever they want, if I felt the need to do a collection of videos that are actually thougthful and not a satire towards something I would probably take an hour or two, write down my points, collect data, cite references and then do a video about 1 subject instead of having a bunch of stuff rolled into one video.

Unreal. You guys need to learn to laugh..heh.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I still can't get over how many people seem to be taking these videos seriously.. haha.

Got a couple of threshold players flaming me now. This is great.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Dude, don't worry. We were all laughing uproariously. Unintentional comedy is still comedy, and is still entertaining.

I watched a total crap movie last night (No Country for Old Men.... one of the worst movies I have seen in at least a year), and then sat down to the computer and discovered your videos. Your videos washed away all the bitterness over wasting 2 hours on that movie and replaced it with a good hour of laugh out loud entertainment.

I probably wasn't laughing for the reasons you intended though. :)

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

As long as you're laughing I honestly don't care. They're not meant to be taken seriously. If you didn't notice that within the first 2 minutes of every video I have (except for the RPI viewpoint one) then you're daft. If you think you can do better at satiring the subject of RPI's vs non-RPI's go right ahead. I'm waiting to see your comedic genius. :)

I have to go for a bit, but when I get back I'll try to do another SPECIAL video just for you guys.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

That sounds like the Jon Stewart (or any "political comedian" for that matter) dodge:

Step 1: Attack something or someone - the more bitter and vitriolic the attack the better.

Step 2: If critical praise is received, puff up your chest and act like you are brilliant.

Step 3: If criticism is received, or if anyone points out glaring flaws in the attack's "logic", say: "Hey, I'm a comedian, I'm trying to be funny, its a joke."

Generally, the real joke is the person using this dodge.

No Delerak, your intent was very clear and your bitterness was even clearer. In the two videos linked here already, you were trying to make attacks and they blew up in your face. The parts that were funny were the unintentional comedy (like your parents walking in to tell you to do some chores, and you had to lie to them about being in an interview with Microsoft). The parts where you were trying to be funny (like the WoW teamspeak part, or the pushups) were just kinda weird and made the viewer embarrassed for you.

But by all means, keep making videos.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Oh, I was laughing, don't worry about that.

I've been following this conversation for a while, and have remained silent for the most part. I spoke up only when I just couldn't keep from saying something anymore.

Your video on Threshold was one such incident. I had watched the others.. had a good laugh at your expense and moved on. But the half-assed comparison between your game and Thresholds. Yeah, that I'm going to take offense to, and call someone out on.. and then well.. all the stuff that had annoyed me from this thread came out.

Oh btw... I wasn't flaming you as a Threshold player. Yes I play the game.. have been for approaching 9 years now.. but like I've said, I play it off and on but it is still the only mud I really do play. I posted because I personally, as a game designer, took offense to it. Didn't matter what game you used for this, I would have gone, looked at them and then likely have responded in the same exact way.

Honestly, satire or not, your videos were in the general tone I've seen come from you through this whole thing, so they realy just did little more than serve as a showcase to thoroughly discredit you in every possible way for me.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

If I had more time to respond I would, but I'm just checking in. If you fail to realize that I can cut any part of the videos then I may as well just give up right here and now.

I left it in because it was intentional. I'm not going to go over my videos for people who fail to realize what's even going on in them.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

My dog in this fight is this one. You can't possibly believe that the RPI community is really catering to: "a bunch of lying, disrespectful, anal retentive morons who are so biased and ignorant that they can't remember how many races they saw on a screen not even ten minutes prior.

And in the following sentence do you really mean that we're all twinks? That seems a bit heavy handed.

I know a lot of RPI (AFS?) players and in so far as I'm aware most of us don't eat babies.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Okay, I'll try my best here.

Do I have a biased agenda? No, do I have an agenda? Yes. To prove my point which I could not prove in this thread, the fact remains that RPI's differ, the character creation is only one of many aspects that differ and make RPI's have superior roleplaying and atmosphere. It's harder to get into an RPI mud then it is other normal muds. RPI's are like an exclusive club where most people can't get in due to ignorance like your post you've made here.

First of all, if you're going to list what I do in the video, at least admit that most of my comments are sarcasm. If you cannot detect this then you have a long ways to go in social settings. A LOT of what I say in my videos is not to be taken serious, this is obvious by my tone of voice. The only video I have so far is the RPI viewpoints video I posted, and the difference between that video and my others is quite obvious. If you'd like I'll provide the dialogue of my video so people can see just how ridiculous it is that you guys take my comments to heart.

Wow.. I don't even know if I should reply to the thing about logging into my own mud. I even stated that I'm showing favoritism by logging into my mud, but at the same time, it still proves my point for character creation. Yes I admit during this part of the video I did go off on tangeants about the features my own mud has during character creation but is this not the point? My point was that the character creation for RPI muds is far more in-depth and I proved that, and I didn't even get 30% into the character creation process of my mud.

