Message 17296 : An idea for MUME role-playing (Gwaywffon) Written on Fri Mar 12 19:43:47 1999 Harken, all ye of Middle Earth. [Warning... long, OOC post follows] PROPOSAL FOR `ROLE-PLAYERS' IN MUME This posting is a result of a number of conversations between several of the players on MUME. The fundamental concern is that role-playing (i.e. acting out a part with your character, as if you were really in Middle Earth), is sometimes difficult to achieve in MUME. This is not because of the technical limitations of the MUME-code. To the contrary, the MUME environment is incredibly rich and the world is as extensive as it is detailed (hats off to the implementors!). The problem that I wish to address is one of player attitudes and interaction, and over the course of this document, I will expand what I mean further. Before going on, however, let me first define a few acronyms (and their meanings) that will repeatedly come up. For those who know these things already, forgive me, but you would be surprised how many people ask me what they mean. RP - Role Playing. The playing of your character as if he/she was a real character within Middle Earth. It means reacting as that individual would do, given their would-be circumstances and history. Hence, RPers - players who engage in RP. RL - Real Life. Apparently, this exists. This is any game information (stats, mechanics, etc.), as well as a players own personal knowledge and experience. In other words, anything that a character in Middle Earth would be oblivious to, should it be reality itself. IC - In Character. That is, an action or response based on the principles of role-playing. OOC - Out-of-character. This is where you act/say things that are not within your characters knowledge/experience base. Examples include anything from RL, gleaned info from another character, etc. Okay. With that out of the way, let me outlay the problems with RP in MUME. The problem is that we have a mixed community on MUME. The RPers (role-players, who are there for environment and what is essentially the acting) and the XPers (experience-point-getters, who are there for the points, score, and thrill of fighting human opponents). I'm not saying that one group is better than the other, but with different motivations for playing MUME, there can be serious clashes of interest. To illustrate, imagine that you have just logged on and would like to team up with some other players on an adventure. The XPer would `tell' people "wanna group?", while the RPer would probably introduce themselves, talk about the weather, ask what was happening on the borders, propose an expedition, etc. etc. To an RPer, "wanna group?" is extremely unrealistic. No-one would walk up to a stranger in Middle Earth with a question like that (unless you want to start a fight perhaps). To the XPer, however, the sort of chit-chat that an RPer would give is a right pain, a waste of time and a heap of unnecessary spam. However, until you walk up and say "wanna group?" or "Hello, I haven't seen you in this fair town before...", there is no way of telling what sort of player lies behind the character that you're approaching. Get your opening line wrong and someone will get annoyed. To remedy this situation and, in a sense, foster a more healthy RP environment on MUME, I am offering the following plan for comments and criticism by the gods and mortals. My suggestion is this. Players should be given a switch or flag, that they can set to indicate that they are role-playing their character. It could be toggled with a simple command. E.g. *> roleplay You are now considered to be role-playing. *> roleplay You cease to be regarded as role-playing. Of course, no-one wants to be RP all the time, just like there is no such thing as a pure RPer and a pure XPer. When you activate the command, it changes the internal RP flag from on to off or vice versa. The flag would be indicated in the `whois' of the player. This would let others see that a player will probably give an RP response if approached. It would let the RPers find others who are receptive to their conversations, and let the XPers avoid potential sources of spam. E.g. *> roleplay You are now considered to be role-playing. *> whois Gwaywffon Gwaywffon the Human Spearmaster is a level fifteen Warrior. Is playing from *.uk. (Roleplaying) *> roleplay You cease to be regarded as role-playing *> whois Gwaywffon Gwaywffon the Human Spearmaster is a level fifteen Warrior. Is playing from *.uk. In addition to this, the `who' command could be modified to accept, say, `roleplayers' as an argument, just as it accepts `men', `elves', etc. When executed, this command would list all the players whose RP flag is activated. This would provide another good way of getting RPers together. E.g. *>who roleplayers Roleplayers ----------- Gwaywffon the Human Spearmaster Clint the Dwarf Barliman the Innkeeper Players who violate the common-sense rules of RP, could have their RP flag turned off for a period or permanently by the gods. By violation, I mean having the RP flag set, but engaging in highly non-RP conduct. MUME can be a fairly coarse, hack and slash arena. Amongst its sincerity to the books, there are some pretty silly non-RP things (like named LotR characters who are the wrong class/race). Hopefully, the suggestions above will work around these poorer aspects of MUME, and would encourage the concept of the RP guild that has been suggested by Petrel, et al., assisted by the provision of the RP flag. For more information on role-playing, read Petrel's book (there's a copy in the Fornost library; type "help books" for assistance). I think that these ideas would encourage the MUME RP subculture to grow. If it has something concrete to latch onto, rather than lots of individual RPers that struggle against the XP-race and if they have somewhere to gather, then it will provide a focus. If they can identify a fellow RPer, then they can be selective about who they group with - should they feel like XPs or RP. And, let's face it, we all need a balance of both (in a ratio to suit our tastes, of course). All comments and criticism are most welcome, either posted here or mailed to me personally. Gwaywffon, of Rohan.