So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

In RPI games I see emotes and says done in one of two ways: 1. Everyone says what they want to say when they want to say it, and they emote when they want to emote, or 2. Everyone emotes or says something when it's their turn to do so. In the latter case, thoughtlessly skipping turns makes people mad.

The first way is how role play is done in most RPI games I've played. I've only seen the second way done in two or three RPI games.

Taking turns seems to me to require a lot of waiting. People take their time coming up with highly descriptive poses, and I've waited as long as 45 minutes to have a second turn. To hear it from people in these games, NO ONE does the first way and they can only imagine that kind of role play to be highly disorganized and impossible to follow. Aside from the waiting, taking turns seems to make it easier to leave new people out of a scene as the subsequent players are not obligated to acknowledge the new players if they don't want to (which I discussed ).

I prefer the first method because a lot of communication can be done in a short time. It is highly efficient, and emotes color scenes when they are used to their full potential, or, at the very least, tell others exactly what a character is doing. People also do not have to think up long, prosaic emotes for each turn they have. It also leads to greater immersion as players waiting for their turns end up doing other things (filing taxes, writing the Next Great Novel, getting something to drink, etc.) while they wait.

In both styles, emoting (posing) as someone enters a room is very helpful (usually done in style 1, required by law in style 2) for providing details of a scene to newcomers (that is, newbies and otherwise).

EDIT: I meant to post this on the role play board... Oh well.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I've seen and played both. Generally, most people consider a mud "more RP focused" if people are required or strongly encouraged to sit and take turns, round-robin style, typing very well-thought out, descriptive, 4-6 line poses, and less RP focused if people just spit out one-liners using the "say" and "emote" commands most of us are familiar with from most mud codebases.

The turn taking system ensures that everybody is involved and gets to participate if they want, and gives everybody sufficient time to type out whatever showy descriptive material they want. And it's organized. Nobody gets overlooked that way, and everyone feels a collaborative spirit of having their moment in the spotlight and building a scene together in a very RP focused environment. But you're stuck waiting 45 minutes in a crowded room to finally get your turn to type something, and three quarters of the prose you read doesn't actually advance the scene or communicate all that much. Five lines about how a person moves when he or she walks and his or her facial expression, and one line of actual conversation, that you waited 15 minutes for the other person to post gets unreal. You spent 15 minutes of your real life advancing a fictional mud conversation 30 seconds.

The freeform system is fast, flexible, and lets people focus on content rather than describing everything. It's great for less wordy players who would rather be judged by what their character says, does, and is like than their skills as a writer as they try to describe details that they haven't thought about and don't add all that much to the scene. After all, playing a mud is more like acting in a play than writing a book. You should be playing your role, not writing a story. So thing happen fast, nobody's stuck waiting for their turn, and nobody's stuck reading or writing an entire paragraph of description to speak a sentence. But not everybody feels included when people run in, run out, talk over them, and don't take the time to appreciate their nuances (or write nuances of their own to be appreciated). Very "serious" roleplayers feel like this style glosses over a lot of the opportunities for roleplaying and makes everything feel more like a shallow game and less like a deeply immersive RP experience.

It's a royal pain in the butt in either method to have to immediately drop what you're doing and type something out so some guy who just walked in knows what's taking place. Some muds have a character position/status command that lets you at least set the scene a little bit by changing the text people see when they enter, (e.g., someone entering would see people's names followed by a settable string of text: "Acacia stands at the north end of the street, leaning against the wall of the smithy with his arms folded across his chest, speaking to Snowtroll <next line> Snowtroll squats at the north end of the street in front of the smithy, pooping in front of Acacia , because in serious RP muds, people have to go to the bathroom, and in really serious RP muds, people don't take a break from RP for any reason including pooping")

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

In my experience turn-taking seems to be more popular on mushes, and freeform on RPIs. I don't know how it started but I'm guessing it's because it's easier to interleave coded commands on RPIs when the RP style is freeform. Most mushes have fewer coded commands to deal with.

