WoD Games (nWod unless otherwise noted)
San Francisco: Paris of the West -- sfmux.com:1337 // http://www.sfmux.com/index.php/Main_Page
Reno -- reno.kydance.net:2018 // http: http://reno.kydance.net/index.php/Main_Page
Fallcoast -- fallcoast.net 2009 // http://fallcoast.net/wiki/Main_Page
Fate's Harvest -- fatesharvest.com:6464 // http://fatesharvest.com/w/Main_Page
Garou MUSH -- 205.138.63.222 // garoumush.org (oWoD)
Temptest -- game.tempestmux.com 5555 // website unknown (oWoD)
Sheltering Sky: Colorado by Night -- mush.shelteringcolorado.com 2601 (oWoD)
City of Hope MUSH -- cityofhopemush.net port 8888 // http://coh.spork.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
From the Ashes: Detroit by Night -- fta.darcness.net 2860 (v20/w20/m20)
Let Freedom Ring -- - portent.genesismuds.com 8020 // http://letfreedomring.wikidot.com/ (20th Anniv Ed)
Dark Communion -- Dark Communion (Dark Ages)
Descent -- thedescentmux.com:2860 // thedescentmux.com

Anime
MahouMUSH -- MahouMUSH.com 7342 // http://www.mahoumush.com

Horror/Urban Fantasy/Urban Horror/Sci-Fi (Non IP)
Multiverse Crisis -- multiversemush.com 5001 // http://multiversemush.com/mw/index.php?title=Main_Page (mixed genres)
Dream Chasers MUSH -- dreamchasers.space 4767 (mixed genres)
Mythara: At the Crossroads -- mythara.com 9900
Cybersphere -- cs.netsville.com 7777
Sindome -- moo.sindome.org 5555
HellMOO -- hellmoo.org 7777 // http://hellmoo.org/
Star Conquest -- squidsoft.net 7777
Lost Dominion: lostdominion.org:600 // https://lostdominion.org (Rifts Based Setting)
Neon Moo -- neon-moo.space, port 7777 // https://neon-moo.space/?date=2018-06-22

IPs (Television, Movies, Comics, Etc.)
Blood of Dragons -- bod.westeros.org: 3000 // http://www.westeros.org/BoD/ (based on Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire series)
Marsilikos - Under the Wings of Angels -- marsilikos.silvertree.org, port 1310 // http://marsilikos.wikidot.com (Kushiel's Legacy book series)
Welcome to Lovecraft -- LovecraftMa.com: 1880 // http://lovecraftma.com/index.php/Main_Page (inspired by the Locke and Key comic series)
Road to Amber -- roadtoamber.com 6250 // http://roadtoamber.com/ (Amber book series)
Babylon 5: The Last Best Hope -- babylon.monolithwebsystems.com 2259 // website unknown (Babylon 5 series)
Shadowrun: Denver -- aelfhame.net 1999 // http://denver.wikidot.com/ (Shadowrun)
United Heroes Mush -- unitedheroesmush.com 1999 // https://www.unitedheroesmush.com/index.php?title=Main_Page (Marvel Universe)
Star Trek: Among The Stars -- ats.trekmush.org 1701 // http://www.trekmush.org/index.php/Main_Page (Star Trek)
Equestrian Dawn -- mush.equestriandawn.com 8789 (MLP)
Star Wars: Rebirth Mush -- game.starwarsrebirth.com 9999 (Star Wars)
Tenebrae - the Emblem of Ea -- tenebraemush.net 4001 ((Pathfinder/D&D))
Pernworld -- paper.mudmagic.com 2211 (Pern series)
CoMuX: NuGenesis -- nugenesismux.com 6006 (Marvel Universe)
Inheritance Gambit: inheritancegambit.com:2099 // https://inheritancegambit.com (Marvel Universe)
Super Robot Wars -- srwmush.com 2015 // https://www.srwmush.com/index.php?title=Main_Page (Video Game)
Tenebrous Isles - tenebrousisles.com port 9001 // Website: http://www.tenebrousisles.com/wiki/Main_Page (Dresden Files)
Mutant Genesis MUX: mutantgenesismux.com:2017 // mutantgenesismux.com (Marvel Universe, mutant-focused)
Gods and Monsters MUX: mutantgenesismux.com:2017 // godsandmonstersmux.com (DC Universe, Justice League focused)

