RolePlaying

Most people on mume, including myself, arent hardcore roleplayers however i think most of the people you encounter do try to roleplay to a certain extent, or at least try to stay in character mostly. Here are two books written by Petrel about the subject which i found quite interesting to read and much better than anything i could write about the subject:
You take out 'Roleplaying' by Petrel and begin to read.


If you are new to MUME, this will not be an easy book.  At this writing,
Roleplaying in MUME is in need of a revival.  Perhaps you will be part
of that revival!  Much of this work is aimed at people who have played
here a long time, who are interested in roleplaying, but who have not
had the experience of doing it here.  Therefore, some of the specifics
in the examples may be unfamiliar to you if you are new here.  Also, if
you are new here, you may find the world confusing enough without
finding out that there are people with different ideas about how to
play!

Still, that is the reality.  If you are one of those who have a real
aptitude for roleplaying and a real appreciation for Tolkienicity,
you will (I hope) find the energy to plow through this volume and
provide necessary feedback to the author as to how it is or
is not successful.  Whatever your favored style of play, I
hope you enjoy the game, whether or not you enjoy this book! :)

                      Petrel
                      Feb. 11 1997
       Chapter 1 - What Is Roleplaying?

       Chapter 2 - Fundamentals of Character

       Chapter 3 - Roleplaying Behaviour

       Chapter 4 - Game Features and Roleplay

       Chapter 5 - The RP and GP Communities

       Chapter 6 - Creating Your RP Character


   Chapter 1 - What Is Roleplaying?
   ================================

Roleplaying [often abbreviated to RP] is, simply, playing a role
- that is, trying to develop a character, a fleshed-out individual
within a given world [the Tolkien world, in our case], and to speak
and act as that person would act.  

Roleplaying exists in contrast to mere 'gameplaying'.  A gameplayer
tries to score as many points as possible (exp, levels, war points)
as quickly as possible.  A gameplayer tries to learn all the
game data so as to score as quickly as possible.  He may 'stat-hunt'
for a character with exceptional strength or intelligence.  He
tries to get the best equipment possible as quickly as possible.
He interacts with other players enough to get partners to get
experience, equipment, money and war points.  He determines his
behavior (good or evil) on the basis of what will help him score
the most points the fastest.  He tries to find out the numbers
underlying the game: what is the damage roll of this weapon?
how much is the damage of that spell?  what wisdom does a warrior
need to learn that spell?  He uses the 'emote' command to speak
with people who don't speak his language, or to give signals to
his groupmates.  Since xp and wp are gained only in combat, the
combat commands are most important to him.  He races about at top
speed, in brief mode, so that the room descriptions do not slow him
down.  He kills as much as he can, as quickly as he can.  He might
avoid killing elves, but only because he has heard about 'punishments'
for elf-killing.

Roleplaying has different goals.  It is not about scoring points, and
in some senses it is not like playing a 'game' at all.  It is more like
amateur theatre or even like literature.  Roleplayers have the same
kind of joy that Tolkien must have had in creating an interesting
character or plot development.  They are playing for 'pride in
authorship' and for the fun of creating an interesting theatre piece,
not for numbers and points.  A roleplayer recognizes that in a good
Tolkien play not everyone will be Aragorn; there have to be some
lesser warriors and even ordinary farmers and merchants without
combat skills.  Therefore he/she is more likely to accept the
default stats he or she is dealt, or even to generate more unusual
and "challenging" distributions so as to play a more interesting
character.  He/she will enjoy the time spent with other roleplayers
weaving an interesting or beautiful scene, even if this involves
sitting in the tavern talking all night, more than time spent in
raw "xping" with gameplayers.  The roleplayer determines his/her
behavior by what would be natural, appropriate, or interesting for
his/her character in the situation.  He/she uses the 'emote' command
freely to create a sense of scene.  Most roleplayers may look forward
to competition and conflict, but they will want to do it in a way
that arises naturally from the world they have created.

Here are some things which roleplaying is NOT:
- Speaking in a contrived "Old English" style with "thee" and "ye"
 all the time.  (In Tolkien, hobbits and men were generally quite
 plain-spoken.  High-elves were considerably more formal.  The point
 is that one matches one's speech to the demands of one's characters.
 There is no "RP style of speech".)
- Killing every good mob in sight with the excuse that one is "playing
 an evil character".
- Picking fights with people for the same flimsy excuse, and because
 one has heard a rumor that "rp-based whitie pkilling won't get you
 listed".

Furthermore, GOOD roleplaying requires interaction with other
roleplayers and with the Tolkien environment.  One may be able
to play "Macbeth" very well, but if the play being staged is
"Cats", one is not doing good roleplaying by storming onstage
and acting like a king.  Often it happens that everyone wants
to roleplay a king, or, at any rate, some heroic knight or
mighty wizard who has been "sent from Gondor" representing the
Order of the Silver Spoon or some such thing.  Fewer people want
to roleplay the ordinary hobbits of the Shire or farmers of the
Bree-land, and yet if there aren't any ordinary people the kings
and princes will not have as good a time.  Good roleplayers will
want to co-ordinate their efforts somehow.

Good roleplaying and good gameplaying do not mix very well.  
Roleplaying will never make you the top warlord or give you the
most xp.  The things that roleplayers spend their time on are a
waste of time to gameplayers.

Furthermore, the diku system of character development (xp, levels,
etc.) is not very good for roleplaying.  It rewards body count,
not style of play.  A -pure- roleplayer, who spent his/her time on
roleplaying interaction, only hunting when it was in character to
do so, making his excursions long, rich dramas spiced with emotes,
savoring the drama of each blow of the sword - well, that takes a
lot of time, and he/she would find it hard to advance much beyond
level 6.  A certain amount of "xping" is necessary if one wants
to see the farther parts of Middle-Earth.  

Therefore, most roleplayers in a diku system will find themselves
playing in a sort of partial RP style.  They may do their xp-hunting
in a fast-paced scramble, and then spend part of their time engaging
in a more pure form of role-playing.  Or they may spend most or all
of their time xp-hunting, accepting the distortions of time that
involved (like dashing around at hundreds of miles per hour), but
maintaining a consistent character type, being someone more than
just an experience-maximizer.  Or they may RP minimally with a
legend character, but also have a couple of low-levels who RP
more purely.

In fact we do not at the moment have a good RP tradition in MUME,
though some people try it from time to time.  The answer to the
question of "what it means to roleplay in MUME" has to be answered
by a developing community of players who actually do it.



