Roleplaying is far from dead. I have personally seen a resurgence of interest in the topic all over the place, ranging from the live-ins at the fraternity I joined to to numerous corners of the Internet where it goes on in some form or other. It's a flourishing hobby with millions of active participants globally. People love it, and it's finally really reaching outside the Anglosphere.

But there is one place within the roleplaying world that is stagnant: the MU* world. The world that relies on Telnet, that archaic command line "protocol," if you want to even call it that, where the most sophisticated output you'll get from the server is a blob of ANSI text. There's really nothing wrong with this, and frankly, I'd love to see it flourish just as much as the rest of the roleplaying world.

So let's face facts: new roleplayers aren't coming to MU*s. They're finding random Internet forums (like this one) to do play-by-post. They're meeting people on Discord servers. They're on /qst/ posting under temporary tripcodes that evaporate with the thread, leaving them free to do as they please in the short term with minimal consequences long-term. They're on private World of WarCraft servers, and in IMVU chat rooms. They're in the roleplay tags on Omegle.

But they aren't starting up a new instance of TinyMUX, and they aren't joining any of the established games, either, unless they're showing up specifically for World of Darkness or some kind of capeshit. Most "new" players are just very old players who have long been banned or ostracized hoping to get a fresh start. MU* users and administrators are steeped in so many nuanced, implicit cultural cues that some random person falling into it would get lost and in most cases almost immediately just leave. It's an elaborate world, built for people who are already entrenched in it and not for people who are just showing up., and it's getting smaller

My instincts tell me it's time to face the music: Telnet is on its way out, and with it, MU*'s. It is the Internet equivalent of AM radio, except less relevant. If I were to start a roleplaying community today, I would make a Discord server, because I'm convinced people actually use that program for now. I wouldn't create a new instance of RhostMUSH, and I wouldn't write my own custom codebase, for fear that the command line would scare off perfectly sane, intelligent, capable, fun roleplayers. Clicking on things is just more straightforward to people. It's more comprehensible and frankly a superior interface to memorizing a thousand ad hoc commands. I love MU*'s and they will always have a special place in my memories but I think it's time for us to admit it: we lost the argument, this medium is going to die with us in our nursing homes, at the latest.

So, this thread is here to raise the question if I am right, and depending on the answer to the question:

• If I am wrong, how can we get the vast swath of roleplayers to join existing MU*'s and create their own?
• If I am right, what platform should we jump ships to?
• Should we even jump ships, or accept our fall into extreme RP obscurity?

@apos said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

On the other hand, how many players do you want?

Infinite, ideally. That doesn't mean I want to be on a game with infinity players, but more roleplayers means more places to roleplay means more ways to do it means more themes and new angles and many modifications to old angles.

It's better than the alternative of the hobby being "niche," which means that you've got very limited options. Almost all active MU*'s today are either World of Darkness or some kind of capeshit, and I'm interested in neither lately. I'd love to see historical RP settings. I'd love to see more weird concept ones, like where they, instead of changing the world, change the structure of the RP; if you want to know what I mean by different structures, compare a tabletop RPG where your ST/GM/DM is physically present for all matters vs a MU* where they act more as moderators in many regards and stay out of the regular RP. There's a lot in RP to do that hasn't been hashed out yet, and that's in no small part because of how "niche" the hobby is.

@Rook

People are getting personally offended by the voicing of opinions, so it seems much less a technical discussion than it is a preference discussion.

This is as much if not more a preference discussion than anything. It is my personal preference that we continue to use MU*'s. However, the point of the thread is that it is my belief that the vast majority of the world prefers exactly the opposite. I have had to deal with people's reluctance to use command lines over the years, and it's so dramatic that I'm convinced they'd reject free money if it meant spending more than a few minutes actually using a command line; that software with literal mind-reading and fellatio functions would be turned away if it meant you had to type in read mind=me or suck dick=me or whatever. People fucking hate command lines, and this isn't limited to idiots. So I think that we are behooved to take seriously this reality.