In my next video I did get out of ROOM 1 of character creation and I have to say I wasn't impressed, my point still stands.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Delerak. I will say this as succinctly and kindly as possible. You have sunken to a alltime low. Whether your video was a joke or not, it was extremely poor taste, offensive, and childish. Something we as Admin of MUDs should be above. We are the elite in games and epic roleplay not 13 year olds.

You owe Threshold an apology.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Again, I'll try my best here as I did with Mina's post heh.

First off I can honestly say I don't care what you think about my videos.

My point stands about character creation differences.

That's great, it still proves my point.

My mud is far from finished and there are OOC channels on RPI's they just aren't global. If a player needs help you have forums, petition (in game wishing to the immortals), Instant Messengers, and a slew of other ways to contact people to get help.


Actually, you have no idea what you're talking about. The fact is I had multiple accounts years ago, and I have had the same account for probably 4-5 years now. I had another account because one account was bugged and wouldn't let me login, that's what I was thinking about -- I probably should have made that clear in the video.


Not on-stage. I do live theatre and that's where my experiences come from. As far as your references to actors dealing with character breaks, sure. We have to deal with it, we don't have to harbor it and allow for it on our muds, that's like saying we should just let the public into the studios to watch and talk while the actors are trying to act. It's private for a reason.

If you can do better I await your link. And my shirt won't come off again. Like I stated before these videos aren't 10 straight minutes they are done throughout the day when I get time to record and say some ****.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

If I was trying to make attacks, I assure you I could Threshold. This is no where near the utter destruction I could weave upon your mud if I felt I would like to. I could care less about Threshold. I chose to satire your muds character creation because you stood out the most in my mind being against us using RPI for our muds, and I felt that you simply never understood our viewpoints, therefore comparing the two character creations could only help or perhaps even hinder you if that's the case now.

Also if you don't detect my sarcasm in the videos, then I don't know what to tell you, they weren't made with seriousness in mind, and you can believe whatever it is you want to believe, but I say again, the videos are all light-hearted.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Your mud is next on my list to compare features between RPI's and non-RPI's.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

You know what I don't even have to. I noticed you post logs from your mud, perfect.



Any RPI player can compare those to the ones posted on SOI and Arms websites to see the differences in roleplay between normal mud and RPI muds.


Here's arms link for RP logs.


And SOI's:

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Delerak, I really wish you'd let this one die. Dragging the thread out in debates about semantics and terms and what "kind" of roleplaying is better is just silly.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Let me quote from my own post again:

And again:

If I thought they were all like this guy, do you really think that I'd feel bad for them in having this video represent them? I wouldn't bother to make that statement.

Lastly, Threshold shares many players with Armageddon and Harshlands. One of our long time players is a former admin of Harshlands, and I value her greatly as a player and a roleplayer. One of our 10+ years players is now building on the new Armageddon. She's one of the best roleplayers I know and a great person. There are tons of people who enjoy a huge variety of games, and they enjoy roleplaying in a lot of places. They haven't secluded themselves to any one type of mud. :) I adore most of our players, and some of them dabble on some of the AFS muds, and they move easily between the two (or three or four) games. I'd hardly classify them with the person who made those videos.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

ROFL. I'm scared to see you at your worse then. You do so much to hurt your cause that I'm glad we don't share the same opinions on roleplaying and muds.

You need to look up the word biased. All your posts and all your videos dealing with AFSes are incredibly biased. If you had bothered to read this thread at all instead of going off half-cocked all the time, you'd be able to see and comprehend that everyone knows that AFSes differ, and most of us do not want to be categorized with AFSes. They have a very specific set of features that some of us believe hurt a roleplaying environment and the progress of players, and we've opted not to have those features. If you knew anything about coding, it wouldn't take more than a month of hard work to put in every feature set that AFSes have. It also doesn't take anything to add about 3 hours of work for a player to get into a game. Anyone can be anal retentive and reject dozens of character creation attempts. We actually actively make sure that this does not occur. Players are not to be kept waiting to get into the world and begin exploring their characters.

Thank you for confirming that AFSes (at least yours) are nothing more than an exclusive clubs where you're expected to jump through all sorts of hoops in order to "belong". That's been the point many of us have been trying to make for quite some time.

ROFL. I hate to inform you, but you failed miserably at seeming sarcastic. If that was your intent, you need to take some acting classes because you aren't very good at it.

If that's true, then you wouldn't be here trying to defend the points and the mistakes you made in the video. If it's satire and silliness, then the content is irrelevant, and you were just having a good laugh. You contradict yourself by arguing so vehemently the points in your film that people have taken exception to.