   Chapter 2 - Fundamentals of Character
   =====================================

To role-play a character, you have to know who that character is.
Excellence in Roleplay is a matter of delivering a seamless performance,
of acting in a way that is natural for your character.  But how
do you know what you would naturally do until you know where you
came from, how you have grown up, and what your place in society is?
Instead of sending your character out in the world as a "generic
dwarf", a serious roleplayer will want to address questions like:

CULTURE.  What sort of society shaped your character?  What are its
values, what is its history, what are its songs and proverbs?  And
how does this affect your character?  People do not pay NEARLY
enough attention to this in MUME, I think.  Tolkien says that hobbits
have no magic, yet people turn out hobbit mages left and right.
Hobbits are sedentary and home-loving, yet the aforesaid hobbit mages
are always found sneaking about the darkest troll-caves.  Elves are
basically good people, often stern, but reluctant to use violence
or restraint; and in fact they are described as little concerned with
the fate of other peoples, and spending their time in song.  Not much
like the spell-blasting powerhouses we see hanging around the orc
caves!  Of course gameplayers can't be judged by RP standards, but
there are a lot of people who think they ARE good RPers and yet have
chosen to play very strange elves and hobbits.  

FAMILY.  Who were your parents?  Your grandparents?  Are any of them
alive?  What other siblings or other relatives do you have?  What
was their place in the community?  (ALL the following questions about
your own character can - in a second pass - be asked about these
relatives!)

BIOGRAPHY.  Where was your character born?  What was his/her childhood
like?  What happened to make him/her become who he/she is today?  (By
the way, the story that 'my parents were killed by orcs, so I seek
revenge' is QUITE overused by roleplayers.)  What are you ashamed of
having people find out about?  Which of your accomplishments do you
boast about all the time?

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION.  This seems like the easiest thing to do, but
just look at people's descriptions and you see how many people neglect
it.

ABILITIES/CAPACITIES [Stats].  "Stats" should not just be
numbers to be plugged into damage equations, they should guide
your character's behavior!  This is difficult to do, but more
people SHOULD do it, and will get into the habit of it as
roleplaying becomes more common.  If your character has a Wisdom of 10,
shouldn't he or she be rash, hasty, emotional, and 'unwise'?  If
you have an intelligence of 8, why are you making complex battle
plans?  If you have a Dex of 9, aren't you rather clumsy?  Shouldn't
you bump into things every once in a while?  Of course there is no
recipe for this, and I am not saying that your low-int low-wis
character has to mobdie all the time or blunder into deathtraps,
but he/she really should act a bit different from that Elven Mage
over there with Str 18 Wis 18.  Think about this.

TEMPERAMENT.  Temperament should flow from one's biography, native
abilities, and also from the influences that are natural to one's
species and culture.  Read the help files about your species.  Think
about shortcomings, sins, and weaknesses that your character might
have - don't make him/her like a "Generic Perfect Hero/Heroine".
The "seven deadly sins" are anger, pride, gluttony, lust, greed,
laziness, and envy.  Others might include procrastination, fear,
suspiciousness, prejudice, self-doubt, ignorance, impulsivity,
depression, gullibility, and insensitivity.  Which of these do you have?
How about substance abuse?  After a couple nasty mobdeaths I RP'd one
of my characters as an alcoholic for a while.

Notice that I haven't even mentioned 'alignment' here!  Nothing is WORSE
RP than someone who says "I'm playing an evil character" and then
runs around Bree killing off all the guards for no earthly reason.
People do evil actions for reasons, after all, and according to
patterns!  If you're evil, how and why did this happen?  What
will you do and what won't you do?  Aside from 'sins', there are
minor failings, features, and quirks, like good or bad taste in
clothes, pedantry, being a bore, giggliness, standoffishness...
If all else fails, write down ten names of people you know, then
write down ten things about the temperament or character of each one;
what can you take from that list and apply to your character?

OCCUPATION / ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY.  Ressaven said to me once,
"One of the problems with RP on MUME is that everyone is an
'Adventurer'."  This is too true.  It is a rather boring world
when EVERYONE is "a mighty smiter" or "a mighty mage" and nothing
more.  Who are the farmers, the wheelwrights, the herders, the
craftspeople, the peddlers, the hunters, the drovers, the miners?
Let's not act as if everyone was born on a warhorse or lived his
whole life in a 'magic school'!  Even if one is "an adventurer"
now, one surely hasn't been adventuring one's whole life?  Furthermore,
if you are going to be "a smith", wouldn't it be cool to go find
a library book and actually learn something about smithing?  What
are the parts of an anvil, for example?  How would you go about
shoeing a horse if you had to?  Think how much more interesting you
will be!  And you dwarven miners, how many of you know anything about
geology and minerology?  Don't you want to be able to talk intelligently
about hematite and malachite?

POSSESSIONS.  What are your personal possessions?  What are your
keepsakes and gifts?  What is your residence like, when you aren't
staying at the Inn?

SPEECH.  I am not referring to 'Old English Speech' and saying 'thee'
and 'hast' all the time.  Nor am I suggesting that everyone should
speak in dialect all the time; badly done dialect is terrible.
In LOTR, the hobbits are represented as speaking very ordinary English
most of the time.  So don't feel obliged to speak in an 'odd' way;
but consider the possibilities at least.  Is your character's speech
formal or informal, blunt or polite (or overpolite)?  Are there
little expressions that he/she uses over and over again?  Does he/she
show off his/her knowledge of other tongues?  Think of all the ways in
which speech distinguishes characters in fine literature from
Tolkien to Dickens, and see if there are any tricks you can pick up.

SKILLS AND HOBBIES.  What does your character do in his/her spare time?
Cook? Sew? What games is he/she good at? Does he or she play a musical
instrument?  Sing?  Paint?  Carve?  He/she might be one of those amateur
historians / archaeologists / naturalists that England used to be
full of - VERY nice RP for hobbits IMHO.



   Chapter 3 - Roleplaying Behaviour
   =================================

All right, what does one DO with one's carefully developed character?
Much of this chapter will seem COMPLETELY STRANGE to a lot of people
in MUME, because all our experience is in going around and killing
things as quickly as possible.  I am going to start at the other
end of the spectrum entirely, and start out talking about -pure-
roleplay, with NO killing and NO experience attached to it.  I
know some people will want to walk out of the lecture when I
get to the part about the farmer hoeing weeds, grumbling something
like "this is like ballet class" or something insulting :)  Please
bear with me, though.  Once you learn to recognize what 'pure
roleplay' is like, you can incorporate chunks, or admixtures, or
it in your own play, even the xp-hunting smob-killing part.

