Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes

[Kanye Qwest]

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Kanye-Qwest

I believe you missed an important part of @Lotherio's text: He is setting up a game where it doesn't matter. I can't tell if you're telling him that he's wrong to do so, but it sure seems like it.

No dear, I didn't miss anything. I was explaining why I don't feel it's right to view game requirements you don't meet as punitive. I think it's great to make a game with no activity requirements. I want everyone to have fun and be chill. Everyone in the world, except anyone involved in Duck Dynasty.

[Lotherio]

@Kanye-Qwest said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Kanye-Qwest

I believe you missed an important part of @Lotherio's text: He is setting up a game where it doesn't matter. I can't tell if you're telling him that he's wrong to do so, but it sure seems like it.

No dear, I didn't miss anything. I was explaining why I don't feel it's right to view game requirements you don't meet as punitive. I think it's great to make a game with no activity requirements. I want everyone to have fun and be chill. Everyone in the world, except anyone involved in Duck Dynasty.

Damnit, the new place was a Duck Dynasty Mu*, I was making code for slacking off while making duck calls and everything.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Also - if you need a doctor and one isn't around, you can absolutely go to the hospital and NPC doctors are coded to give you the gift of healing - but you're at the mercy of the person that wounded you actually getting you there on time, and no amount of OOCly paging/calling/seeking someone to save you via OOC means is going to help - you've got to navigate through the streets to the hospital and hope you don't bleed out along the way. (You have 1 rl hour).

Why 1 hour? This seems like an arbitrary number to me, and you were arguing against abitrariness for creating hard feelings. Even set rules can cause hard feelings. "I had only 2 points over lethal, while Bob had 10, and he had the same hour to get help as I did, that's unfair!"

And this is what gets me about Muds: All these systems are, in the end, arbitrary. Like all games, you pick the game you like and you play it, knowing that it's arbitrary. Saying "at least Muds do it differently" is the concession that different games are different. It's not a solution, and the way your particular Mud habit goes isn't better in general. It's better for you, absolutely, but I don't see this as being a solution to any problem than "one of a thousand ways to do it".

So no, I don't think your answer is a great solution. I think it's a concession to the people who like things that way, as opposed to people who like things, well, the Mush way.

2 points over...10 points over... whether your arm is severed at the elbow or shoulder - you're bleeding. A critical injury is one that, whatever the means of application, has shortened your lifespan to 1 RL hour without intervention. It's not arbitrary, it's the length of time at which you are considered in mortal peril, no matter your injury. you could have an injury that requires treatment within 12 hours, or 62. That's not considered a dire emergency by the game.

Then how was the time of one hour decided on? Just because something is the same for everyone does not mean it is not arbitrary.

[Kestrel]

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

'Activity' is nothing but a ratio of time spent in-game and time spent off-game and the only way to not hold anyone accountable for their offline time is to have zero expectation of activity whatsoever.

This rubs me the wrong way. If someone can only get on once a week, or once a month, why should they be excluded from having the fun they want?

Sometimes, yes. As illustrated by the example @Arkandel provided here:

@Arkandel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@mietze said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I don't know why it's so hard for people to just say "oh darn, this person wasn't able to be here oocly, well, let's just assume they were prevented from acting by something unforeseen until we have a chance to talk."

There are two reasons, one better than the other.

1. Because said people are jerks.

2. Because this person is actually abusing the fact they aren't around. For instance I log on maybe once a week but please assume I've been to all the political meetings, and while your PC was at risk of dying in the Slaughthouse of Horror please assume I was also there fighting valiantly at the back. What, it's time for you to put in a spend for Glory 4? Me too! We're old war buddies, you and I.

... I guess I could have summed it up by stating 'people are jerks' and leaving it at that.

It isn't always a case of, 'omg, real life is so busy!' Some people just don't like RPing certain things. For example, conflict. If all you log on to do is TS with your boo, and you just really hate conflict and have 0 desire to ever be involved in it or to go through the hassle of RPing your involvement in a battle, in major story points, I don't think that you should be allowed to reap the benefit of story points you just aren't putting the effort into.

What you give is what you get. It sucks you can't be online 24/7, or that you can't get along with everyone well enough to play with them — I'm not even arguing that you should. But it is annoying for those players who had the time to spare and invested into the story, risking their character and giving enjoyment to other players, to watch as some apathetic schmuck rolls past them to claim all of the glory points and none of the effort.

Even on a MUSH — if a player doesn't RP with me, I'd rather our characters just not have our stories be more intricately involved than, 'Oh hey, yeah, that guy John, I've seen him around'. I don't want that player sending me a page assuring me that John has been giving my character lots of personal one-on-one time if we cannot actually RP it out. Otherwise, it's as dull as solo-killing a player who's offline on a MUD and calling that 'story'.

