Am I the only one tickled by how the typo in the first line of the OP is so appropriate for our blessed genre?

Hmm, I'll get back to you on that.

I can't say I'm surprised but I am a little saddened that it seems like these days people pretty much ignore the IC grid for spontaneous RP. Maybe it's nostalgia but I feel like some of the best RP back in the day came about wandering the grid.

edit: I want to clarify that I don't mean hanging out in bars or whatever. Just people finding interesting places on the grid and improvising scenes there playing off the environment.

Seriously? I have no idea who or what the Blackstaff is, but what have they been doing the last two years? Playing cribbage?

Honestly I think the difference between muds and mushes comes down to the fact that by and large on a mush there is no gameplay without other players. That's not true on 99.9% of muds. You could even say the PvE play on muds influences mud players' perceptions of each other -- when you interact with coded systems like crafting or bashing you develop a set of expectations that extends to your RP.

Uruk-hai07837 doesn't ever OOC does he?

@SkinnyThicket said in Does size matter? What about duration?:

You know, this does remind me of the other side of this - another question, "How detailed should my writing be?" - and I find myself occasionally prompted to step outside of my comfort in the presence of almost poetic prose.

So does that imply that, when dictating the conditions of a scene, minimum times between posts might be important than maximum for some people?

Some people RP like they're writing a novel, and others like they're acting/improvising in a play (which isn't totally descriptive -- I like more of a director stance myself), and this affects posing in so many ways. It's important to recognize what kind of RPer the other person is and not get bent out of shape that they're doing it the 'wrong' way.

Arx is using a rather old fork of Evennia, no? You guys have a lot on your plate but you should port to the latest release IMO.

Less dialog can be good, nonverbal action can be good. But where can I officially register my peeve for poses that attempt to answer to four other people's poses in the same scene. Their character's head will be whipping around smiling, smirking, winking and nodding like an understudy in the cast for the Exorcist.

Sometimes I think mu*'s need more of a formal convention of moving the spotlight to one or two PCs in a big group scene. Of course everyone's got bit in the ass by drama kings and queens hogging the spotlight so the gut instinct is to avoid that at all costs.

This is one of those situations where you realize rooms ≠ scenes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Magica is a classic.

Arx is using a rather old fork of Evennia, no? You guys have a lot on your plate but you should port to the latest release IMO.

There's a small but active MOO group on Google Groups. MOO-talk maybe? They've done some neat things lately.

Also that game Wayfar 1444. Based on a release of HellMOO's core I think.

One of the big problems with learning mushcode as a beginner is mushcode is a right bastard to read.

Start learning with this http://muxify.musoapbox.net/editor.html and make your life easier.

Does the Pope eat fish on Friday?

I guess what I'm about to say makes me the bastard of Charles Murray and Alan Bloom, much to my dismay. 'Fun' as a metric of success is about as useful as saying your lunch was 'successful' because you had 'fun' eating dessert. I have fun watching Nate Diaz videos on Youtube, but nobody really cares about my personal fun watching Youtube, and nobody should. A game is successful when it meets objective critera of success, like size, popularity, breaking new ground in the genre, and high technical and creative standards. If you are having fun on a game, that game is not necessarily successful. It's just... 'fun'. /rant

What's an off-screen system?

This all reminded me of an old post on art and RPGs I read a while back that I thought had good things to say, http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2007/02/meeting-and-birth.html

edit: and http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/10/elitism-and-rpgs-as-art.html

I think it's important to try some of the time. First, it's more fun and interesting IMO. You're pushing boundaries and trying different things. Second I think you get better at what you're doing faster when you're doing it with some intention, and there can be more satisfaction in doing something well.

I more like the question do RPers try to make art. All jokes aside, and people's goals notwithstanding, unfortunately I find that most people don't try.

@Pyrephox said in Survival/Apocalypse Genre Survivability:

I would like to see something a bit more like Xenoblade Chronicles X. For those not familiar with the game: the idea is that colony ships fled Earth when Earth got caught in the middle of an interstellar war. Some of the war factions pursued the colony ships, damaging many/all of them. One crashes on a new planet, scattering stasis pods across most of the planet. The main ship has been repurposed into a home base/colony, but they're on a planet filled with unknown megafauna and alien pursuers. The purpose is to survive, but also to try and thrive. So, you have a way to integrate new characters (a new PC obviously just got thawed out of a recovered life pod), you have a home base with an explicit goal of "try to live like normal people" for those people who are more social players, but you also have a constant threat of unknown and dangerous life that needs to be understood/defeated in order for the colony to gather the resources it continues to need to expand and establish itself. That many people are highly competent in a field doesn't break the bank as much, because NO ONE is competent in "what the hell is this thing trying to eat me", because it's all new species. And a new planet gives the story staff leeway to introduce new threats over time, as people expand and explore.

I've seen this idea come up here and there and I think it's pretty cool; for some reason I thought of it today and remembered this post from @Pyrephox .

Has anyone done a mu* like this before?

There is a Western mu* out there, saw it on Mudconnector recently -- http://www.mudconnect.com/cgi-bin/adv_search.cgi?Mode=MUD&mud=Grimwood