I admit I get frustrated by the '10 line pose saying nothing' style of RP. Of course you don't always get that, some people are amazing writers. But, especially when there are four or more people in the mix, people seem to forget that to advance a scene you don't really need to do much more than 'the next obvious thing'. People seem to avoid that for some reason, I guess they think it's boring or unimaginative. But I'd rather move the scene than wait a half hour for a (possibly) imaginative pose.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I think you're confusing game styles. RPIs are not turn-based. Your last paragraph indicates that you've played tried several RPIs - but there aren't several RPIs. There are only a few in existence. I think at last count, there were 5. RPI is an actual game designation - not a description of a type of roleplay. Although it doesn't identify a codebase, it does identify specific criteria; turn-based roleplay is not among that list of criteria.

Also, RPIs have no levels, death is permanent, and you don't kill mobs just because mobs exist. You kill mobs only if your character has some need to kill them. Such as - he's a hunter gathering skins for his crafting girlfriend. Or he's a paid mercenary escorting a group through dangerous terrain and protects them from the aggressive mobs that get in their way. Or you're learning how to kill creatures for those types of reasons, and need something to practice on, so you kill some less dangerous things, and sell their skins and meat and body parts in the markets, which gives you coin to afford food and water so you can continue thriving and ultimately achieve your goal.

In other words, the code exists so that players can work their characters into believable in-character goals; not so that characters can level up or get RPPs or stat boosts.

So if what you've been trying doesn't sound much like what I've described above, you've been mistaking RPIs for something else, which might be why some folks here who -would- normally respond, are probably just scratching their heads wondering what you're talking about.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

That or you actually think that there are only 5 RPI games.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Oh, well thats nice to know. I honestly thought RPI was just what you called it where roleplay was mandated and heavily enforced. So what it non-optional Rp Muds called? RPM for Roleplay mandated?

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

There was some big and stupid debate a long time ago about nomenclature/terminology with no real resolution. I don't think anybody cares that much if "RPI" is a special term of art with a very special meaning, or if RPI just means exactly what the descriptive English words would indicate, or whether that's more properly called roleplay-enforced to avoid confusion with this very special term RPI that some people insist can only mean a certain set of features and a certain type of game.

It's pretty clear what OP means by RPI in this particular case by context, and his exploration of muds and the opinion he's asked people to give him hasn't been limited to the half dozen or so muds that deign to label themselves "RPI," nor has it been limited to level-less, permanent death muds, nor turn-taking or talk as you will muds, nor any other specific styles or features.

I don't think anybody is confused, scratching their heads trying to figure out how this guy's questions could possibly mesh with some limited set of features and games, termed "RPI," the definition for which everyone knows or ought to know only means the 5 games on the list of official RPIs, which necessarily must have permanent death, no levels, and no mob killing except as required for RP, but also no turn-taking when it comes to speech and actions.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I just figured that RPI was what the MU* scene was using these days to describe RP Enforced. If RP is mandatory in a game, I don't see what the difference is between that game and any other game that also mandates RP, whether it's mandatory but has permanent death, or mandatory but has penalized resurrections.

Some of the games require taking turns, and others don't. I was just asking what the advantage in the former is, and I posted the disadvantages I had observed.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

People get really itchy about making a distinction between "roleplay enforced" and "roleplay intensive." You'll open a whole can of worms if you get into what is or isn't an "RPI," but try to keep an open mind regarding what's out there. I've found myself loving some muds I never would have thought to try back in my conceited days when I thought I knew what made the perfect game.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Well then, if the consensus is that RPI is an arbitrary word meaning whatever someone wants to assign to it, then I'll just state that the OP's post is asking about MMRs, not RPIs. With MMR meaning - mud, multi-roleplay. That's my arbitary term for it. And RPI, I have decided, stands for Random Puffball Interface.

