Quite sage. I see one major porblem however. CF is driven by killing mobs. Exp gains are from kills. Advancement in your profession is from kills. And so it goes. The rewards for RPing, exp-wise, pale in comparison. As long as this persits I doubt that the RP culture here will ever be a mainstream event. The alternative, e.g., giving exp for acting out buying berry pies at the bakery, seems tedious. And after you've slain the 257th lesser troll you are uninterested in RPing ridding the forest from this evil. It's about novelty. And novelty is found pimarily in PKing --some of the best interactions I've seen in my 5 year stint on this mud were in logs showing after-PK discourse. Some of my best interactions were also in similar situations. There's a raw edge there that can not be duplicated in most other enviroments. Novelty in RPing can become rather stale if it lacks a context. There are undoubtedly folks you can pull this off but this seems to be a minority or situational at best (I'm in the situational group). In the end, I fully support the exp gains from good RP, quests, and travelling to new lands (as currently implemented) but I have a hard time with wanting/mandating such play from all PCs. There is baseline of decent descritptions and relavent diction that the mud should and largely does mandate. Beyond that I think it wishful tihnking only realizable by removing 80+% of the playerbase. FWIW, I genuinely believe that allowing folks to customize thier PCs would held RP (not like stock ROM!). This is likly a Pandora's Box but I'll just give an example. I've ofthen thought it would be interesting to play an assaasin that refuses to use any weapons other than his hands. This is certainly doable in CF but gives you a handicap. If you allowed a character to trade now useless skills (here the weapon skills, shield block) for some replacment(s), I think folks might be persuaded to RP more. There is something about being unique that inspires RP. The "tallest", "most beautiful" things seen in descs... Also, some (most?) folks do not have the time to embellish a role (a sign of unique identity) but would rather simply act on it. Obviously, deciding on replacments skills (equivalent skill value) would be difficult but hardly impossible. One could envision a note after char creation as a petition of sorts and take it from there. Obviously, such customizations would need to be within reason (absurd example: no shamans swearing of famish and wanting deathblow) and coherent. But the assassin who wishes to focus exclusively on hand to hand combat certainly seems within bounds of both the class and the mud. Just a thought...