Fantasy/Medieval Settings (Non IP)
Arx -- play.arxmush.org port 3000 // Website: play.arxmush.org
Valorous Dominion -- 71.171.93.80:1510 // http://valorous.wikidot.com
The Enternal Crusade - mushhaven.com port 1220 Website: eternalcrusade.wikidot.com

Other
Match of the Millenium -- motm.kicks-ass.net port 2002 // http://motm.kicks-ass.net/ (Arena/Fight Tournament Theme)
License to Kill -- portent.genesismuds.com:2077 (Espionage/Spy Themes)

Adult Themes
NaughtyMuffin MUSH -- muffinmush.club 2469
Penultimate Destination -- penultimatemush.com 9500
Shoujo-Ai MUSH -- yuriba.com 4201
Shangrila MUSH -- shangrilamux.com 9999
Terminus Faire -- terminus.mushpark.com 9999

Some Guidelines:

• Completeness: This is by no means an exhaustive list, if I've overlooked a game it wasn't intentional and please reach out so I can update.

• Game Quality/Content: I cannot vouch for any of these games in terms of content, staff quality, activity levels, plot quality, player behavior, etc. Good luck and put on your helmet.

• Websites: Some were not available in all cases or I couldn't find them, if I missed yours my apologies and let me know so I can correct.

• Notes: I may have gotten some genre notes wrong or connection addresses wrong - please reach out in PM or correct on this thread

• Sources: I pulled from Mud Connector, the MSB threads, and Mud Stats - 2 of the 3 of these sources are not always reliable in terms of refresh data but I did attempt to connect to most of these places to verify that they are up and there are people logged in and active -- i.e. no 3 people connected and idle for 6 days, etc.

• Cadence: I plan to periodically update this list with new games/removing closed games as time allows.

I was actually really excited to play but being one of those players who has a full time job where I can't login from work, my plan was to work on my application as soon as I got home.

I feel kind of weirdly ... punished or something that I can't be online all day. I already struggle with this or have on other games where the light speed nature of those games leaves players struggling to balance and keep up. There will be other games and its not the end of the world and this does suggest that I'm a poor fit for a game that seems to move too fast even at opening.

I was just digging the theme and legit excited. So yeah. I'm bummed.

It's not that there are PCs teenagers with an abject lack of social skills and a refusal to get along with other people IC, there is a niche in this specific theme that caters to that. There is, however, something to be said regarding the art of playing an asshole that makes it enticing to come back and find out all the interesting reasons why they are a magnificent asshole.

The source material has plenty of magnificent assholes but we see their humanity because the show writers craft those little views into their humanity on purpose. This is in order to make us invest and make us care what happens to this PC because they are going through something that we wouldn't otherwise know about if the writers didn't show as a series of flashbacks and narrative exposition.

The closest thing on the game to that is Memoirs section and maybe some people read those, but just as easily most people don't read them and especially won't read them if the Memoir is about a PC that has run them off.

The art of magnificent assholery is poorly understood and the players who are taking it too far, who think they're building an air of mystery that's meant to intice us to come back and peel away more of the onion? They are often creating a bar so high that not even the people that can sing the high note in the Star Spangled Banner can get over it. And the reality is -- no one with a little self-respect for the way they want to spend their limited free time to play in a game after a certain point is going to enjoy bashing their head into the same wall over and over and over again just to flatter your mean as fuck with no apparent upside PC.

If you're rude and shitty once IC and there's no interpersonal basis for it, I certainly write it off to IC forces beyond my control and insight. If you're rude and shitty a second time IC, I start to wonder what's up this. If you're rude and shitty a third time IC, I am likely going to assume that you are just an asshole, you don't want my PC to build rapport with yours and whatever reasons that may exist for why you are a shitlordly dillhole in this game are now in the 'I don't give a fuck' bin OOC.

There is such a thing as being too precious with your exacting interpretation of a terribly behaved person in character and it is sadly often the case, that the players doing this are so fixated on how precious they are being that they fail to see that they are now actually alienating players.

And this can actually have a negative impact on the cooperative elements of the game, especially if those same PCs stand in the way to another PC's ability to interact with plot or affect story elements.

