I've been trying to get my shit together to post a response about this.

I've known Ixo for about five years now, and we've brainstormed and butted heads and plotted and played together in very small spaces for much of that time.

I was talking to my partner today (who does not MU*) about losing him. I have never lost a friend I have never met in the flesh until today. And that sounds strange, I know, but I did consider him to be a friend. We talk a lot of shit on this forum and in this hobby, and we are often cynical about one another and our motivations. And gods, but I did not agree with Ixo about so many things.

But we both loved stories. And great characters. And situations that were wonderfully impossible. And imagining how to be extraordinary...and often succeeding.

I like to think I knew a side of Ixo that maybe many people in his life did not, a real and genuine piece of him. Someone that wrestled with complicated and messy stories because life is complicated and messy, and as much as we often pretend (especially on MSB) that we have the answers, I'm not sure that there are 'answers'. There are, however, stories. And those are sometimes as real as anything in our lives.

Were the practical details of my life changed by knowing him? My job, my relationship, my home? Probably not. But I think none of us would come to MU*ing and stick around if it didn't illuminate and challenge us. My life is richer for knowing him and his stories, and he is an inseparable part of stories I will tell in the future.

Past:
Firan: Rodellos N'Gato, Faedrus Garkansen
Haunted Memories: Engel (Ghoul)
Redemption: Warrik
The Reach: Leith (mage), Luke Powell (Changeling)
Sunny's Amber OTT: Arion
Arx: Lucio, Cassius, Kaldur
SW: Dawn of Defiance: Siolo Mazz, Tal Dekka
Fear and Loathing: Cosmopolitan (Staff), Tucker
Tenebrae: Dagdan
Valorous Dominion: Christofano
Chontio: Dag Findo
Ithir: Boros
Others, but above are the places I was at for any length of time.

Current:
Gray Harbor: Henry Covington

@bored I play Cristofano, the HoH of House Sabastino. I agree with you. And I think @Lotherio seems to have agreed, too. The game needs better documentation. You are right to call it out, and I think @Lotherio has also acknowledged that they need to do better in that regard.

Like Auspice, I certainly threw myself out there with requests. And many of them were seriously, like...what does that rumor even mean? If I devote a resource to this, what is that /actually/ accomplishing? Etc. I will say that the staff has been amazing about getting back to me about these things. I don't think @Auspice is suggesting that the playerbase is to blame, and neither am I. But I also think a lot of us have PTSD about staff, and prefer to look to a wiki rather than +request, myself included. Like Auspice, I will suggest that, until documentation is as robust as it should be, you should absolutely pester staff. Giovanni Acuto and Galileo have always been super happy to answer questions and, more importantly to me, work out things that will be good for rp.

To be completely honest, I had no idea Sabastino now had enough house rep to buy any resources back. I have mostly approached this game with a go-big-or-go-home attitude. I dropped all my resources by the 11th of the month figuring that if I lacked resources for other things down the line, then that would only lead to good rp for the PCs in my house. Not suggesting that is how everyone should go about it, but if you see a lot of things about yay Sabastino early in the month and then later its all about the other houses, you will know why, at least from an ooc perspective.

TL/DR: Yes, the game needs fully defined and outlined systems. Yes, if you aren't sure how to proceed you should +request for a convo with staff.

Just wanted to give a shout out to Fear and Loathing. I've been playing there for about two months and am having a blast.

The vampire sphere is, in particular, very fun and active with a great player base and terrific staff support. There is an ongoing PrP that is pulling people in across spheres and has already generated over 50 ST'd scenes, with numerous other related social scenes.

Politics is also heating up, with lots of power up for grabs for those Kindred who can managed to wield and hold it.

If you are interested and looking for a specific way in, I am particularly interested in recruiting for the Invictus. We could use more members in the Covenant to help us seize control of the Vegas Strip. Even more specifically, both I and another Invictus player are interested in siring progeny, so if you are interested in an IC becoming and would like to play Gangrel or Mekhet, let us know. We'd be happy to help you out with that!