Many people associate roleplaying with 'quests'.  But quests will not
be running most of the time, so I want to look at the question of
how one roleplays 'ordinary life', so to speak, and then get on to
quests.  In a sentence, your character should act naturally, in
interaction with other roleplayers, so as to develop an interesting
story.  I intend this sentence to incorporate a lot of wisdom in a
few words, viz.:

Acting naturally:  This means acting as your character would normally
act in the situation.  But of course to determine what is natural, one
has to have some idea of your character's occupation, habits, desires
and plans.  If you are a farmer, it's 'natural' to be tilling your
field; if you are a miner, it's 'natural' to be mining.
Furthermore, what is 'natural' depends on what else is
going on from moment to moment.  If an old friend comes by, it's 'natural'
to stop what you're doing and invite him/her to lunch (particularly
true for hobbits).  If a strange character comes into the inn, it's
'natural' to find out what he's up to.  If you overhear a conversation
which suggests an opportunity for socializing, or combat, or trade,
or scheming, or theft, or combat, depending on your character's
propensities, it's 'natural' to try to take advantage of it somehow.
'Natural' incorporates 'spontaneous'.  Your plans can change from moment
to moment.

Now, here is an important point: what is natural is often NOT what
is most advantageous!  Your character knows less than you, the player,
do.  Your character does not know about the spirit in that cave, unless
he's been there before or someone has told him about it.  Your character
does not know that the guy at the next table is a notorious thief.
Of course, you can always claim that somebody told you, and that
MIGHT make sense... but it's not good roleplay if it always works out
that someone has warned you of the dangers beforehand, etc.  
Therefore, it's important to keep a separation between the things
that you know OOC (out of character, that is, as a player) and the
things that you know IC (in character, on the basis of your character's
own experience).  The question of 'narrates' and tells, and if it's
ever permissible to treat information from them as IC knowledge,
is a tough one and will be taken up later.  

Interaction with other roleplayers:  Of course you CAN roleplay
by yourself, if you are a genuine fanatic, or just really in the
mood.  I have spent a pleasant summer afternoon sitting on the
Patio in Rivendell, drinking tea, smiling at the waitress, and
looking out pensively on the waters of the Bruinen...  But I'm
pretty strange ;-)  For most people, there is not much fun in
roleplaying a farmer tilling his field, all by oneself..
l
A Field
This is a field of crops...
A cow is standing here.
emote takes his hoe in hand...
emote begins chopping steadily at the weeds.
emote has found a particularly tough one.
l
A Field
This is a field of crops...
A cow is standing here.

Whether or not you think this is boring, it's sort of a waste of your
fine talents if nobody can see you!  Therefore you really want to find
someone else, even if you are just going to be tilling your field.
It is a legitimate use of narrate to set up RP encounters:

narr Help, I'm tilling my field.. Someone come up with some
    more interesting RP :)
Bob tells you 'On my way'

Bob arrives from the north.
emote , who has been diligently hoeing weeds, takes a deep breath,
       leans on his hoe, and smiles at you.
Bob looks harried and upset.
Bob says 'It's the strangest damned thing.  My well has gone completely
       dry!'
emote looks startled, and says, 'Your well?? really?'
Bob says 'YES.  There's not a drop in it.  How is yours?'

Well, perhaps Bob has somewhere he wants to go with this, perhaps not,
but it's arguably more interesting than standing around typing
'emote hoes weeds'!  Maybe the two of you should go into town and
look for a mason or even a dowser.  Maybe it's the fault of all
these mages you've seen about lately.  Maybe Bob will have to have
a well-digging party.  If you go into town, it gives you an excuse
to drop by the tavern and see if any traveling dwarves have brought any
interesting stories.

Properly speaking, then, Quests and Events are just occasions to
bring roleplayers together.  Killing the boar or winning the
prize is secondary.

If you are participating in some sort of RP interaction,
but want or need to say something OOC, it's good form to make that
explicit:

say The ale is really good here....
say [OOC] Argh have to log out in 1 min. :(

You may in fact want to make aliases:
alias os say [OOC]
alias oe emote [OOC]

Interesting story: This is the trickiest part.  Of course most
ordinary people in Middle-Earth spent most of their time doing
routine things which nobody would have wasted a fantasy novel on.
Therefore, it is legitimate to guide the action of the story that
you are a part of toward interesting topics.  The art in this
is to know how much to bend the probabilities without smashing
them into bits.  Somewhere between 'unnecessarily dull' RP and
'impossibly exciting' RP there is an optimum.  If you are
always 'discovering an old treasure map in your grandfather's
possessions' it will get a bit boring.  But you can always claim
whatever you like about your offline time.

Here's an example from Elendor MUSH.  Llewyn, who plays a Constable
of Bree, and I have just found out OOC that something interesting
is happening in the Shire the following day.  Unfortunately nobody
has told us about it IC, and it seems we are going to be left out
of it.
say OOC: SAY - wouldn't it be natural for you to go over to the
   Brandywine and tell the Shirriffs about the troll who was in
   the Chetwood? [There really had been one.]  As a courtesy, to let
   them know to keep alert.
say OOC: And then they would tell YOU about the other thing.
Llewyn says OOC: 'You're right, I could!  But is there time for that?'
say OOC: Who's to say you haven't already done it? ;-)
Llewyn says OOC: 'Very sneaky!'
(both go back IC)
Llewyn dashes in, all out of breath.
Llewyn says 'I was just over talking with the Bridge guards, and do you
      know what I heard?? -- [etc.]'

The thing that made this work is that he WAS a constable and had a duty
to 'law enforcement' which made it natural for him to go over there.
Also, he had just logged on, so he COULD have been on the road the
last day, for all anyone knew.  By contrast, if a man of Bree comes
up and says 'A mysterious dwarf came to my house last night bringing
news of orcs near Rivendell etc.' this is just silly.  Especially if
he does it every day.

Now, we can edge back toward what experience-hunting in a semi-RP
style might be.  It does not work very well, frankly, if you and
everyone else in the group are killing the same brigands for the
18th time.  Maybe *sigh* you had just better whack the brigands,
take the money and the xp, and go on to more interesting things.
But if you have never explored this area before, or someone else
in your group hasn't, there's your opportunity.  Announce that
you are organizing an expedition and see if any young hobbits
want to come along.  Pick the members for their interest in
RP.  Talk about it a bit.  Buy the supplies and set out.  Go a
little slow, so you and the other members can imagine themselves
standing on that hill, or peering into that dark cave, wondering
what is in there.  Take some time to express apprehension, pride,
fatigue, etc.  Make a campfire and cook that meat, don't just gulp it
down raw like a wild beast! :)  Make an adventure out of it, is
the point.  And for the Gods' sake, don't just do it by remote
control, i.e., narr "Where is the Giant Spider from Bree" "What do
I open at 'In the Cave'" "Is the secretdoor nobash" "How tough is
the spider" and all that!!  Not unless you are utterly stuck, and
maybe not even then.



