Atonement RPI was a roleplay intensive MUD that combined the genres of Science Fiction, survival horror, and a post-apocalyptic setting.
Alpha places the players in the role of one of several crew members of a spaceship trying to return Home. Recently woken from cryogenic sleep, these survivors find themselves with no memory of their past lives, why they boarded the ship, where they're from, or even where they're going. Additionally, they soon learn that they're not alone, and the Ship is home to several ugly threats standing in the way of their survival.
In Beta, the theme shifts to a post-apocalyptic setting, following the tale of a fallen Lunar Colony. The Outlanders of Grungetown must strive for survival against each other and the ever present "Evil Empire" New Phoenix, which has retrieved a fair amount of Utopian resources and instated themselves as lords of the moon. In addition to this, a new threat comes with the Genetic Terrors, the hive-minded zombie like creatures which crashed with the Survivors of the SBS Phoenix II. As New Phoenix and Grungetown war with each other and discover long-lost aspects of Utopia, the Terrors present their own threats...
In Gamma, the overwhelming power of the Terrors forces the remaining Lunar survivors to flee on the original colonization ship, the SBS Atlas, with the intent to go to Alpha Centauri, the only known successful human colony remaining...
This game provides examples of:
- A House Divided: Various factions fight against and amongst each other.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: A lot of players can't afford and would consider the prices of the weapons and other useful items at the store to be ridiculously high, considering the fact that the mutants are a big threat to everybody in the ship.
- Anyone Can Die: By code, or by plot which might almost purposefully end in your PC's death.
- Disaster Scavengers: Most items possessed by players have been scavenged from somewhere in the ship.
- Duct Tape for Everything: Many crafts in the game require the use of duct tape. These crafted items range from makeshift spears, clubs, helmets, pants and other assorted equipment.
- Ghost Ship: The S.B.S. Phoenix, the setting of the alpha phase of the MUD, is an example of this.
- Improvised Weapon: Only a handful of characters possess actual weapons. Most people use scavenged everyday objects that have been transformed into crude weapons.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Much of the items that exist in the game have been looted from a corpse, stolen, or otherwise scavenged from some place initially.
- Machete Mayhem: A rare weapon in the MUD.
- Mission Control: Personnel in the panic room of the S.B.S. Phoenix feed information to others in the ship through the intercom.
- Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: The setting is fairly high up.
- Not Quite Dead: Downed mutants (or people) may rise back up.
- Player Personality Quiz: During character creation, the MUD will ask you a series of questions involving the personality and traits of your character that will determine his or her starting skills and stats.
- Power Equals Rarity: Only a handful of characters possess the real weapons and armour. Most have to make do with makeshift ones, which are considerably weaker.
- Respawning Enemies: Zombies continue to rise out of corpse piles until the source have been destroyed.
- Scenery Gorn: Blood everywhere, the ship torn apart, and disturbing messages written in blood and chunks of flesh and/or brain matter.
- Shout-Out: One of the scavenged items players can find is a copy of Analog magazine. Which in the future has apparently changed formats to include pornography.
- Sound-Only Death: The MUD gives off random echoes to the players. One of these echoes mentions a scream of death coming from another deck of the ship.
- Took a Level in Badass: Player characters start out with low or only decent level skills. If lucky enough to survive, players can, over time (or quickly, if twinking), build these skills up to extremely high levels.
- Was Once a Man: The various mutants in the MUD.
- After the End: Beta's moon setting is more Post-Apocalyptic than Space Opera, taking place in the ruins of a fallen lunar colony.
- Apocalypse How: Planetary societal collapse.
- Bad Boss: Anyone involved in The Teaser "How the West Was Won" knows who.
- Bit-Part Bad Guys: Bandits, zombies, and Peter.
- Black Knight: Jack likes to say that he's a knight, while attacking PCs.
- Bloodsport: One of the more popular forms of entertainment in Grungetown, including the arena and the local sport of "Flashball".
- The Chessmaster: In Alpha it was Betty. Maybe now, Sky Gaiman or Angelique.
- The Computer Is Your Friend: Probably Atlas.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Inverted. Cyborgs bear a heavy social stigma, not for the belief that their implants make them less human, but because they are assumed to have done something at least shady — though more likely abominable — to even afford them.
- Cyborg: One of the playable races living in Grungetown.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The lunar ecosystem is incredibly harsh. If it breaths, it will probably want to eat you, or wait around for something else to kill you and eat what's left.
- Fantastic Racism: Mutants and cyborgs both labor under severe social stigma for varying reasons.
- Impractically Fancy Outfits: With the new variable code giving players more freedom with their wardrobe, this is almost assured to happen.
- La Résistance: The Revolutionary Army (aka, the Anarchists).
- New Old West: Grungetown and the Outlands.
- Ready for Lovemaking: You can never get away from this in a game. Even the mutants are doing it.
- Shrouded in Myth: Rumored creatures such as "Atlas", "Devarado de Mundo" and "Audrey".
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Anticipated to be way, way on the cynical side.
- Terraform: Beta takes place on a barely-terraformed version of Earth's moon.
- The Teaser: The pre-open timeline RPT for Beta, "How the West Was Won", showed how the water plant around which the game's main settlement, Grungetown, grew was captured by the Wilmingtons.
- Apocalypse How: Universal Species Extinction/Class 3.
- Breath Weapon: The Blighter spat out Deadly Gas and lightning. And it had three heads that could only be dealt with with a flamethrower.
- Bug War: These guys just would not leave us alone
- Creating Life Is Bad: Where the bugs came from.
- Explosions in Space: And how. Rode the fireball right off to the next destination.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The End, and several notable characters.
- Hive Caste System: Not hyper-organized, but there were definitely different classes.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The End — when it turns out to be an accident.
- Nuke 'em: Nuked the moon before ditching it. Sort of nuked the motherships, too.
- Synthetic Plague: What caused the collapse of the United Lunar Nation. Science Is Bad Gone Horribly Wrong.