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<blockquote data-quote="RFisher" data-source="post: 3665217" data-attributes="member: 3608">OK, perhaps a transcript is warranted:The bold bits were typed by the user. The rest were printed by the game.Interactive fiction (IF) is the new-fangled buzz-word for &quot;text adventure games&quot;. They are (generally) text-based. The computer doesn't present visual representation of things, merely text describing them. The user acts by typing (pidgin) English sentences. (Though there are shortcuts for common commands.)It's a form that can't commercially compete anymore. There are some interesting developments in the amatuer IF world, though. I thought <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_(computer_game)" target="_blank">Galatea</a> was quite interesting.I tend to think of TRPGs as IF with a person taking the computer's role.MUDs are (at least when I was into them) very similar to IF except that they are multi-player. Most have features that allowed a player with permission (sometimes called &quot;a wizard&quot;) to build the world from within the game. In the ones I enjoyed the most, pretty much everyone was a wizard &amp; had a portion of the world they could build as they saw fit.The only limit to what you could create were what you could describe. Although, getting the game engine to give appropriate responses to other players' interactions with your creations was the real limit. &amp; also--for me--the challenge. LamdaMOO had a pretty sophisticated programming language that could let you do a whole lot, though.There was a Star Trek MUSH that the users used as a medium for role-playing. I would count it more akin to playing a TRPG via WebRPG than to something like a MMORPG, though. The &quot;rules&quot; of the role-playing tended to be enforced more by consensus than by the software.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="RFisher, post: 3665217, member: 3608"] OK, perhaps a transcript is warranted: The [b]bold[/b] bits were typed by the user. The rest were printed by the game. Interactive fiction (IF) is the new-fangled buzz-word for "text adventure games". They are (generally) text-based. The computer doesn't present visual representation of things, merely text describing them. The user acts by typing (pidgin) English sentences. (Though there are shortcuts for common commands.) It's a form that can't commercially compete anymore. There are some interesting developments in the amatuer IF world, though. I thought [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_(computer_game)]Galatea[/url] was quite interesting. I tend to think of TRPGs as IF with a person taking the computer's role. MUDs are (at least when I was into them) very similar to IF except that they are multi-player. Most have features that allowed a player with permission (sometimes called "a wizard") to build the world from within the game. In the ones I enjoyed the most, pretty much everyone was a wizard & had a portion of the world they could build as they saw fit. The only limit to what you could create were what you could describe. Although, getting the game engine to give appropriate responses to other players' interactions with your creations was the real limit. & also--for me--the challenge. LamdaMOO had a pretty sophisticated programming language that could let you do a whole lot, though. There was a Star Trek MUSH that the users used as a medium for role-playing. I would count it more akin to playing a TRPG via WebRPG than to something like a MMORPG, though. The "rules" of the role-playing tended to be enforced more by consensus than by the software. [/QUOTE]

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