It just can't work like in traditional, IRL RP, where you get experience points for attaining goals or for good roleplaying.

Code them a unique skill for their research. Create a library system that allows them to publish their papers and perhaps even be paid for them, if there's a price to take it out of the library or look at it.

I actually like the library idea. Imagine if some tomes were really hard to get, containing really obscure secrets about say, the nature of Gaudiguch or a record of a conversation between the higher ups of Magnagora in the early days of the taint.

That's one way to encourage RP tangibly. Make Knowledge a commodity

Too much unnecessary work when the Admin have more than enough already. Plus, then you have to grade it, otherwise everyone else gets it, which ruins the point.

Perhaps it could. Experience is supposed to indicate life experience. If a god sees a player really sticking to his role, and getting into the experience, why not reward the player with the experience points to match the supposed life experience that their roleplay is developing?

I might be speaking crazytalk, but why not Kashim? Im not asking anyone to "rate" someone elses roleplay, merely notice it and reward it where the reward is in role.

This also encourages a mentality of paranoia about favouritism. :/ Amongst other things, it's just not really the best thing to do.

There's no way administration can watch everyone's progress in their personal story or how much they stick to their role. That would only make chosen, loudmouth individuals being rewarded, and more silent types feel unwelcomed. So 'merely noticing' is also impossible if it's goin to be fair.
Also, experience points don't really reflect life experience in Lusternia, let's not try to make it that way cause it just isn't.

In another MUD I play, Awakened Worlds, there are imms whose sole purpose is to create interesting RP experiences. There's only one or two, but they try their hardest to keep everything fresh through "imm runs": short quests that involve infiltrating a compound, getting an item from a remote location, stealing stuff from the president of a corporation, etc. These are planned out maybe 30 minutes in advance, and the OLC involved is minimal: usually just a couple mobs, which are modified from templates, and a couple quest items. The reward? Money and experience. They usually involve lots of player decisions, usually controversial ones, so that there's a very open outcome to these. These quests don't last overly long, and they usually have limited participation to keep everything within a decent challenge rating, but they still are great ways to keep people roleplaying.

If we could bring something small like this to Lusternia, that would be great. The one thing I notice is the fact that, apart from changes in political power and the introduction of something huge, Lusternia seems to find a balance point and stay firmly there. Little variations here and there would be great, and mini-events like these would really help.

I don't think the Admins need to create more RP oppurtunities. The potential is allready there. I never have a problem finding RP even if it is just a brief conversation with a Guild or Commune mate. What I think many of the more RP oriented people are looking for is a way to alleviate their morale in the face of the prevalence of PK without hindering the fun of the Pkers.

How about this:

Divines possess more mobs than they do, I've been talking about how that's good for RP for ages, in a few topics.

Put players in situations with Mobs where roleplaying the situation to their advantage could lead to a tangible benefit.

For example: Sekreh is leading a single loboshigaru pilgrim, but on the way the pilgrim says "Wait a second, stop. Did you see that Aslaran back there? He looked kind of suspicious, had a lump under his cloak. I got a kind of bad vibe, you feel like a detour?"

So say the player agrees, they go back and see the Aslaran pilgrim, who's wandering around looking suspicious. The player asks what the lump is, the aslaran panics and runs off. The player and loboshigaru persue, ending up in a chase through Magnagora. Eventually they corner the Aslaran, and demand that he explain himself. The Aslaran could perhaps reveal the package as a small magical device he stole from Ardrak. If the player convinces him to hand it over, or RPs the situation escalating to combat, or even some other continuation of the chase scene, and returns the thing to Ardrak, Ardrak could thank them and perhaps give them some gold, or add power to the Megalith with the recovered device.

Think one shot quests, real world quests, simple things a divine or two could do in two minutes to really develop a sense of immersion. They already possess Mobs for conversation, the only difference is a titch more effort and imagination. Don't have the workforce? Let me possess Mobs, I'll do it for you!

Ninjad

It sounds great. But it only involves one player. And it's relatively quite a lot of work when you consider that.