Y'know, since these terms mean whatever someone wants them to mean, and has no actual significance. Oh and also - just for future notice: RPG - now stands for Rocks, Paper, and Graphics.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

From now on, I'm talking about any game where role play is mandatory.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Wow, its been a long time since we had THIS discussion! :)

The problem with trying to argue that RPI or "Role Play Intensive" only applies to 5 muds is the term is far too generic and non-specific.

Terms like DIKU, LP, Smaug, Merc, MUSH, Moo, etc. have always worked because they were very specific and non-generic. They basically had no meaning outside of defining a type of Mud or codebase.

When people hear RPI/Role Play Intensive, they treat it just like it sounds: a general description using basic words they are familiar with.

The "RPI crowd" could have resolved this years ago if they'd come up with a more specific, non-generic term long ago. Then we wouldn't have this discussion/debate every few years.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

So just out of curiosity, is it more common now on RPIs (by which I mean not mushes or muxes...) to RP in turns, aka 'pose order'? Most muds I've RPed on (by which I mean, not mushes or muxes...;D) ignore turn-taking.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Well, If the phrase RPI means nothing, then who the hell knows. If we're talking about muds that adhere to the very strict criteria listed above (of which there are about five) no. Those muds are completely free form.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

It's hardly arbitrary to take the words "roleplay intensive" and assign them a meaning corresponding with the English definition of those words. What's arbitrary is taking those words and assigning them a special, unique, term-of-art definition specific to a very select set of games and features not indicated by the English meaning of those words, and assuming everyone knows or ought to know that "RPI" means that and only that.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I've encountered some RP-enforced MUDs where there is a pose order, and people get very angry if someone goes out of turn.

I didn't intend for this thread to explode into a [new] discussion of proper game terminology.

This is what I propose: henceforth, all games which require role play at all times while on the grid are RP Enforced; all games which do not require role play while on the grid are Non-RP; and all games which encourage role play but will not cause trouble if you don't stay in-character are RP Encouraged.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

That is completely reasonable.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

That's pretty much how it is now. The only problem with it, is when people want to abbreviate, since both RP-Enforced and RP-Encouraged abbreviate to RPE. As for the whole "well if RPI people wanted their games to be exclusive, they should've made a better abbreviation when they created it" - at the time, they were the ONLY ones who wanted to call themselves RPIs, and so they did, and it stuck, and everyone who knew about the existence of any differences in the first place, knew what everyone meant when they used the term RPI. It was only after the fact that some games chose to call themselves RPIs, when they weren't like the games that had already been calling themselves RPIs, and everyone who knew about them recognized what that meant.

Sort of like criticizing people who call windows "windows" - just because windows is now the latest trendy word to describe a wall-hanging picture frame. Sure, you can call it a window. But it won't be that glass partition between the inside of your room and the back yard.

And sure, you can call your hack-n-slash mechanics game with 400 socials (or verbs, if you prefer), and levels and exp points that requires you to be in-character all the time an RPI, but it still won't be an RPI.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

So the problem nobody thought to make a sticky somewhere explaining the meaning of all the jargon. Rendering all this talk just gobbledygook to any but the most in the know Mudders. So many problems can be solved via stickies. Tsk Tsk.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

There's no need to permanently record something like that for future reference. It's just arrogance. "My mud isn't just roleplay-enforced. It's intensive and very realistic and the entire focus is roleplaying and I have a whole bunch of features to encourage that and took out a whole bunch of regular mud features to discourage anything but that. I need an entirely new term for this very special type of mud that separates me from the herd of other roleplaying muds that clearly aren't as intense. People shouldn't have to read the description of my mud to know that mine's special."

Fast forward a year or so to a mud that's extremely roleplay focused, but maybe doesn't have permanent death, or maybe allows for skill improvement and advancement through more traditional mud means, or maybe even has levels or OOC channels, and you get people going crazy. "That's not RPI! It's not as intense as my mud, because of this one thing they do differently, and I don't want people getting confused and thinking their mud is as intense as mine because they call theirs RPI."

