Jan 19, 2015, 5:59 AM

@ThatOneDude said:

@Ganymede Right, and that's the beauty of the internet and the choices out there, correct?

Hardly. The MUSH world is pretty small. This is why we have people on other parts of the board asking, "Is there any non-WoD game to recommend?" and such. It can be right hard to find a game that suits you. The internet is huge when it comes to choices for porn and you can meet just about any fetish you want, but when it comes to finding a MUSH, no.

My experience, if I am going to have success (that is, I play a while and it's fun) on a game, it needs to meet certain desires.

Probably for everyone there's

#1: RP is happening at times when I can and want to play.

This is followed by a load of other stuff, which people value at varying degrees. Do I understand the game world? Do I connect with it? Do they allow the type of character I want to play? Is it consent, dice, a hybrid thereof? If there's a dice system, is it one I like? Do people I know I like to RP with play there, or want to play if I do? Does somebody I can't stand staff there or otherwise have a lot of power over how things go? Does it feel welcoming?

Everybody probably has their own list of preferences, with elements that range in importance from 'that's a deal-breaker, won't play there' to 'not what I'd like best, but I don't mind.'

You can't expect to find your perfect game. I (and probably many others) can't even expect to build it. If I had the code skill to make the game with all the features, functions, policies, game-world etc. that are just exactly what I think is the very bestest a MUSH could have, it probably wouldn't meet the desires of other people enough to attract enough of a player-base to meet that #1 condition of RP being available.

We end up talking about all sorts of MUSH design elements, looking for the variant that falls between 'great!' and 'I don't mind' for the greatest number of players who fit the vague profile of players we'd like to attract.