Clear or not, I still think it's misguided and draws the wrong conclusion.
It's not that I need the exposure. Whether I do or not is immaterial. This is an academic debate on the nature of quality in role-play. When cast in that light, "death only" is not something I can support.
Well technically it's an advertisement thread for a MUD and a text-based game community!
As for roleplay, I made that clear too! I don't expect my girlfriend to go to actual federal prison when she slaps me for putting on sunglasses and pretending to be in the FBI and instructing her to stay sexy. Just like I don't expect perma-death to be required in all roleplay forms. Just the ones we list on OR (which is why it is a criteria).
For example lets look at Sindome which is arguably the least perma-death game with coded death on Optional Realities. It is almost impossible to actually permanently die on that game due to the setting, theme, and cloning being one of the fundamental technologies for the people of that world. I played there for a short time, wasn't my cup of tea, but their roleplay wasn't any worse than other RP muds I've tried over the last 15 years. Yet even with cloning being a fundamental part of their setting they still choose to include the ability to permanently die. Why?
EDIT - Note Sindome is a MOO, didn't mean to imply it was a mud.
@Jeshin said:
For example lets look at Sindome which is arguably the least perma-death game with coded death on Optional Realities. It is almost impossible to actually permanently die on that game due to the setting, theme, and cloning being one of the fundamental technologies for the people of that world. I played there for a short time, wasn't my cup of tea, but their roleplay wasn't any worse than other RP muds I've tried over the last 15 years. Yet even with cloning being a fundamental part of their setting they still choose to include the ability to permanently die. Why?
So it sounds like they have fewer permanent character deaths than many non-consent dark themed games. Which makes the requirement for coded permadeath seem arbitrary and irrelevant.
Can you clarify what you mean by "coded" perma-death?
The perma-death requirement is simply that a character can be killed without the consent of the player behind it. We've never said someone has to die every day on your game or anything else. While it is almost impossible to die in Sindome, you can be killed against your will. I'm unsure why quantity is relevant? What if a game has perma-death and code but no roleplay? They'd claim the roleplay was arbitrary too.
Some statistics Sindome Provided on OR
If you scroll down they show their newbie death % , while it is almost impossible to die on Sindome you can still die due to bad luck or people directly and consistently targeting you. Savvy players can simply minimize their risk of perma-death the longer they live requiring a more concerted effort to perm them.
This thread is an advertisement thread for a MUD and a text-based game community!
^ Just so everyone can read it without their filters going off and wiping it from their memory. 
@Jeshin said:
Can you clarify what you mean by "coded" perma-death?
The perma-death requirement is simply that a character can be killed without the consent of the player behind it.
Then forget the coded part. If that game qualifies for your list, then too should most non-consent Mushes.
Yeah, people can die on most WoD MUSHes against their wishes. It just rarely happens because MUSHes have that transparency that MUDs lack, so it gets out OOCly and usually pretty quickly, and the PKer kind of gets branded as an 'asshole' and people start avoiding them.
Sindome
Automated Systems: Combat, Crafting, Cloning, Cybernetics, Medical, etc.
Roleplay Centric: Requires biography and staff enforces thematic roleplay by all users.
Perma-death: Supports perma-death
^ This game meets all the criteria.
Otherspace
Automated Systems: Space travel and Crafting
Roleplay Centric: Requires biography and staff enforces thematic roleplay by all users.
Perma-death: Supports perma-death
^ This game meets all the criteria
The Sea of Storms
Automated systems: combat, channeling, and crafting
Roleplay Centric: Staff enforces thematic roleplay by all users and character progression requires RP logs.
Perma-death: Supports perma-death
Now I picked these 3 games because all 3 of them have a very low or improbable chance of perma-death. Otherspace (to my knowledge) doesn't have a lot of player death running around but it can happen and has happened. Sindome as I explained has cloning but perma-death is still possible. TSOSmud (where I spent the majority of my staff experience) has a running joke that your characters new until their 2nd ooc year of existence. Perma-death exists on TSOSmud and it happened but it wasn't a common occurence.