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Point taken. Which is to say I have read your comment and you have managed to convince me to side with your opinion and I believe you. So I am making this post here to tell you that you have convinced me rather then not responding in any way at all which would be rude and inconsiderate.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

This sounds extremely familiar. :-P

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I don't think 'non-RPI' muds (for example, Threshold or New Worlds) ever really advertise as RPIs. What they do claim is that their RP is as 'good' as muds that call themselves RPIs (Armageddon, etcetera), and perhaps respond to LFMs that say 'I want an RPI'. It's like if I said 'I want vanilla ice cream' and someone says, 'well, I have vanilla with oreos, how about that'.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Everywhere I go, there's this sense of pride and superiority, as if the game I'm in is the only game out there that does things right (or exists), and each time it's just the same game as the previous dozen. I buy SnowTroll's comment because there are plenty of games MU* which are basically trying to claim that they invented role play.

I can tell you right now that Ateraan, Threshold, OtherSpace, and perhaps a bajillion other games aren't so special from any other game.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Well that's because none of those games are muds. In fact, the term mud no longer exists, it was created by some guys from Denmark who are all in their 60's now. All these games are just text games, obsolete and pointless. You should go play Ultima Online instead, that's a REAL game. Muds aren't even really games. Just call them - chat rooms with atmosphere.

Since we're diluting the meaning of terms because we don't want to be left out of the in-crowd, or because we think the RPI crowd thinks they're so special but they're really not -

I mean honestly - it's the people who have something against the RPIs that are attracting the most attention, by demanding that the RPI crowd stop calling themselves RPIs, or allowing everyone else to call themselves RPIs too.

An RPI, as stated in a MYRIAD of other threads, is nothing more or less than a text game that includes certain criteria - among which are permanent death, no global ooc channel, RP required, and around a dozen other very specific criteria. There are only 5 of these games, mostly because the vast majority of gamers have no interest in playing them. If they did, there'd probably be a lot more of them. They are ONLY of interest to a very small number of people; out of the tens of thousands of mudders on the planet earth, perhaps only a thousand of them are attracted to RPIs.

It's not because they're elite, or special, or better than anyone else. It's for the same reason there are only a very few games about outer space, or star trek - because most people just don't really care about gaming about outer space or star trek. There's nothing innately superior about either, compared to any other type of game.

So all y'all quit with the ridiculous bashing of people who try to keep the RPI label limited to the traditional meaning of RPIs. All you're doing is diluting YOUR game's place in the mudding world, and muddying up the players who are looking for RPIs - and looking for anything BUT RPIs - by insisting that your game, which isn't an RPI, is. If you keep doing that, then we might as well just all proclaim everyone's mud to be an outer space mud because technically, you access it through the internet, which is just space, which is outside your house, therefore it's outer space.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

What's wrong with classifying a MU* based on whether it mandates RP on the grid, and then further narrowing it down based on what kind of setting, genre, level of PK, whether it is permadeath, and so forth? While we're at it, let's further classify games based on whether you "get 2.key" or "get key 2".

Nothing makes your five or so games particularly worthy of being regarded as more "intense" than any other enforced game.

I don't know what games you are talking about, but I think I can guess one: Black Sands, right? It has permadeath, no global OOC channel (or area), and RP on the grid at all times.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

No one has ever said that some muds are better or worse. Or that RP on one mud is less good than on another. (I mean people say things like that all the time, but those are subjective assessments. Objectively, there's no better or worse when deciding between RPI RPE or H-n-S.) Someone came up with an ancronym that was not in wide use (at the time) to abbreviate in a way that was reasonable a big long list of criteria. RPI. No one says other muds are less intense.