   Chapter 4 - Game Features and Roleplay
   ======================================

If one is going to Roleplay in earnest, one has to ignore, or
circumvent, some features of the game.  Some of them are pretty
non-controversial among roleplayers, while, with regard to others,
there is no consensus, and reasonable roleplayers disagree.
Let's do the easy stuff first:

Stats

I think it's reasonable to say that if someone is always talking
about his ob, pb, hp, moves, the Damroll of his weapon, level,
etc., he is not roleplaying by anyone's definition.  These numbers
are strictly gameplay stuff.  The same goes for
the names of hidden doors, the % to which you can learn a spell,
and so forth.  I don't mean that you should never type 'stat',
but you should try to convert the numbers into thoughts before
discussing them.

Socials

Canned socials should be viewed with suspicion or avoided altogether.
For one thing, they don't always produce the output to other people
that you would expect.  Use emotes, or can your own aliases.

Travel and Time

The journey from Bree to Rivendell takes about 3 weeks for someone
like Aragorn, but in MUME it can be done in an hour, at a land
speed that you only find on the Bonneville Salt Flats.  This poses
problems, particularly since the option of 'camping' does not
exist at this writing.  If one is travelling eastward from Bree one
has to get to the Last Inn to rent at all, which is a two-week trip.
Suppose you don't have 7 hours to play, though?  In fact one pretty
much has to travel a lot faster than one really should, but when
RPing one should try not to spam at top speed at least, and should
somehow take into account that it is a long, long journey.  The
specifics of this have to be worked out in practice.

Well, that was the easy part.  Now we come to the problematic stuff:
features of the game that are nothing like the books, such as
teleportation, narrating, resurrection, and looting your own corpse.
In general RPers are found along a continuum here between two
poles which I will call Book Supremacy and Game Supremacy.  Book
Supremacists say: if it's not in Tolkien you should not use
it, not matter whether it exists in MUME or not.  Game Supremacists
say: MUME is a consistent world, not exactly the same as Tolkien's
Middle-Earth, and we should RP using the features of that world.
Book Supremacists think Game Supremacists are cheats, while
Game Supremacists think Book Supremacists are unrealistic fanatics.
Some of their areas of dispute are:

Instant Information and Communications

This includes a host of commands, such as 'narrate', 'tell', 'who', and
'where', all of which obtain or convey information by telepathy,
radio, radar, or something of the sort.  Here I also include the
board system, whereby information written on a board in the Havens
is instantly known in Rivendell.  This is probably the area where
the Book Supremacists have the strongest argument.  The point is not
that one should never narrate anything, but that one should not use
the information IC, not in a simplistic way anyhow.
This, by the way, is the answer to a question which was asked
on the boards recently: "How can you roleplay when people can transfer
their thoughts to the other end of the earth?"  

One answer is that one can treat those narrates as just social
conversation among the players of the game, while not using them IC.
This is sort of a new idea for MUME, I know, since everyone sort
of accepts that 'narrate' is a sort of 'battle radio channel'.  
Yes, that WOULD mean that if someone narrates that orcs are at
Nen-i-Sul, and YOU are 1 west of Nen-i-Sul, you are NOT supposed
to turn and run in the other direction (or, if you are a well-armoured
smiter group, spam kill and run east).  You are supposed to keep
on playing your role.

Another is that one can use that information but sort of filter it
first, on the theory that 'narrates' represent 'things that people
have heard about', 'stories that people are telling', 'news from
afar.'  So if some big news happens, and people are discussing on
narrate, and you hear about it, AND it is something someone like
you, in your area, WOULD have heard about, then you can use the
information IC.  This still doesn't help with the orcs at Nen-i-Sul,
though.

A third answer is that one should not use narrates and other OOC
information to -help you get an advantage- IC, but that you can
use it to -help others-.  For example, if someone has gotten
trapped in the Old Wight's lair and needs help, and narrates for
aid, I don't necessarily say 'Sorry, Jack, I don't use narrates
IC'.  But should -I-, as a roleplayer, narrate for help if -I-
get stuck in there, thus magically sending my words via telepathy
and so on?  I did this, I confess.  Twice.  Would I do it today?
I think maybe not, particularly once a Roleplay tradition sprouts
up in MUME.

As for the Boards, I think it would be good if postings on the
In-Character board were prefaced by the name of the place where
the message was actually posted, so that looking at the board
would show you:
 1. Bree: auction tomorrow
 2. Shire: big party!!
 3. Rivendell: minions defeated
This would allow purists to give a little thought to whether they
think the news would really have gotten to their location.

Long-distance Spells (teleport, transfer, word of recall, locate
life, locate object, portal, scry)

These don't exist anywhere in Tolkien, and I think there's a lot
to be said for the idea that "Real Roleplayers" ought not to use
them, but should walk or ride (If it's good enough for Gandalf...).
On the other hand, they're less objectionable then narrate, since
they at least cost mana, have to be practiced, require some
intelligence to use them properly, and so on.

Death and Resurrection

The sad 'reality' (if that's the word) is that 'the gift of Eru',
i.e., praying back to the mortal realms from the Halls of Mandos,
is nothing like anything in LOTR.  Yes, elves resurrect, but they
are supposed to stay in the blessed lands, not run back and loot
their own corpses!  Yes, dwarves maybe come back in some strange way,
but by being reborn hundreds of years later.  As for humans, they
are supposed to stay in the Halls, dot, end of line.  Here, on the
other hand, resurrection is a part of life (so to speak).  The
true Book Supremacists will argue that if you want to roleplay,
you should be prepared to stay dead like a decent chap and let your
friends mourn you properly.  On the other hand, death in MUME is
really easy... maybe easier than it should ideally be.  It's hard
to drag people out of battle, or escape.  Incapacitating hits
are rare.  Tolkien orcs liked to capture people alive, but MUME
orcs can't do that.  So you can argue that resurrection is a patch,
a fixup for the bug that death is too easy.  MAYBE an RPer ought
to sit in the halls and calculate the odds that he might have lived
through the fight after all, and if he honestly concludes (no sarcasm)
that his friends might have gotten him out, then he comes back.
Otherwise he waves good-bye forever.

Regenerating Named Mobs

These are very troublesome to the RP-oriented person.  Let's say you
hear that there is an evil bandit in the Midgewater named Bill Ferny.
You go out there with some constables and defeat him.  All right, but
then he is out there again the next day??  And the next??  How can
one deal with this in an RP framework?  Maybe it's just impossible.
Maybe RPers should just avoid Ferny when In Character, sneaking out
there when OOC to get some xp in semi-RP style.  No easy answers here!