I thought the point was that you were trying to be funny. Isn't that what you claim the point is? Remember, I'm socially lacking because I found your video to be intentionally misleading and didn't get that you were trying to be intentionally funny. I did think you were pretty funny in a pathetic way, but most of the RPI stuff was just boring, honestly, except for the part about medieval people not knowing how to tell time or count days.

Well, good thing we're not trying to impress you, and yes, I understand that your point is that AFS muds are elitist, exclusive clubs for roleplayers who think they're way too good for any other type of game. That's been what I've been trying to get across this entire discussion*. :)

*(In case anyone missed it, my point has been that many, many AFS players post and behave this way, not that all of them do. )

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

"Utter destruction you could weave upon our mud?" Are you 10 years old or something?

Forget about Threshold and spend some time writing docs for your mud, which needs them badly. I'm bowing out of this "discussion" now that it's been turned into a useless flame fest, and I apologize for getting sucked in and contributing to it.

AFS players, please know that I do value your feature set and think that it plays a huge part in the roleplaying community. I understand the appeal of AFS games, and I wouldn't have spent time contributing to the list if I felt that it wasn't a worthy endeavor.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I could care less about threshold. It was an example in my video. I have plenty of docs for my mud as well.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I don't represent anyone but myself and my own views.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

I'm glad we don't either. You play at Threshold, why am I not surprised at your retaliation?

None of my posts or videos are biased. It's my opinion, which I believe is truth. If I wanted to be biased I would blindly support any RPI mud I find but I don't. I support RPI muds that I believe do it right, but it takes a lot to do that.


I never said they were exclusive clubs, I compared them to exclusive clubs. Compared to normal muds where you can login a lot easier, this is also in regards to the character creation process. Maybe I should have made this clearer.


I've been told that by many people, but I just don't believe them.


It's only a mistake if I admit it, so far I've only mistake I've admitted is using my mud as a comparison and going into detail about my char-gen which was bias somewhat.

I'm not even gonna try and respond to this. It's a mixture of satire and making a point about something, try reading the Canterbury Tales sometime.



[/quote]

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

Hahahahahaha BEWARE THE CRT WARRIOR!

What form would your destruction take? Would you do push ups on my server?

Are you sure your parents wouldn't walk in and ask you to take out the trash in the middle of your brutal assault?

From your videos, we learned:

1) You have been banned from at least one major mud.

2) You have been accused on multiple occasions of code theft, and in at least one occasion it was true and necessitated an "immediate fix."

3) You are 24 years old and you live with your parents.

4) You lie to your parents about your crazy activities, and seem to be trying to make them think your computer activities are far more serious and productive than they are.

5) You don't even grasp how absurd and embarrassing your own videos are.

But seriously. Please keep it up. :)

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

1) Yes.

2) I already addressed this.

3) Actually I don't, it was a joke and you're apparently too daft to realize it. But I'm actually flattered that I convinced someone, (thought my acting wasn't that great?).

4) See 3.

5) It's also embarassing if I let it. And I don't really care what you or anyone else thinks about me.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

My videos are satirical in nature, they are the ones who are "dragging" this whole debate out and making me out to be the bad guy when in fact I'm just stating my firm belief in something. We're all entitled to our opinions and if anyone else has the guts to post videos of their opinions I await the link.

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

The abbreviation you're looking for is RPI. Using inaccurate terms like "AFS" doesn't do anything but confuse people. RPI is the historical term for games utilizing the features and philosophies shared by games like Armageddon, Harshlands, and Shadows of Isildur. One might further break down the games into three or four sub-categories such as Armageddon-Type RPI or Harshlands-Type RPI since there are small variations in the other features of these games as well as the implementation of the 19 shared features (Armageddon for example does not show any generalized skill aptitude while Harshlands uses 4 terms to broadly represent them).

Having spoken with many coders including those working on developing RPI type code from scratch, I do believe they'd find this statement inaccurate. Stock codes like Diku and the like just aren't built around RPI specifications.

As for the believe that they "hurt a roleplaying environment", I'd like to hear just how they do. I've played over 950 different MUDs, over half of them role-playing MUDs of one sort or another (including every RPI that's ever opened its doors) and if I had to sit down and make out a list of the 100 best role-playing moments I've ever seen, every one on that list would probably be from RPIs (I say probably only because I have never made such a list and can't therefore say definitely though off the top of my head I can not remember any role-play on a non-RPI that can compare to the best I've encountered on RPIs).

It doesn't take "about 3 hours of work for a player to get into" a RPI unless you count developing the concept for a character before you actually log into the port to create it. The chargen (character generation) process can take maybe 5-15 minutes depending upon user familiarity with the process. Approval can take between an hour to a day (depending on staff availability).