People on both sides of this argument should practice polite discourse. Maybe in a mirror until we can get it right. We've all said the same things over and over. Let's move it along. It's just silly that this argument comes up over and over. I've never been at a urinal, but I imagine the only people who are measuring there are the ones who place way too much importance on the size of their equipment. I think we should all just pee and zip up now.

Apparently on some games you take turns emoting? Does this happen on muds or is it sort of a mush phenomenon?

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Primarily mushes, though I've played a couple of muds where, if not outright required, turn taking is strongly encouraged, i.e., "Hey, you skipped me! It was my turn to post next!" It's not that incompatible of a concept with muds as people seem to think it is. People already take turns in roleplaying muds when you say or emote something, then wait for the other guy to respond before you say something else. In crowded rooms in a mud, it's just polite to let some other people do things between your actions rather than trample all over the scene, and in a couple of muds I tried in the past (that may or may not be "RPIs," but the primary gameplay revolved around speaking and acting in front of other players rather than traditional advancement mechanics), I've seen players deliberately organize a room into "round-robin" pose order once people started arriving. I've seen looser muds where turn taking is preferred, but with the understanding that a room can often include several ongoing small groups and conversations, and people in those small groups can have their own turn order with each other, independent of what's going on in the larger room as a whole.

I guess the bigger question/distinction would be whether there are (m)any muds where turn order is outright required by rules, which I imagine would be a rare thing. Every mud is going to inherently have a bias toward some type of turn taking, but it's normally too much of a pain in the butt to keep track of who's turn it is to roleplay and ask players to sit on their hands if they have something to contribute.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I've seen MU* with table-rooms for a private conversation, and an inn with a bar room, a cafe room, and a lounge. One MU* had a town square with nine rooms, and there was a system of fountains with the major fountain in the center room and a small fountain in each of the other eight (so you could get free water in each room), and all nine rooms also had benches. Since this game featured eight movement directions (plus up and down), you could peer into other rooms to see who was where.

In these games people took the initiative on their own to move sidebar conversations into one of these alternatives to avoid the issue of people speaking over each other in the same room. It's not so much of a problem in the field when groups tend to be small and intimate.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

UL doesn't have any turn taking rule, but people tend to take their conversations elsewhere when places get crowded.
When that's not possible (Perhaps for an event or such), people are pretty good about not overwhelming a scene. Mostly. People that are attention hogs tend to get ostracized.

There are a lot of bars, inns, tea rooms, etc. There are even more outdoor areas that are nice to hang around. Parks with benches, forest glades, ruined temples, etc. Like the poster above me mentioned, some of the larger areas are split up to allow people to keep separate and still peer around.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Pretty much; it's a popular thing in the MUD I run for people to split off into small groups and go somewhere more secluded when things get too crowded in the main speaking areas. Some people prefer to avoid groups entirely. Some of the areas are designed with that in mind, and include isolated spots to hang out, some intentionally hidden.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

"I may not have half a dozen games to rub together for this all but obsolete label, but gosh darn it, I will derail actual newbie questions from actual people with aggressive elitist rhetoric every damn time!"

Seriously though, nobody cares about "RPI" except the people labeling themselves "RPI". To the rest of the world, "RPI" means RPI, which is kind of more 'traditional', being the basic definition of the words.

The "MUD community" just keeps trying to shoot its leg off in these ugly attempts at division and one-up-manship. The vast majority of the games do not have the playerbase to basically sustain themselves and we keep getting this Golden Age BS on the airwaves.

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

I'm still waiting for Jazuela to name the five games that are so far above role play-enforced that they get their very own classification (and a crappy one for just five games, to boot).

This is what I'm guessing will be in her list of games:
FiranMUX (oy vey)
Black Sands
OtherSpace

Re: So what advantage does the three post rule actually offer?
 

Not to be argumentative (and I usually am argumentative), but didn't we hash this out to the nth degree several years ago? I'm suprised there's even a discussion on it. I'm even more suprised anyone cares. :p