   Chapter 5 - The RP and GP Communities
   =====================================

In the previous chapter I hinted at the the strongest arguments
against the Book Supremacist position.  Argument #1 is very simple:
"If one tries to roleplay anywhere east of Bree on Book Supremacist
lines, you will get immediately killed by non-roleplaying enemies."
That is a powerful argument, to be sure.  There's no easy answer to
the fact that in the current MUME environment if you try to poke
along slowly from Bree to Rivendell, or NOC to Warrens for that
matter, without listening to narrates, refusing to port, narrate
for transes, or use word of recall, you are quite likely to get
slaughtered by some gameplayer who has heard where you are on
narrate and proceeds to chop you up for your equip, xp and wp.
Although it is at least an argument that even Book Supremacists
might want to consider praying back from Mandos if they have gotten
killed by gameplayers.

In fact, the truth is that it is very hard to merge good roleplaying
with the War.  Once the enemy shows up, even the best roleplayers
are spamming around, trying to blast the enemy or get away;
nobody is typing 'emote hacks the orc with a mighty blow of his dwarven
axe' and so on.  And it is hard to do anything about this with
combat as fast as it is, and with the rules against interrace
fraternization being what they are.

So at first glance it seems that it is much easier for RP to be done
in areas that are relatively safe from the wars - west of Bree, by
whities, or in the depths of the orc caves, by orcs.  Or in Moria,
because of its being no-narrate.  Of course, as we get some more
experience with it, we may get some new ideas.

Furthermore, all of this discussion applies to conflict among
same-side players, when some of them are roleplaying and others
are not.  You are playing a good hero.  You see someone killing
the Druid.  You come to the Druid's defense.  If the evil party
is into Roleplay, this can be fun for all.  But if he is just
a gameplayer, or a malcontent trying to screw things up to prove
some point, then you have to decide how to deal with him.  If
you end up trying to kill each other, will you use 'where' to
find out where he is?  Or narrates?  If you do, he will probably
call you a hypocrite.  But if you don't, then he will probably
escape you, or kill you.  Both approaches have their drawbacks.

Argument #2 against the Book Supremacist position is that "If you
do it that way, you'll spoil it for all the other players."  If
you don't trans people out of fights, it's YOUR fault when they
die.  If you don't spam or port from Rivendell to OERMGW to join
the willow party, it's YOUR fault if there are too few casters.
And so on.

Actually, both arguments 1 and 2 are (taken to their logical extents)
arguments against ALL roleplay.  And we have heard them used that
way a hundred times: "The environment here makes roleplay impossible."

But in fact there are plenty of players here who want to RP.  The
problem they have had so far is that they have gotten lost in
the spam and culture of the GP community, and have so far been
unable to develop an RP community of their own.  Partly this is
because MUME culture is shaped so much by narrates, and narrates
have an inherent anti-RP tendency.  And in fact most narrates now
facilitate either stat-hunting, xp-hunting ('what do I open', 'who
wants to do willow') or 'electronic battlefield'-style pkilling
and trans-begging.  MUME culture is also shaped by
what is on the boards, and what do you find there?  Whining about
how there ought to be more damage from this sword or less damage from
that spell or how some bug ought to be fixed, that is, OOC GP
spam.  Partly it is because the code does not support some of the
things that RPers could really use, like, for example, typing
"WHO IC" and getting a list of the people who are roleplaying and
In Character.  And partly it is because the GP-ers are, necessarily,
better at killing than the RP-ers, and, as a result, are better
able to explore all the dangerous parts of MUME.

Short of massive interference with and censorship of GP players,
which happens on MUSHes but which will not happen here, the only
obvious way around this is that RP-oriented players have to
come together and create their own community.  Possibly a
thing like a Role-Players' Guild will come into existence.
An RPG could schedule its own Events, and make some determinations
as to where on the Book/Game Supremacist line the standard
should be set.  RPG members will have 'some way' to recognize
who the roleplayers are, if only by the fact that membership lists
can be mailed to people.  When you go into the tavern, you will
be able to refer to the list and figure out who might be
interested in some RP conversation or activity, and who will look
at you blankly and say 'wanta smob?'  An RPG might be able to
develop a sort of story line, a history of the RP events that have
taken place.. who likes who, who hates who, who has driven who out
of business, and so on.  The stronger and better organized the
RP community is, the more interesting the RP will be; the more
interesting it is, the more people it will recruit.

Aside from the spontaneous roleplaying of ordinary life, which is
likely to result in a lot of small talk in taverns, there is the
possibility of Special Events.  The RPG will be able to sponsor and
implement such Events.  I prefer the term 'Events' to 'Quests',
since the term 'Quest' suggests (to some) that there is going to
be money, xp, or a cool item at the end of it.  In MUME, xp will
be gotten only from coded quests of the Bree Weaponsmith variety.
And those are difficult to code and debug.  (On the other hand,
nothing, so far as I know, prohibits mortals from putting up
cash prizes or item rewards.  Perhaps the RPG will have to get
a 'Director of Development' to hustle up contributions!)

'Quest' also suggests hunting some beast and killing it, which,
although we can certainly do that, is only a small subset of what
we can do.  We can do lawsuits, parties, contests, arguments, fights,
rescues, and all sorts of things.  Some of these things obviously
need no divine participation at all.  If we need specially designed
mobiles and items, or gods switching into mobs, we CAN potentially
get them, IF it is just for fun and nobody is expecting to get
xp or money out of management.  Let there be no mistake: Top
Management is Distrustful of such goings-on, and will (in my view)
be the MORE distrustful, the more 'ad hoc', private, and unscheduled
such things are.  If there is adequate public advance notice, the
fears of Management may be quieted to some extent.



   Chapter 6 - Creating Your RP Character
   ======================================

If you are convinced by all this, then you will want to know what
to do next to set up your new or existing character as an 'official'
Roleplayer.  Two processes go into creating a character: the menu
part or 'character creation screen', and the mental part, in which
you develop the individual character on the basis of the material
in Chapter 2 of this book.  If you are creating a new character,
you can do either one first; you can develop a character sketch
first and then select race, class, and stat priorities to make
it come true, or you can determine the character's parameters some
other way - even at random - and then develop a corresponding bio.
The first few paragraphs will deal with new characters,
and then the existing ones can pick up at the appropriate place.