The last time I created a character on a RPI, I spent several days designing the character before I even logged into chargen. Chargen itself took me about 5 minutes if that. Even if I weren't familiar with the process it wouldn't have required that long a time to input the data. Was accepted on the first attempt as all my characters have been, even the very first one I ever made on a RPI because if you read the information in chargen and have a reasonable degree of English proficiency you shouldn't have problems getting through the process without a hitch.

As for the statement that "anyone can be anal retentive and reject dozens of character creation attempts", this only serves to illustrate the difference between the RPI philosophy and that of some other games. RPIs concentrate on a process intended to maintain consistency with the setting in the game world in order to provide the immersion players often say they want. You'd be surprised by the number of green-haired, black-eyed characters are submitted. The usual problems that the players commit which results in a rejected application including not reading the information on the screen or just outright disregard for it leading to unacceptable descriptions and backgrounds, use of horrible spelling and grammar, and sometimes accidently forgetting to complete parts of the process before submitting.

As for keeping a player waiting, it's not about that. It's about reviewing their application to ensure that there aren't grievous errors or incompatible elements in their description and background which could cause problems if they were in the game world. These can be stuff like the aforementioned green hair or a character having a noble background without approval (since nobility would carry with it rights in a society, it's not something you can just choose to have).

It's not being "anal" though, it's ensuring a consistent fairness and standard across the board for all players and preventing glaring inconsistencies with the game world. If just anything goes, you end up with a mess of a world. A comprehensive oversight of chargen prevents or at least limits the possibility of that happening.

Attacking all games or even one because of a single person's opinion is a dubious means of backing up an argument. The "point" many of you have been trying to make is hardly that, it seems more like a defense of a lack of standards. The tired old claim of "elitism" is just a way of opposing something or someone by attacking alleged motives rather than facts.

The same could be said of many non-RPI players as well but it's irrelevant to the discussion. I wish people would stop with the personal attacks. It's a flawed tactic. It doesn't legitimize a position to attempt or even succeed in discrediting a person with the opposing position. Even if the leader of the KKK said "2+2=4" and Mother Theresa said "2+2=5", the Klansman would be correct and she would be wrong. That he also advocated violence and racism while she works tiredlessly for the poor and suffering wouldn't matter.

Role-Playing Intensive (RPI) is a term that was applied to a specific set of features shared by a small number of games which concentrated solely on role-playing and heavily modified existing codebases to suit their needs. Those modifications occurred originally in two, later three, different games each independently coded (not sharing the same coders) and were adopted by other game developers over the years as well, most utilizing the code of one of the first two as a starting point. Along the way, the term Role-Playing Intensive or RPI was coined to describe these games because the modifications they had enacted were concentrated on supporting a philosophy of role-playing, not mob-killing like the stock codebase from which they had begun. The term began to be viewed as an indicator of quality role-play, possibly because the quality of role-play on these first games was higher than the standard found in the MUD community at the time. Whether as a result of wanting to piggyback off this perception of quality or merely as a result of poor English skills, Role-Playing Intensive became somehow associated with the belief that it meant "intense role-playing" and other games began to use the term to describe themselves. Confusion and contrasting uses of the term began to occur, sometimes causing problems for RPIs and even sometimes for non-RPIs.

Some, like myself, have sought to clarify and correct this misuse because it a) hurts RPI MUDs by attracting players who have no desire to play such type games, b) hurts the MUDding community by maintaining the lack of standards for which the community is known, c) confuses players by the inconsistent definitions employed more and more without regard for any reasonable attempt at maintaining consistency. The only ones that gain from this are a) dishonest MUD administrators who rely on propaganda to promote their game as opposed to honest descriptions, b) disingenous MUD administrators who would rather bring the standards, and perception of such standards, of the community down rather than raise the standards of their own games. While everyone likes to bitch about low standards in the community, be it an overabundance of stock Dikus or other such grumbling, the debate over the misuse of the term RPI is no different other than, for some, the shoe is on the other foot now. The term RPI is no more accurate or inaccurate now than it ever has been. The problem is not the term, it's the way in which it has been inaccurately employed without thought as to meaning. Why this has happened isn't even the point. Whether the result of deliberate deceit or simply ignorant misunderstanding, its continued abuse serves only to reinforce the negative perception that text-based games are amateurish and somehow inferior to graphicals. And that's just not true. But maintaining a community that allows blatant disregard and even deliberate undermining of any sense of standard certainly provides nothing but a black mark upon us all.

Take care,

Jason

Re: Guidelines for an RPI mud.
 

If ever there was a sign that a thread was out of content, this is probably a good one.