Any questions? Come on in and check out the activity. And feel free to shoot me a page while you are there. I play as Tucker.

Just spit-balling here, but I wonder if there is any value in having the head of each roster family played by an NPC to ensure maximum drama. It always seems to me that the joy of regency plotlines is trying to work against a fate in its various forms (loveless arranged marriages, saving the family home with a wealthy match, the inability to get introductions where desired, status vs wealth, attraction vs class, new loyalties as a head of house remarries, etc.). Maybe having npcs to serve as antagonists (or at least to drive antagonistic plotlines) would provide players with the requisite obstacles to drive this kind of rp.

Updated!

Hi! I've been following this game and this thread with interest, and I just wanted to throw in my two cents in terms of game balance with channelers and non-channelers.

I would propose that you consider certain types of PCs to be 'supers', and that everyone can only have one of those. An Aes Sedai would certainly be one example, but there might be others as well, including rulers. For those who do not want to play something that is an established super like the examples above, perhaps there could be a final category which is "ta'veren". You would have to decide what this means, mechanically, but perhaps they get points to spend in a given scene to get out of a scrape, or make something happen that wouldn't ordinarily take place, etc.

That way it might make sense that if you want to play the baker's kid that ends up helping to save the world, there is a valid, thematic reason for it to happen, and a reason for Aes Sedai (particularly of the Blue Ajah) to be interested in you and to pull you into rp.

It's been a million years since I played Firan, but I will weigh in on a couple of things here and add a few more things I remember, if they are useful.

There was genetic code. Back when I was there, it had nothing to do with grandparents (or at least I don't think it did). Rather, it selected at random a trait from either parent for hair, skin, eyes. So a red-haired, fair-skinned, green-eyed mother and a black haired, tan-skinned, brown-eyed father could produce a child who was red-haired, tan-skinned, and green-eyed (etc.)

Craftable food had an energy value that would add to your total when eaten, up to your maximum allowed daily. The higher the quality (in general) the more the energy bonus. I think for most people the max was 25 with food providing anywhere from 5 - 25 per consumed. Then, if you used the sleep command, a percentage of that energy (say, 2/3rds) would go toward your stored total. Any time you did something like harvest a field (which would ICly take more than one person could do in a day (25), the remainder would be taken from stored ERP to represent multiple days work. People could also transfer and sell stored energy to others (as if they were working for them, or providing peasant labor, etc.)

One of the cool things in Firan was that headstaff had decided what each clan needed in terms of raw resources, and what each clan had to provide in terms of trade. A big part of each season was for trade ministers to meet with one another and work out trade agreements to ensure that their clan needs were met. If not (as mentioned above) crisis.

A couple of other things:

Pray success determined whether or not a god heard your prayer (though I think it was still up to the god whether or not to act).

Fashion checks. In big scenes, you could run a fashion check and the code would check the quality of make and materials of what everyone in the room was wearing. Those wearing well made clothes of high quality materials received social points (essentially coded clout that was used to measure status), while those in poorly made clothes of poor materials lost points (an attempt to ensure that there was always a social point class distinction).

Animal breeding. I think it a version of the same code for the @eesha command, just for animals, with the goal to breed the best horse, cow, etc.

If I think of more I'll drop it in here. Enjoy!

Updated.

Also, just a shout out to @skew and @farfalla for running a great game in Chontio. A fun story, excellent unfolding plot, a nice, fun, supportive player base, and all-around terrific rp. Come by if you are looking for an active, interesting game.

http://chontio.aresmush.com/

Yesssss. Amber.