All 3 of these games meet all the criteria to be listed so yeah any MUSH or MOO or MUD that wants to come and be like. Hey I qualify for this criteria and this is why. We definitely consider them even if they don't fulfill the MUD standard because we are not a MUD only community. So non-consent MUSHes if you have some form of automated system send me an e-mail right here: Admin@OptionalRealities.com
@Jeshin
Requiem for Kingsmouth
Automated Systems: Boons, Daily Waking Vitae (Ability to modify this to include extra things you pay for), Feeding, Monthly Resources, XP Spends, Character Generation (but not approval), Hunting, Rolling Dice (Pulling from sheet stats), Wielding Items, Wearing Armor, Modifying Initiative Scores, Rolling Initiatives, Ticketing System, Ritual Tracker, +OSS Automates Patrols, Automated Territory Investigations, +OSS Automates Coverups, Automated Lacrima deposits based on Garden Attributes, Hunger Prompts, Automated Torpor upon not feeding, Damage, Healing, Willpower Recovery, I can keep going but will not
Roleplay Centric: The only rooms we have are IC ones and if you're on the gird you are on the grid and roleplaying
Perma-Death: We are 100% non-consent, but we have a civilian status that guarantees you the discussion of alternatives but not the guarantee of something not happening
Seriously, What the hell are muds doing now-a-days? My mush has more automated systems than all of those you listed. Shamefur dispray.
The big divide between MUD/MUSH that is never going to get bridged, is how RP happens.
Firan had mud-style RP. No other MUSH/MUX really does. You don't walk around the grid, run into people and say hi.
Only the sea of storms is a MUD the other is a MUSH (Otherspace) and the other is a MOO (Sindome). Also I didn't go into the level of detail you did because my point didn't require it!
That being said at first glance Requiem for Kingsmouth appears to be a MUSH that would be listed on OR if the owner wanted it to be.
On a side note.
I was under the impression that Civilian status does in fact mean nothing will happen to you, but also that you aren't supposed to be starting shit and can't be involved in certain things like politics/territory?
I thought the one between Civilian and Political (I forget what it was called), is the one where you might not be killed, but you might be X instead?
@TNP said:
Then forget the coded part. If that game qualifies for your list, then too should most non-consent Mushes.
From reading earlier in this thread, it's more the "automated systems" bit (the definition of which I find kind of fuzzy) that would keep a lot of MUSHes from being listed. Even in games with varying levels of consent, if your character dies in the story they are dead. The perma-death thing struck me as much more aimed at combat MUDs with continual respawning.
@Tempest The keyword is not starting things. Civilians are protected, but they're expected to not pursue aggressive actions and as long as they do that nothing will happen and alternatives will always be pursued. That being said, There isn't a 100% guarantee that being civilian means you won't die because of that expectation of not pursuing aggressive actions.
Also, you're looking for support. Civilian -> Support -> Political.
Automated Systems
This is indeed a kind of... grey area. Really I'm a big softie and I want to list as many games as I can but I also have principals and so I stick to the criteria (even though I did consider changing it). For "automated systems" I will attempt to give some examples.
Foraging - The ability for characters to "forage" and receive an item.
Combat - The ability to take an action and have the resulting damage / effect automatically determined and echoed. Even if it's Tempest strikes Jeshin for mild damage and we then determine ourselves how we want to RP that out.
Travel - Travel beyond simply moving between rooms such as space travel, dimensional travel, dream travel, teleporations, etc etc.
Territory Control - The ability for rooms, zones, territory to affect characters or be affected by characters without staff manually doing all the affecting.
Investigations / Tracking - The ability for characters to gain information via coded commands without the manual support or staffers or other players.
Crafting - The ability for characters to produce an item based on their skills or abilities.
You don't need all of them. For the most part I like a minimum of 2 in a game but if you only have 1 and it's a biggie than it's just as good to me. When accepting games that applied the automated systems have often been the thing we had to discuss a bit and I normally login or check out websites for helpfiles to better understand their implementation.
Oh also any inventive social / political / magic stuff that might be theme/game specific. It's hard to be comprehensive but I think the idea is getting across.
@jeshin So you didn't actually provide a definition of automated system, but it seems to be any command that performs some action and gives some output. If that's the case, then every game in existence qualifies for your list.
No I didn't. I provided examples of some automated systems.
For Example...
+roll/will strength + swordfighting + specialty <--- this doesn't qualify as a automated system at this time if all it does is output the result of 11 successes and then your opponent would roll and then the pair of you would figure out who won it and get a Judge involved, so on so forth.
Chargen <---- Doesn't count as a automated systems at this time
Score / +sheet <----- Doesn't count as a automated system at this time
I've had some people discuss counting +roll, +sheet, and chargen as automated systems with me but at this time I don't consider them to be automated systems or if you want to argue that they are than they are not the automated systems we mean when we say automated systems.
@Jeshin Then perhaps you need to actually define automated systems beyond 'Whatever I want it to mean at any given point in time.'
Clear or not, I still think it's misguided and draws the wrong conclusion.
It's not that I need the exposure. Whether I do or not is immaterial. This is an academic debate on the nature of quality in role-play. When cast in that light, "death only" is not something I can support.