@Ghost

***=Spoilers And Salty AF***

I think one of the ways bleed is avoided is to also do a radical self-inventory of things you do not want to RP about.

Here's my list:

Romantic infidelity
Body horror
Racism and racial violence
Pregnancy

And then you tell people your list at the outset.

There's this idea that you have RP everything thrown at you even if it's a total shit sandwich that doesn't do anything for you or your PC and politely be on board with having a bad time so someone else can have a great time. And if you don't like something, you have to play through it in-game even if it's objectively harmful to the player.

To which: hell no.

There's a huge difference between moves and countermoves in an IG conflict and your PC is bested or you just don't like the outcome versus being subjected to being a punching bag for IG events because it's great fun for someone else at your expense. People can intelligently tell the difference and those who try to use this an excuse to not 'lose' in game are in the wrong for attempting to manipulate an outcome.

If you're at all a human being and someone says: 'hey, I can't RP about this subject' or 'this is taking a turn to a place that's really hard on me and I can't do this', then you give them an out while preserving the IG outcome.

Edit: a word

I work with a lot of Slavic people at my job. I enjoy this. I especially enjoy the Polish lady whom, if you so much as sneeze at your desk, stalks you all over the office until she all but physically picks you up and places you on the sidewalk to make you go home. You must stay away for 3 days at minimum. Do not try to come back.

Ilu Madeizja. You're doing God's work.

@tek said in Emotional bleed:

@GangOfDolls Now to be fair, in the right setting with the right oversight, that could be helpful. However, a recreational game with people who didn't sign up to facilitate your therapy is NOT the place for that shit.

I generally tend to take a harder line in that I don't think it's generally ever healthy to do this, from my point of view. The therapeutic process requires a lot of oversight that you can't get in a game setting.

But more over, if you're doing this in a game setting, then you're doing it while interacting with other players and whether they know it or not, that's really not a fair position to put anyone in. Even if they consent to it because I don't believe this is actually something anyone can fundamentally consent to because the underpinnings of it are unethical. It doesn't make anyone a bad person. It just makes it a bad action.

This is different just exploring a thing. Exploration of human behavior and meaning is way different.

@tek To add to that, I've tended to notice it be more of a thing when players are trying to work out/unpack/give themselves a short course in self-administered therapy about something they're struggling with via PC as a proxy. This is almost always a total recipe for intense and ugly disaster.

Oh, yeah, I do see your point. And it may just be a matter of play style. I've played some major dicks in my time (as have we all) but as I get older and crankier, I do find that sometimes its not always in the interest of a game or a character to lead with uncompromisingly aggressive behavior IC when the PC on the receiving end hasn't done much other than be there at the wrong place, wrong time. Like sensibly, even people who very traumatized and behaviorally stunted, do not as a whole walk up and emotionally roundhouse kick a total stranger for just sort of standing there.

Provoking that kind of reaction is another thing, totally.

There's a charisma and chemical alchemy in a way to playing a PC who goes out of their way to be mean to strangers usually because their approach is very nuanced and you see the humanity underneath this PC that makes them charming and ultimately relatable. And I think for some players, how they think their PC comes across and how they really come across, are very different and they don't see it.

TL;DR: Dealing with a jerk necessitates an upside to dealing with a jerk. No upside? People will avoid your jerk.

I think forgiveness is important. There are certain people and things in this hobby that I've forgiven, both because there have been apologies and definitely there's been no apologies. The first is nice- sometimes really nice, if for no other reason that you feel seen and heard about how something was hurtful when it didn't need to be. The second is more of a function of needing to just move on in life. Here again, I'm not waiting around for someone to pony up on apology but you run the risk of getting stuck in a sentiment or a feeling that doesn't do anything productive and just makes you feel like shit.

I also think sometimes you do things that are upsetting to someone else and apologizing isn't enough or for whatever reason, trying to offer one is the wrong idea. I think in those cases, if it's not enough or you just think attempting to apologize is going to be more harmful than helpful - you just have to agree to learn something from it and not repeat that behavior.