Some purists take the position that character generation ought to
be mainly random, because "you don't have any choice as to who you
are before you are born."  I used to create all my characters mainly
by throwing dice or flipping coins to determine race and class.  I'm
no longer sure that's a good idea, though, because I've thought a
bit more about the following consideration: the choice of race
OUGHT to have a lot to do with what you want your character to do.
If you enjoy social roleplaying, even with a character who may never
be very high level, hobbits are very well suited to this; they are
supposed to spend a lot of their time eating and drinking, as we all
know.  On the other hand, if you want to fight in the east a lot,
you might want to produce a dwarf.  If you REALLY want a cleric, then
(from the Book Supremacist perspective at least) there is no point
being a hobbit, because hobbits can't do magic at all.  My point
is that from a roleplaying perspective you might as well create a
race of character who will fit well into the way you want to spend
your time.  By 'fit well' I am talking about RP-wise, not GP-wise
in the sense of who has what race mods.

How about gender?  It's "supposedly true" that most people on M*s
are male, though I don't have any hard data on it.  Should guys play
female characters?  On the one hand it's a bit disturbing having
a MUD full of female characters played by guys, for some reason
(although it was that way in Shakespeare's theatre, come to think
of it).  On the other hand a world that's 80% male doesn't make much
sense either.  No easy answers here; do what you feel like, I guess.
But if you are going to be female, try to be somone other than the
Eowyn-style shieldmaiden, for the sake of variety?  (Not a slam at
our Eowyn, I just think there are too many Eowyn clones.)

Now we come to 'class'.  This system may change at any time, but at
the moment 'class' means (a) are you especially strong, intelligent,
wise, or dextrous [for your race] and (b) (more important) which
'package' of spells/skills will you have the most aptitude for.
I think it -immediately- follows from this that dwarves are natural
warriors, hobbits are natural 'thieves' [not to say that they steal, but
that they are dextrous, stealthy, etc.], elves are natural clerics
[not mages - you never see an elf fireballing someone in LOTR, that's
humans' work].  I used to flip coins here, as I said, and I came
up with some interesting characters.  I'm less likely to do so now -
not because "Dwarven mages suck" or for some such GP thing, but
just because from an RP perspective, unusually stealthy/magical
dwarves ought to be very rare.

When it comes to the order of secondary stats, however, throwing
dice and flipping coins can indeed produce some interesting stat
combinations.  It's fun to come up with a stat combination
randomly, then try to come up with a biography that produced it.
Why are you an unusually strong hobbit?  [It's that Tookish blood.]
Why an unusually intelligent dwarf?  On the other hand, you may
have created your biography already, in which case you may be
setting your secondary stat priorities on the basis of what it
says.

All right, now let's say that you have generated a character,
gone through Chapter 2, and developed a sense of who your character
is.  Next you want to write your 'whois' and 'description'.  Too
many MUMErs use these as venues for their favorite poetry,
metal lyrics, ASCII art [some of it quite good I admit],
jokes with asterisks [*an orc* kills you etc.], and so on.  Your
descrip. should have your physical appearance.  Your whois should
have something about your role in the community or reputation.

Now you may want to do whatever you have to do OOC to get your
citizenship established properly, for example, by going to Bree,
paying one gold, and making yourself a hobbit or human of the Bree-land.
(As to where to get the 1 gold, see _Riches at Your Feet!_, also
in this library.)

The next thing to do is to join the RolePlayers' Guild, WHEN it comes
into existence.  At this writing it hasn't yet.  But it may be
soon!  For the moment, send a MUMEmail to me (Petrel) to join
the list of people who are discussing the creation of such a group.

Well, this is not a complete guide - if there can be such a thing -
but I hope it gives the movement toward RP a little impetus.
Please write the author with any input, suggestions for additions
or corrections, flames, etc.  Good RP to all!


You take out 'Mushy Thoughts about Roleplay' by Petrel and begin to read.


       Chapter 1 - A Visit to Elendor

       Chapter 2 - Compulsory RP vs. Voluntary RP

       Chapter 3 - Obstacles to Voluntary RP

       Chapter 4 - A MUSH within a MUME?

       Chapter 5 - Uncoded Quests and /switched Gods


   Chapter 1 - A Visit to Elendor
   ==============================

A Visit to Elendor

In past discussions of RP, we have heard the argument that 'RP and
diku don't mix; this isn't a MUSH; if you want RP go to a MUSH.'
In the last couple of days, I have done just that.  I started a
character on Elendor, which is the MUME of MUSHes, that is,
a Tolkien-based MUSH with a dedicated player base, a strong
management team, and a high reputation.  Ressaven also has
experience there.  I wanted to find out what they had that we
didn't.  What is it about MUSHes that enables them, and not
us, to have RP - if that is how it is?  I had never spent
any significant amount of time on a MUSH, and if you have the
following "discoveries" will not be new to you.

The difference between Elendor and MUME, in terms of the code and data
files, is NOT mainly that they have features we lack.  Quite the
opposite!  It is that they LACK the features we have.  They have
no mobs to speak of, little in the way of equipment, and not much
of what we call mudlle.  Some of their descriptions are potentially
richer, but that's not what makes the difference.

Compared to what you see in MUME Bree, Elender Bree is virtually
deserted.  It is like an empty stage.  You find yourselves in a
reasonably well-described but totally empty room.  You have little
in the way of money or equipment.  Even if you had them, there would
not be much you could do with them.  There are no mobs walking around.
There is no possibility of adventure - UNTIL you find some other
people sitting around.  Then you can start to tell each other stories,
make up plans, tell them about your imaginary past, and so on.  The
most important commands in Elendor are 'say' and 'emote' [pose].  If
you happen to be in a relatively peaceful area, you might spend
your whole evening ONLY saying and emoting.  Even if you are
an orc in a nasty area, where combat and dying are common, you are
emoting most of the time.

MUSHing is an art form sort of like improvisational drama.  When I
created my Breeland character, I found myself (quite by chance) at
the inception of what we would call a 'quest' - in MUSH terms, a
'TinyPlot'. [I KNOW this term will never gain popularity here!]
A few days before, it had been spread around that a troll had got
into the Chetwood somehow.  Offstage and Out of character, some
of the Breelanders had arranged to obtain a couple of trolls, whom
I think were 'puppets', more or less what we would call 'switched
mobs', and developed a plan whereby one of the trolls would be
scared off by someone pretending to be Gandalf.  This plan having
been developed and scheduled, about 12 Breelanders tried to log on to
participate in the drama.  When I arrived, everyone was sitting
in the Prancing Pony dressing up the guy as a wizard.  Of course
this was done entirely with emotes.  When he was supposedly
dressed, he ducked into the bathroom and came out having changed
his description.  We then marched off to a few rooms outside of
Bree, where we went through the motions of hiding in the brush,
pretending to cast spells at the trolls, etc.  Then we were left
fighting the remaining troll, which only three of us could do because
they were 'registered for combat' (which you can't do before you've
been there for two RL weeks).