@sunny said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

I want to point out that honest to god, we don't want the flood gates to open from these other RP communities. If we tip over to 'too accessible' (that sounds terrible, and I don't mean it like that) we'll have to readdress a lot more than the technology involved. Our games are all structured, roughly, the same way. You need a staffer for every 10-50 players, depending on how your game is set up, right?

What will happen is when you already have too many players, you stop letting in new ones. If you don't know how to control growth in your community, then you're just bad at administering something. Like elite colleges that already have enough students, the leftovers overflow into their own spheres and make their own MU*'s.

What's the big concern? That some MU*'s will emerge that aren't structured the same way? I'm not sure how this is a problem. This reads as reluctance to adapt to any kind of change that isn't tightly controlled, and maybe even straight-up fear of it.

That reboots/rehashes + diversity casting = the vast majority of the film industry in 2017+1. Come up with some new shit, and just so you know, pandering to progressives by filling your umpteenth overproduced reboot with womyn and non-whites just doesn't qualify.

Is there one? I'm used to topmudsites and MudConnector, but both seem a little out of it these days. There are things I've seen that I know for a fact are not there, as an example. Is there a MU* directory worth actually looking at?

@sunny said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

I want to point out that honest to god, we don't want the flood gates to open from these other RP communities. If we tip over to 'too accessible' (that sounds terrible, and I don't mean it like that) we'll have to readdress a lot more than the technology involved. Our games are all structured, roughly, the same way. You need a staffer for every 10-50 players, depending on how your game is set up, right?

What will happen is when you already have too many players, you stop letting in new ones. If you don't know how to control growth in your community, then you're just bad at administering something. Like elite colleges that already have enough students, the leftovers overflow into their own spheres and make their own MU*'s.

What's the big concern? That some MU*'s will emerge that aren't structured the same way? I'm not sure how this is a problem. This reads as reluctance to adapt to any kind of change that isn't tightly controlled, and maybe even straight-up fear of it.

I'd much prefer to just go on AnimeBytes. I downloaded Jin-Roh tonight while I was getting stoned with my friends. Streaming appears easier on the surface, but if you want HD animus with autistically precise subtitles by devoted weeaboo fans, you gotta get on the trackers.

Now, in spite of all my bitching about how Telnet is archaic, there are some things MU*'s do better than anything else I've seen:

• Rooms where you can navigate, either by cardinal directions (N, E, S, W) or by abstract idea (Main Street; your exits are: coffee shop, bank, alleyway)
• Objects and NPCs (typically called "mobiles" or "mobs") in those rooms
• Inventories of items with special properties that are on your character's person
• Complex code that can be applied to specific rooms, specific objects/inventory items, and specific NPCs

Things like Discord, while more elegant for the normies, do not come close to having this stuff. I think that if we are to keep MU*'s around and promulgate their credibility in these regards, we could maybe get enough new users to merit it. But the issue of hating command lines will persist, and I think that's worth addressing.

@thenomain said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

So make another game. "It's too hard." Then start a 4-chan RP play by post. "I don't want to." Nnnnnghhhhh....

Who says I haven't?

@magee101 said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

@moonman I meant to imply that the hobby is MU* not roleplay

I really do think MU*ing is on its way out, which sucks, because I love doing it.

@magee101 said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

I don't know if the hobby is dying, it seems about the same size and difficulty to find games as it did almost 20 years ago when I started, what I have seen is a migration away from the rp based systems (mush/mux etc) to muds or forum play because of reasons stated earlier in this thread. If it is dying? Enjoy the ride, we have one life. If it isn't? Grab a friend or two and try to get them to sit down with you as your friend and play with you once a week or something.

Roleplay is not dying, but I think MU*ing is.

@apos said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

On the other hand, how many players do you want?

Infinite, ideally. That doesn't mean I want to be on a game with infinity players, but more roleplayers means more places to roleplay means more ways to do it means more themes and new angles and many modifications to old angles.

It's better than the alternative of the hobby being "niche," which means that you've got very limited options. Almost all active MU*'s today are either World of Darkness or some kind of capeshit, and I'm interested in neither lately. I'd love to see historical RP settings. I'd love to see more weird concept ones, like where they, instead of changing the world, change the structure of the RP; if you want to know what I mean by different structures, compare a tabletop RPG where your ST/GM/DM is physically present for all matters vs a MU* where they act more as moderators in many regards and stay out of the regular RP. There's a lot in RP to do that hasn't been hashed out yet, and that's in no small part because of how "niche" the hobby is.

