[MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Sometime at or around 08:01 AM 1/8/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Miroslav
Silovic jumping up to shout:
>
>I'd think that it would be
>possible to design a way to financially compensate players who turn
>former hack/social MUD into immersive roleplaying experience (MUSHers
>do it for free... ;) ) - in the form of free hours, for instance.
>
>Of course, the challenge is to do it in the way that'd be fair to all
>the players.

A similar situation: In most RPGs, you receive XP bonuses for good
roleplay. On
most MUDs, you receive XP for combat. Period. A challenge I've often looked at
and considered is how to reward the roleplayers without being unfair to the
combat folks -- for example, on most White Wolf-based systems, you receive XP
*only* for RP and never for combat. As a result, combat is rather rare. On
most
MUDs, as I've mentioned, there are XP for combat but never for RP. As a
result,
of course, RP is considered a waste of time (what does it get you?) and hence
not invested in. I've considered a few ways of handling this, but I'm having
real difficulty coming up with something fair. Has anyone managed to come up
with an equitable method of awarding RP-based XP with an automated system, or
does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
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