@Ganymede, brief mention: my earlier post wasn't in response to yours, but to the one I quoted. Apologies for the confusion.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Even on a MUSH — if a player doesn't RP with me, I'd rather our characters just not have our stories be more intricately involved than, 'Oh hey, yeah, that guy John, I've seen him around'. I don't want that player sending me a page assuring me that John has been giving my character lots of personal one-on-one time if we cannot actually RP it out. Otherwise, it's as dull as solo-killing a player who's offline on a MUD and calling that 'story'.

Then say no when they page about the one on one time. There no rule on any MUSH I have ever seen that says you have to go along with with the other player suggests. Just be polite and say that you prefer to have important interaction on screen or however you want o word it and move on to the next guy person who plays the style you enjoy.
I was resentfully paged by someone asking me to if it was alright if we said that my char was teaching hers a skill. My answer was no he wouldn't teach that to anybody. Other player player said No prob and went on to find some one else to handle the IC teaching.
Yes for the MUD folks reading this, all this could have been handled ICly just as well. And honestly in this particular case I have no preference as to how it gets handled save that the OOC way was a bit quicker.

[Thenomain]

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Also - if you need a doctor and one isn't around, you can absolutely go to the hospital and NPC doctors are coded to give you the gift of healing - but you're at the mercy of the person that wounded you actually getting you there on time, and no amount of OOCly paging/calling/seeking someone to save you via OOC means is going to help - you've got to navigate through the streets to the hospital and hope you don't bleed out along the way. (You have 1 rl hour).

Why 1 hour? This seems like an arbitrary number to me, and you were arguing against abitrariness for creating hard feelings. Even set rules can cause hard feelings. "I had only 2 points over lethal, while Bob had 10, and he had the same hour to get help as I did, that's unfair!"

And this is what gets me about Muds: All these systems are, in the end, arbitrary. Like all games, you pick the game you like and you play it, knowing that it's arbitrary. Saying "at least Muds do it differently" is the concession that different games are different. It's not a solution, and the way your particular Mud habit goes isn't better in general. It's better for you, absolutely, but I don't see this as being a solution to any problem than "one of a thousand ways to do it".

So no, I don't think your answer is a great solution. I think it's a concession to the people who like things that way, as opposed to people who like things, well, the Mush way.

2 points over...10 points over... whether your arm is severed at the elbow or shoulder - you're bleeding.

You are reframing the argument until you're right. And you would be right that, in a system where those two instances are being compared, then they probably have about the same time to live. But what about losing your hand vs. off at the shoulder? What if I knew just enough to make a tourniquet? The system doesn't care. The system isn't coded for it. Yet I bet the person with lots of pressure on the wrist-stump has a lot more time to live than the person with the shoulder-stump. If the system can't apply basic first-aid knowledge to it, can't I also call it unfair?

It certainly is equally (un-)fair to everyone, but man is that not going to matter to some people.

As @Lothorio says, and as I said, knowing the system is one of the reasons to play or not play a game. I'm not saying that your system is wrong, I'm saying that it's no better than an RPG-based game. It's just different. Therefore, it isn't a solution.

[Wretched]

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Even on a MUSH — if a player doesn't RP with me, I'd rather our characters just not have our stories be more intricately involved than, 'Oh hey, yeah, that guy John, I've seen him around'. I don't want that player sending me a page assuring me that John has been giving my character lots of personal one-on-one time if we cannot actually RP it out. Otherwise, it's as dull as solo-killing a player who's offline on a MUD and calling that 'story'.

I'd like to express a small peeve here. I understand what you are saying, I totally do. I have also however experienced the other side of this.

Say your character and mine are in A RELATIONSHIP. You know, they hang out a lot, they enjoy bumping uglies and we have Rp'd this. However MUSH time is a tricky thing, and a scene that would ICly happen in about half an hour takes about 4 hours (to throw a random number out there) to Rp through. If, through the course of me Rping with other people being involved in plots and the like means we have not RP'd in a week, that does not mean you should assume our PC's haven't spoken or interacted in a week. Things happen in downtime.

The next time we Rp, if i get comments like 'Oh I haven't seen or heard from you in a week you jerk omg!' To hell with ya!

If someone you get your PC tangled up with cant meet your times, it's probably better to just say 'hey, it's not working out with our online times' than just assume someone is ICly ignoring/neglecting.

To Clarify, I don't think that exact scenario is what you were talking about, but man i have had this literal thing happen.

[Kestrel]

@Wretched

Yeah, this isn't the exact scenario I had in mind, but I sympathise with the example you presented. Nonetheless, similarly, everyone has different expectations out of relationship RP, same as relationships IRL. If one person has the expectation of daily relationship RP and the other prefers no more than once a week, they probably aren't going to have fun together anyway.