If you're talking about just short little things with NPCs like that, I'd rather see it done with players and not NPCs. The Divine have enough to do without running around in Aslaran pilgrims or other inconsequential denizens. I would far rather interact with other players. That said, a little Divine spurred quest through mortals here and there would be neat, where the Divine sort of use mortals as their own little chess pieces (metaphorically speaking). Your example, for instance, could be very easily acted out if Fain gave item_xyz to Jane Magnagoran, and Lacostian told John Celestian that He overheard Fain and Raezon discussing something sinister in the Havens involving Jane.

One thing that would be neat to see is a 'town crier' denizen though, who wanders around the various cities and recites the most recent news. The news can be a list of 10-20 short sentences about what's going on in the city and world, and could be changed by the Ruling Council and Divine Consulate (maybe 10 for the Council and 10 for the Consulate). That'd be a nifty little RP immersion feature, to see what's currently going on politically/militarily/socially/etc in each city, which would be slanted to the viewpoints of that city.

Well that's the point. Events are great, but they shouldn't be the ONLY time immersive RP happens. My example was just that, an example. I'm just saying small scale, not org, maybe one to five people.

You're right, its not as efficient as having worldwide events, but the reality is worldwide events alone aren't enough for immersion.

Since most orgs don't really enforce having a real character or offer benefits for day to day RP (even if you get points for writing up a GHELP or a ritual), I think the divines should take an active hand in it. They have more power and ability to do so anyhow.

Organizations, on that note, also have the power to create this kind of RP. Consider if Glomdoring (again to use sekreh's life as an example) had very strict rules about what could be discussed in public or revealed publically. Suppose everything had to be cloaked in shadows, and commune mates were allowed to kill each other for any reason. It would create a survival of the fittest situation where getting power in an organization wasn't a matter of news posts (revealing things about yourself is against the rules) but instead dropping letters alluding to secret meetings, contacts and such to gain influence in elections and in the guild. I'm sure Shikari would approve!

That's again just another example of how day to day RP could be rewarded with tangible benefits, as well as how Gods or Orgs could facilitate immersion. Think about it.

Good Idea! It's ideas like this that we need, to facilitate the immersion that's in many ways missing in IRE. The little things make a difference.

If the Divine won't do it, how about having a new sub-Ephemeral level for roleplay facilitators? Essentially, people who have shown how awesome they are at RP can apply and gain access to an account that can possess mobs (and maybe change descriptions on/spawn items and mobs). All mini-events would need to be run by a God first, though (or the roleplay facilitators could simply get assignments of mini-events to do).

Where do I sign?

Dude, you certainly are creative, making such things on the spot...
Now, that sounds great, but... you need players to run it. Creative players who will make it that way and will carry on with it. I doubt everyone would play along.

Roleplaying is definately encouraged, since I entered Glomdoring, I've had 4-6 RP plots on at any time. All sneaky sneakies too.
Damn those secret squirrels, keep hiding my nuts.

Well, I try to encourage RP when I can (of course, it gets my character hated in some cases *coughs) but, like, recently, I just opened up bardic clan who Serens, which isn't meant to just grade possible entries to the competition, but to actually put on performances and hold festivals and stuff that is all purely RP oriented.

However, with some ideas to improve over all RP -> What about dropping Neocredits for gaining levels and instead instituing guild-based quests which earn them for you? Have them result in the same ammount of neocredits as leveling to 65, but have them get progressively harder and involve more and more of what it means to be in that guild.

I personally think that would be great, and would give people a bit more incentive to roleplay, even if they are just normal quests, at least that Mage is actually going to get books, needing to read them to find answers to questions, and the like. Especially if you added random factors like the Estelbar quest, so they couldn't just ask for the answers but would actually have to do the work for it.

I dunno, maybe that's a dumb idea?

That messes up people who just want to bash. See, it's no good REMOVING incentives for other kinds of people to play just in favour of other people. And doing quests isn't really RPing either. :/