I've been in this hobby a long ass time. I started mushing in my late teens as a way to escape an abusive situation at home. I had a lot of coping and survival mechanisms from my real life that I imported into mushing because I'd gotten by in life on those so why not in virtual space. One of those things was trying to overly manage other people's feelings. Children in abusive households often become hyper sensitive to everyone else's emotional barometer and when things are too hot or too cold, they work hard to please the situation. I am/was certainly no exception to that experience, I'm a grown ass adult but I still catch myself doing it.

One of those things that's an extension of all this is passive aggressiveness. For me, it stemmed in being ultra terrified of any sort of confrontation. In my young life, confrontation wasn't about disagreement - it was volcanic displays of fury that sometimes got the cops called. So, the next and only thing to do was to swallow your feelings, avoid confrontation, and pretend everything was just fine. Regardless of being aware of where it comes from, it didn't serve me well for a long time in the MU* wider world. I certainly ruined some otherwise positive and happy online 'working' relationships and friendships because I was ultimately too terrified to just say something that might be upsetting.

I've been through a shitload of therapy as an adult because I got tired of feeling like garbage about this. I have much more clarity and self-awareness around this behavior but because I'm a flawed human being, I still feel myself slipping back into familiar territory. I'm generally much better about it and behavior in general. As much as anything is a work in progress until we no longer draw breath.

But there are cases where I can't find the person in question that I didn't behave well towards because time and the closure of games. In some cases, I've no idea if these people even remember those choice moments - they probably don't and chances are, that momentary blip of conflict was just that for them. But believe me, I remember those blips.

There are cases where I think I know how to find people from the past but I'm not sure they want to hear from me. I don't want to invade boundaries just to offer an apology as that seems like anti-thesis of the point. In both those cases, all I can really do is not repeat my mistakes and missteps, even if that player never knows about it. I guess that's how you prove that you're trying and hopefully succeeding at being sorry for what happened - by trying to avoid repeating the same pattern.

I'm also seconding a VPN connection.

In a former job, I traveled to Singapore and Malaysia 1-2x a year and my ability to connect to games while using wifi networks was pretty hit or miss due to security configurations. I also couldn't log into my US-based Netflix and Hulu accounts.

So, I started engaging with a VPN service and that solved pretty much all of it.

@Derp said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:

V.C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic Series: Look, I was a pretty advanced reader and I devoured this series. Even the prequel that everyone else hated.

Nice. When I was kid my family went on vacation and I took 2 books along, Red Dragon (the prequel to Silence of the Lambs) and It. My mother was horrified that I was reading books well beyond my 11-year-old sensibilities, so confiscated them.

When we got to the cabin we were staying at, someone had left behind Flowers In The Attic and My Sweet Audrina and I read those instead. She didn't have a clue about them.

I definitely learned something from those books.

ETA - Meaningful childhood reading list:

The Stand - Unabridged and Illustrated Version
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Princess Bride
The Little Drummer Girl
Discworld series through Hogfather (and then it changed enough that I didn't like it anymore)

@Auspice

I'm not sure if you've done this yet but - I would look at Glassdoor and see what current employees and past applicants have said about their interview to offer process and typically how long it takes. Some places are just slow as hell because their own internal processes enable that or there's someone out of office for the holiday or other reasons that isn't progressing the contract along.

I would avoid going outside the bounds of your contract recruiter, though without talking to the recruiter that you're thinking about also contacting the company and getting their blessing. You don't actually know what the recruiter and the contract administrator in the company have talked about and it will more than likely succeed in pissing off your recruiter (no matter how slow, lazy, shady, sus they may be- if they are on those things) and it will send up red flags to the contract administrator about the ability to follow directions and go with the flow that may not reflect well on your ability to convert to FTE or at worst case, they may decide this is already starting out on a note they don't like and decide to use another contractor.

In the meantime, you probably already know this and are doing this - but keep applying for FTE and contract jobs. Contract work is extremely ephimeral in tech circles and has a more frequent tendancy to fall through or see big delays or push backs.

Question about Arx!

So, I have previously tried to play but I'm not in a space where I can be online a lot during working hours. My experience with Arx at the time was that this wasn't conducive to getting to do stuff with plot on Arx in the rostered character I picked up.

I don't know enough about Arx to make a new PC and would probably pick up another rostered character but I'm worried about not being able to keep up again. Is the pace still kinda nuts or is it really specific to roster characters and faction or has it generally settled down?