Just spit-balling here, but I wonder if there is any value in having the head of each roster family played by an NPC to ensure maximum drama. It always seems to me that the joy of regency plotlines is trying to work against a fate in its various forms (loveless arranged marriages, saving the family home with a wealthy match, the inability to get introductions where desired, status vs wealth, attraction vs class, new loyalties as a head of house remarries, etc.). Maybe having npcs to serve as antagonists (or at least to drive antagonistic plotlines) would provide players with the requisite obstacles to drive this kind of rp.

@krmbm Oh! Thank you. Works like a charm.

@GangOfDolls Will definitely try a VPN. We were planning on testing that out here anyway for our cable streaming needs (which won't normally allow viewing outside of the US).

@krmbm If by "use that one" you mean I click on it and it takes me to something that looks like a mush login screen, then yes.

@SixRegrets Thank you. I'll look into it. Even with the new site for the check you sent, I get:

" Your IPv6 address on the public Internet appears to be 2806:102e:18:204f:3180:e9fe:7e69:a41e

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) appears to be Uninet S.A. de C.V.

Since you have IPv6, we are including a tab that shows how well you can reach other IPv6 sites. [more info]

No IPv4 address detected

You appear to be able to browse the IPv6 Internet only. You have no access to IPv4. That's pretty bold!

HTTPS support on this web site is in beta. [more info]

Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have IPv6 Internet access."

I will see what I can do about IPv4, though I doubt anyone here is tech savvy enough to know how to even go about something like that. I may just have to suck it up for a week.

@SixRegrets No, It says IPv4: Not detected.

@SixRegrets Pv6: 2806:102e:18:204f:3180:e9fe:7e69:a41e

@SixRegrets You are correct in all three things.

When I try to connect to the first two, I get a message that the website is not responding.

When I try to connect via muclient (potato) it just hangs on the "Connecting to..." text. And then eventually: "Unable to connect to host gray-harbor.com:4201: connection timed out
Connection attempt cancelled. - 26/11/2020 - 21:59:26
Auto-reconnect in 5 minutes 30 seconds..." etc.

It's been a million years since I played Firan, but I will weigh in on a couple of things here and add a few more things I remember, if they are useful.

There was genetic code. Back when I was there, it had nothing to do with grandparents (or at least I don't think it did). Rather, it selected at random a trait from either parent for hair, skin, eyes. So a red-haired, fair-skinned, green-eyed mother and a black haired, tan-skinned, brown-eyed father could produce a child who was red-haired, tan-skinned, and green-eyed (etc.)

Craftable food had an energy value that would add to your total when eaten, up to your maximum allowed daily. The higher the quality (in general) the more the energy bonus. I think for most people the max was 25 with food providing anywhere from 5 - 25 per consumed. Then, if you used the sleep command, a percentage of that energy (say, 2/3rds) would go toward your stored total. Any time you did something like harvest a field (which would ICly take more than one person could do in a day (25), the remainder would be taken from stored ERP to represent multiple days work. People could also transfer and sell stored energy to others (as if they were working for them, or providing peasant labor, etc.)

One of the cool things in Firan was that headstaff had decided what each clan needed in terms of raw resources, and what each clan had to provide in terms of trade. A big part of each season was for trade ministers to meet with one another and work out trade agreements to ensure that their clan needs were met. If not (as mentioned above) crisis.

A couple of other things:

Pray success determined whether or not a god heard your prayer (though I think it was still up to the god whether or not to act).

Fashion checks. In big scenes, you could run a fashion check and the code would check the quality of make and materials of what everyone in the room was wearing. Those wearing well made clothes of high quality materials received social points (essentially coded clout that was used to measure status), while those in poorly made clothes of poor materials lost points (an attempt to ensure that there was always a social point class distinction).

Animal breeding. I think it a version of the same code for the @eesha command, just for animals, with the goal to breed the best horse, cow, etc.

If I think of more I'll drop it in here. Enjoy!

@Derp Good suggestion. I'm going to try that out tomorrow after doing a little more research on my international plan, just to make sure I'm not asking for a massive bill. Thanks for the help!