Elendor combat is very slow by MUME standards, as each blow is
prefaced by an emote, the adversaries agreeably taking turns
hitting each other.  Quite by accident, the troll delivered a
knockout blow to one of the Breelanders.  Naturally this was
another occasion for high drama, as we emoted pulling him off
the field, he groaned, coughed up blood, lapsed into unconsciousness,
etc.  Then the troll was ultimately dispatched, and the wounded
were shepherded back to the Inn.  When all this was over, nobody
had any more "xp points", which don't exist, or money, or
equipment.  We had enjoyed ourselves, however.

TinyPlots do not happen every night, though, and (as the example
indicates) they need some planning and a quorum of locals to bring
off.  What do you do the other 5 nights in the week, when there
are only two other Breelanders logged on In Character?  Well, if
you are a farmer, and the other one is the weaponsmith, and the
third is the waiter in the Prancing Pony, I guess you sit around
talking about weapons, drinks and hay, and how hard it is to get
in the hay in these troubled times.  You try to perfect your
role and your biography, and impress everyone with the seamlessness
of your acting ability.

Is this fun?  I think so.  You may not.  But here is my point.
ALL of this can be done in MUME!  Nothing stops people from sitting
around the bar talking about hay.  Nothing stops people from having
a biography and talking about it.  Nothing stops people from sitting
around emoting.  Even the troll in the Chetwood could be arranged, as
I will elaborate upon later.


   Chapter 2 - Compulsory RP vs. Voluntary RP
   ==========================================

Compulsory RP vs. Voluntary RP

Elendor, of course, requires RP.  In the first place, there is not
much else to do a lot of the time except RP.  In the second place,
the administrators strictly manage player interaction.  The character
creation process is QUITE elaborate.  You cannot get into the world
until the local administrator of the culture approves you.  You cannot
fight anyone until the local administrator has approved you for
combat.  Arbiters can overturn the results of fights if they think
rules of in-character/out-of-character were violated.

In the third place, there is no way to 'level' your character into
a greatly superior one, the way it is in the diku system.  Instead,
if your RP is judged to be good, you are nominated to play a stronger
character.

As a result of all this, people who don't like RP, or who have no
aptitude for it, hate Elendor and depart, leaving behind a player
base solidly committed to Roleplay.  Where do they go?  They
probably come to MUME.

Because of the leveling and scoring elements in the diku system,
the presence of mobs, etc., it is possible for MUMErs to enjoy
themselves without RP.  And there is no likelihood that we are
going to make RP compulsory.  The question, though, is, do we do
what we could to make RP POSSIBLE for people who actually want
to do it?

Well, I think we have recognize that the xp/tp requirements
for leveling are to some degree in tension with RP.  You cannot become
a strong warrior, OR, for that matter, a skillful cleric!, without
having killed a lot of things.  More things than can possibly be
killed in a 'role-play way'.  A character who only killed the things
that it made sense to, and hunted exclusively through roleplaying,
would spend days of playing time before getting to level 5.  Of course,
one could sit in the shire and play a level 3.  But then there are
large portions of the MUD you will never get to see, since you
cannot get a 'promotion' for good roleplay.

However, I think it is possible for people who like RP to get a
compromise.  One can xp-hunt for part of one's time, in a semi-RP
way, while spending the rest of one's time RP-ing more extensively.
RP will not be the source of levels, promotions, money, or
equipment, but it could be the source of some enjoyment.
We apparently have some people who like the idea of more RP, since
they responded favorably to my post.  But it seems hard for them
to get RP going even SOME of the time.  What are the reasons for this?


   Chapter 3 - Obstacles to Voluntary RP
   =====================================

Obstacles to Voluntary RP

I argued above, and repeat, that the obstacles to voluntary RP are
mostly not in the coding of the MUD.  It is POSSIBLE for people to
do non-RP things, but it is also possible for them to spend the
whole day doing pure RP if they want.  Why don't we?  I argue that
the obstacles are mainly psychological and sociological.

(a)  The first set of obstacles to RP lies in the fact that, even
for people who want to RP, the coded features of MUME make it EASIER
to take the easy way and avoid RP, not just in terms of the leveling,
but in terms of the interactions that go into RP itself!

That may seem kind of abstruse, so let me explain what I mean.  Consider
social commands.  They don't exist in Elendor, btw.  They may exist
in user-defined commands, or in people's clients, but I never saw
them in much use.  When someone wants to apologize to you, he
usually stops and thinks and types out an emote that suits the
occasion.  We, on the other hand, can type "apo ".
Much faster!  But it's stereotyped, and it undermines the texture
of the encounter.  It is sort of like the competition between
cheap, mass-produced goods and more expensive craft-made goods!
The coded feature (the social) is easier and faster to use than
the emote.  As a result it drives the emote out of the market!

Take another area: professions.  In Elendor, there is a hobbit
who is the Bree Weaponsmith.  So far as I know, this does not mean
that he has a functioning store where you can buy a sword.  (Not
that you will need a sword, since you aren't going around Bree
killing mobs anyway.)  However, he is on hand to play the role,
to discuss weapons with you (when he happens to be on), and I
think that when someone is approved to carry a weapon, somehow
he gets involved in the process.  When he isn't around, there
is no weaponsmith... not that the town really needs one.  I stress
that there is very little CODE involved in X the Elendor hobbit
being the Bree weaponsmith; it's just that he's identified that way.

Now, we have a robot (mob) in Bree who functions as the weaponsmith.
Still, nothing prevents some MUME hobbit, residing in Bree,
from proclaiming himself to be a weaponsmith.  He could do as
much in that regard as the Elendor Bree weaponsmith, and more.
The problem is that in some regards the mob weaponsmith is BETTER
than the player weaponsmith!  He is open every day, not just
when somebody logs on.  He gets a 'government subsidy' to buy
weapons that he can't sell.  He never runs out of weapons of
certain types.  He can stock hundreds of weapons.  Because of
these features, he drives the player weaponsmith out of business!!
People endure the fact that he's a mob, that he can't converse,
that he is lacking in RP qualities, because of the level of
service that he provides.