@tek

@tek said in Emotional bleed:

@GangOfDolls Now to be fair, in the right setting with the right oversight, that could be helpful. However, a recreational game with people who didn't sign up to facilitate your therapy is NOT the place for that shit.

I generally tend to take a harder line in that I don't think it's generally ever healthy to do this, from my point of view. The therapeutic process requires a lot of oversight that you can't get in a game setting.

But more over, if you're doing this in a game setting, then you're doing it while interacting with other players and whether they know it or not, that's really not a fair position to put anyone in. Even if they consent to it because I don't believe this is actually something anyone can fundamentally consent to because the underpinnings of it are unethical. It doesn't make anyone a bad person. It just makes it a bad action.

This is different just exploring a thing. Exploration of human behavior and meaning is way different.

@tek To add to that, I've tended to notice it be more of a thing when players are trying to work out/unpack/give themselves a short course in self-administered therapy about something they're struggling with via PC as a proxy. This is almost always a total recipe for intense and ugly disaster.

I think one of the ways bleed is avoided is to also do a radical self-inventory of things you do not want to RP about.

Here's my list:

Romantic infidelity
Body horror
Racism and racial violence
Pregnancy

And then you tell people your list at the outset.

There's this idea that you have RP everything thrown at you even if it's a total shit sandwich that doesn't do anything for you or your PC and politely be on board with having a bad time so someone else can have a great time. And if you don't like something, you have to play through it in-game even if it's objectively harmful to the player.

To which: hell no.

There's a huge difference between moves and countermoves in an IG conflict and your PC is bested or you just don't like the outcome versus being subjected to being a punching bag for IG events because it's great fun for someone else at your expense. People can intelligently tell the difference and those who try to use this an excuse to not 'lose' in game are in the wrong for attempting to manipulate an outcome.

If you're at all a human being and someone says: 'hey, I can't RP about this subject' or 'this is taking a turn to a place that's really hard on me and I can't do this', then you give them an out while preserving the IG outcome.

Edit: a word

Not dumb at all. I think what might be a task to manage is the theme: low-tech 50s.

I like this theme but it's one of those things that if you want purity on the theme, it'll require some monitoring of players when they let non-50s things seep into the game.

This is something to think about in terms of how theme is theme and how much you want people to stick to it.

As a current LARPer and MUer, I'm not super prone to bleed these days. I'm not sure why that is because I was certainly way more vulnerable to it when I was younger and experienced a certain amount of it. I was fortunate that it never had destructive consequences and that the people I larped and mu*ed around were constructive, healthy enough to participate in making sure there were boundaries to prevent that.

When I was in mid-20s, I was in a game where my PC was in an intense romantic relationship with another PC. The game was online but myself and the other player knew each other from local larp circles, so we were friends offline before this pairing in-game happened. He happened to be married at the time. I was not. Things sloshed over for both of us in terms of bleed. We were able to hit the breaks, acknowledge there were feelings that while 'real' they probably didn't actually mean that we wanted to hit self-destruct on our social circle and his marriage just because we felt that way, this was an infatuation, and we just let the thing run its course.

I was lucky because if we hadn't taken a step back, we probably would have enthusiastically let bleed dictate behavior, a huge explosion would have happened, and at the end of all that, it would be the last few minutes of The Graduate but in real life, so the slow seep of regret and divorce attorneys.

This is all to say that I think the first step is acknowledging that it happens and that none of us are robots and that brains and hearts are easily mutable and changeable things when it comes to manufacturing emotions and then leaving them unattended. And I think having serious conversations with the people around you that you trust about how to pull the fire alarm if something happens, before it happens.

And there are other kinds of bleed for sure. Nordic format larps and some MU* are really good at the suffer puppet game where intensely shitty stuff happens in a game and then you're stuck in your feelings about it. The larps at least have a de-role and debrief process that gives you tools to separate yourself from the events at the very end of the event (often with mental health professionals involved)-

A de-role exercise I really like is taking a piece of your PCs costume and then literally putting it in a box and basically giving your PC a eulogy. It really helps, I think, with reframing context: this PC was 'alive' for a weekend and now, it's not. There was then and this is now.

I think some of these exercises can be translated into MU* spaces.