@Rook

People are getting personally offended by the voicing of opinions, so it seems much less a technical discussion than it is a preference discussion.

This is as much if not more a preference discussion than anything. It is my personal preference that we continue to use MU*'s. However, the point of the thread is that it is my belief that the vast majority of the world prefers exactly the opposite. I have had to deal with people's reluctance to use command lines over the years, and it's so dramatic that I'm convinced they'd reject free money if it meant spending more than a few minutes actually using a command line; that software with literal mind-reading and fellatio functions would be turned away if it meant you had to type in read mind=me or suck dick=me or whatever. People fucking hate command lines, and this isn't limited to idiots. So I think that we are behooved to take seriously this reality.

@derp

While that's cool and all, I once again come back to: "How do you do this in a way that allows for a diverse range of games like this code allows for without just creating every game from the ground up?"

Normally I don't argue for the use of proprietary "apps," but in this case, it's an attractive one so I'll do it. Discord allows for a range of games and events based on something very similar to commands, except you don't need to type in some weird crap like page Derp=yo to send you a private message. I know that to you and I this might not seem like a big deal, but try getting your average non-programmer to not only comprehend how to do it, but to prefer it over anything with a GUI. Having a GUI for that is, to normal people, even normal roleplayers, completely superior. Now just imagine what it's like with anything more sophisticated than that like, "I'd like to roll Strength + Brawl to punch this motherfucker in the head."

And you can do exactly that. It's easy to write bots on Discord.

Roleplaying is far from dead. I have personally seen a resurgence of interest in the topic all over the place, ranging from the live-ins at the fraternity I joined to to numerous corners of the Internet where it goes on in some form or other. It's a flourishing hobby with millions of active participants globally. People love it, and it's finally really reaching outside the Anglosphere.

But there is one place within the roleplaying world that is stagnant: the MU* world. The world that relies on Telnet, that archaic command line "protocol," if you want to even call it that, where the most sophisticated output you'll get from the server is a blob of ANSI text. There's really nothing wrong with this, and frankly, I'd love to see it flourish just as much as the rest of the roleplaying world.

So let's face facts: new roleplayers aren't coming to MU*s. They're finding random Internet forums (like this one) to do play-by-post. They're meeting people on Discord servers. They're on /qst/ posting under temporary tripcodes that evaporate with the thread, leaving them free to do as they please in the short term with minimal consequences long-term. They're on private World of WarCraft servers, and in IMVU chat rooms. They're in the roleplay tags on Omegle.

But they aren't starting up a new instance of TinyMUX, and they aren't joining any of the established games, either, unless they're showing up specifically for World of Darkness or some kind of capeshit. Most "new" players are just very old players who have long been banned or ostracized hoping to get a fresh start. MU* users and administrators are steeped in so many nuanced, implicit cultural cues that some random person falling into it would get lost and in most cases almost immediately just leave. It's an elaborate world, built for people who are already entrenched in it and not for people who are just showing up., and it's getting smaller

My instincts tell me it's time to face the music: Telnet is on its way out, and with it, MU*'s. It is the Internet equivalent of AM radio, except less relevant. If I were to start a roleplaying community today, I would make a Discord server, because I'm convinced people actually use that program for now. I wouldn't create a new instance of RhostMUSH, and I wouldn't write my own custom codebase, for fear that the command line would scare off perfectly sane, intelligent, capable, fun roleplayers. Clicking on things is just more straightforward to people. It's more comprehensible and frankly a superior interface to memorizing a thousand ad hoc commands. I love MU*'s and they will always have a special place in my memories but I think it's time for us to admit it: we lost the argument, this medium is going to die with us in our nursing homes, at the latest.

So, this thread is here to raise the question if I am right, and depending on the answer to the question:

• If I am wrong, how can we get the vast swath of roleplayers to join existing MU*'s and create their own?
• If I am right, what platform should we jump ships to?
• Should we even jump ships, or accept our fall into extreme RP obscurity?