Ressaven told me the other night: on Elendor players occupy all
positions and social classes; on MUME players are only 'adventurers'.
This is true.  But it's not because MUME -prohibits- people from
playing farmers, weaponsmiths, the Vice-Mayor of Bree, etc.
[Consider Kilvarnan, who has been the Master of the Guard of
Tharbad for quite some time.]  The difference is: first,
Elendor management will validate your position as the Bree
weaponsmith (you can type a command, +breejobs I think, and see
what jobs the Breelanders have); but second, and more important,
MUME creates mobs and features who will compete with you and
undercut you.  This is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it
means that RP here requires some forethought and effort.

(b) The second set of obstacles lies in the existence of an anti-RP
culture, which grows out of the temptation to level-racing and
stat-hunting which is inherent in the diku code.  Although
VIEW ABOUT says that MUME is not part of the xp-hunting rat race,
this news has not gotten through to a large number of MUME rats! :)
Not only do people want to get the best stats, hunt supermobs,
get legend equipment, etc., as fast as possible - with the best
intentions, they want to help YOU and everyone else get the best stats,
hunt supermobs, etc.  Therefore, at any given time, there is a sea
of anti-RP narrates, sings, tells, and spam which drowns out every
impulse to roleplay.  People who want to RP do not know who the
other potential RPers are, or if they exist.  Each one thinks
he or she is the only RPer logged on, that everyone thinks RP
is silly.


   Chapter 4 - A MUSH within a MUME?
   =================================

A MUSH within a MUME?

MUME top management philosophy is based largely on the principles
of compromise and incrementalism.  Implementors, and Aratar, differ
significantly among themselves as to what the 'ideal MUME' will
be, valuing differing features and promoting different forms
of excellence.  The result is a MUD that is trying to be "all
things to all people" - that is trying to satisfy the RPer and
the level-racer, the pacifist and the pkiller, the connoisseur
of room descriptions and the lover of action, all at once.  And
it succeeds rather well at this.  At least, although all players
have gripes and complaints, they apparently all feel that the good
(the parts that satisfy them) outweighs the bad (the parts they
find unpleasant or irritating).  If it were not so, we would not
have the large population of permanently addicted residents that
we do!

However, the RPer faces obstacles here.  The obstacles to RP
are not the result of conscious action.  They are the result of
'market forces', if you will.  There is a Gresham's law in
effect: "Cheap, bad RP drives out good, expensive RP."  And
management is not going to make the sort of radical changes
that would be necessary to eliminate this process.

To survive against these obstacles, MUME RPers need to create a
subculture of roleplay.  They need to be able to recognize each
other.  They need to support their own version of reality.  They
need to help each other ignore the anti-RP culture.  They need to
develop, on a voluntary basis, the kind of shared understandings
that, on Elendor, are enforced by management.  They need to
avoid the coded social, and to patronize the player weaponsmith
if one exists.

I am thinking, in essence, of a Voluntary Organization of players
and gods who would establish rules and understanding for roleplay
among themselves.  These rules would not be imposed by management,
or by code, on the player base as a whole.  They could not be used
to get tangible rewards, like xp or money [assuming that 'experience
points' obtained by elves on a computer screen can be called 'tangible
rewards'!!].  This organization, which could be called the
"Role-Players' Guild" perhaps, might not get any concrete help or
resources from Management.  (I think Management would like to see
roleplay flourish, but it is very much unwilling to do anything
that could be called favoritism toward any group of players.)
But in the final analysis, all that is necessary is that the
participants share their thoughts with each other.  It could be
done entirely via existing public means of communication.

= The rules, or principles, of the RPG could be posted on the
 public boards, and (I think) can be made available through
 the libraries.  (I would recommend that anyone truly interested
 in RP should go and visit Elendor at elendor.sbs.nau.edu 1893 and
 read their RP help file, which I think is NEWS ROLEPLAY.  It
 would be bad manners and a violation of copyright law to
 steal their whole file and post it here, but I wouldn't mind
 working on a paraphrase.)
- Players can identify themselves as members of the RPG in their
 whoises.
- Current membership lists can be MUMEmailed to members.
- Projects, such as quests [see below] could be announced on the
 public boards.
= If legends were to join the RPG, they could put the designation
 in their titles.
- If there were legends who supported the goals of the RPG, they
 might be persuaded to donate rooms in their legend houses - or
 endow new rooms - for the purposes of the RPG.

The whole idea is that, if there were 20 RPers on at a given time,
they would, together, be able to IGNORE the rest of the MUD long
enough and well enough to engage in their own RP activity.



   Chapter 5 - Uncoded Quests and /switched Gods
   =============================================

Uncoded Quests and /switching gods

Because favoritism-by-gods is one of the most horrible things that
Management can conceive, it is VERY unwilling to give gods the
discretion to run uncoded quests that will bring tangible benefits to
mortals.  If experience or items are to be given out, all players
must have an equal opportunity to get them, and the only way to
do this is to do it all by mudlle.

However, since the objective of RPers is not to get experience and
items, but to enjoy themselves, I believe the door to uncoded quests
with god participation is actually wide open, PROVIDED that there are
no tangible benefits.

Suppose, for example, the RPG wanted to do the 'wild boar in the
Northfarthing' quest.  I don't think the experience of a wild boar
is so much, but, if it were necessary to meet Management's objections,
we could put together a 'wild boar' mob on the platform of the
level=1 mob template, adjusting the combat stats as desired, but
providing -no xp-.  Somegod could then switch into the boar, or follow
it wizinvis with some /force aliases, causing it to fight in an
interesting way.  We could even doctor the combat stats so as to
make it a long fight - give it 500 hp, say, but a damroll of 2.

Meanwhile, some mortal has gathered together the party in the Green
Dragon Inn.  Perhaps the party should be limited to level 6's or
below.  Or perhaps a last-minute adjustment of the boar's stats
could be made, based on the levels of whoever shows up.  It should
be made clear, however, that people participate in the hunt at
their own risk.  Of course the gods involved are trying to make
the hunt fun, not punitive, but something might go wrong, and if
it does they won't get reimbursed.  (That should scare off the
legends and let the level 6's have their fun!)  It is an activity
for 'consenting adults', if you will.

If it were packaged this way, I predict that nobody in Management
would have any objections to the project, or to the participation
in it of interested Mc+.

I don't speak for top management, but I predict that they would
have no objections to an uncoded quest with god participation,
IF:
 - It does not give tangible benefit to the mortals, but is
   all about roleplay
 - It is not silly (like a talking cat would be)
 - It is planned in advance
 - It does not endanger non-participants
 - Mortal participants consent in advance to the activity, and
   accept normal risks.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that this set of ideas is in
no way a finished product.  I wanted to write something to help
start a discussion, but I want to hear feedback on this.  Mail
comments back to me and I will either forward them to the whole
'RP mailing list' or add them as additional chapters to this
book.