@ThatGuyThere said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I was resentfully paged by someone asking me to if it was alright if we said that my char was teaching hers a skill. My answer was no he wouldn't teach that to anybody. Other player player said No prob and went on to find some one else to handle the IC teaching.
Yes for the MUD folks reading this, all this could have been handled ICly just as well. And honestly in this particular case I have no preference as to how it gets handled save that the OOC way was a bit quicker.

See, to me, this is a lost opportunity. I personally would so much rather have my character approach yours and say, 'Hey, can you teach me this thing?' To which yours would respond, 'No, I would not teach that to anyone.' We can then try and haggle with one another, or enter a political discussion about why your character is restricting the education of this, etc. If the goal is story, and not to just game your way to a win, isn't trying to control things first OOCly counterproductive?

---

On to the next topic, which I thought I'd address here rather than in the other thread:

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

@Kestrel [...] you lamented the lack of secrets in Mushes in the other thread. As as I was going down the history of the Modern Mush, it felt relevant.

So, to clarify this, the kind of secrets I was referring to aren't of the 'pull lever, discover trapdoor' variety. I was referring more to, 'Everyone thinks my character's family died in a tragic accident, but in actuality, she murdered them all in cold blood.'

Like you, @Thenomain, I consider myself primarily an explorer with a side of world-builder, where the Bartle archetypes are concerned. If I can't find it, I make it, and if I can do neither, I feel my environment is lacking. This extends to character-design as well. My characters are built with layers upon layers upon layers of secrets, and I likewise delight in exploring other characters I interact with the same way. I want to peel back those layers, IC, and find out what makes them tick. In a more gamey, less story-driven environment, I will settle for an exciting grid with hidden quests to explore.

So I find it kind of sad, and I feel very cheated, if someone messages me OOCly to tell me all about their character's hidden motives. And if they ask for mine, my instinct is to just reply, 'fuck off'. @Lotherio claims that on MUSHes he plays, secrets are very much a part of the culture, but they aren't on the MUSH I'm playing on. And I think that, no matter the MUSH, when you allow for so much OOC communication, it's inevitable that people are going to want to be demanding and expect you to be more open. On most MUDs I've played, where simulationism and IC are king, 'find out IC' is a refrain held to a much higher regard than 'communication is key'. And thus, IC mysteries are much better preserved, and are more fun to unlock.

[Pandora]

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Also - if you need a doctor and one isn't around, you can absolutely go to the hospital and NPC doctors are coded to give you the gift of healing - but you're at the mercy of the person that wounded you actually getting you there on time, and no amount of OOCly paging/calling/seeking someone to save you via OOC means is going to help - you've got to navigate through the streets to the hospital and hope you don't bleed out along the way. (You have 1 rl hour).

Why 1 hour? This seems like an arbitrary number to me, and you were arguing against abitrariness for creating hard feelings. Even set rules can cause hard feelings. "I had only 2 points over lethal, while Bob had 10, and he had the same hour to get help as I did, that's unfair!"

And this is what gets me about Muds: All these systems are, in the end, arbitrary. Like all games, you pick the game you like and you play it, knowing that it's arbitrary. Saying "at least Muds do it differently" is the concession that different games are different. It's not a solution, and the way your particular Mud habit goes isn't better in general. It's better for you, absolutely, but I don't see this as being a solution to any problem than "one of a thousand ways to do it".

So no, I don't think your answer is a great solution. I think it's a concession to the people who like things that way, as opposed to people who like things, well, the Mush way.

2 points over...10 points over... whether your arm is severed at the elbow or shoulder - you're bleeding.

You are reframing the argument until you're right. And you would be right that, in a system where those two instances are being compared, then they probably have about the same time to live. But what about losing your hand vs. off at the shoulder? What if I knew just enough to make a tourniquet? The system doesn't care. The system isn't coded for it. Yet I bet the person with lots of pressure on the wrist-stump has a lot more time to live than the person with the shoulder-stump. If the system can't apply basic first-aid knowledge to it, can't I also call it unfair?

It certainly is equally (un-)fair to everyone, but man is that not going to matter to some people.

As @Lothorio says, and as I said, knowing the system is one of the reasons to play or not play a game. I'm not saying that your system is wrong, I'm saying that it's no better than an RPG-based game. It's just different. Therefore, it isn't a solution.

I wasn't aware we were looking for solutions here. MUSHes have a different player type, a different play style, a different game build. MUD solutions are not MUSH solutions, this thread is about differences, not supremacy. And if you had the skill to tourniquet yourself, you could. This example obviously hinges on the idea of needing to be healed by someone else, you're making it harder and more convoluted than it needs to be. Can't we all just get along and secretly (or not so secretly) think our way is better, without implying that anyone doing anything else is wrong/arbitrary?

[Kanye Qwest]

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

So I find it kind of sad, and I feel very cheated, if someone messages me OOCly to tell me all about their character's hidden motives. And if they ask for mine, my instinct is to just reply, 'fuck off'. @Lotherio claims that on MUSHes he plays, secrets are very much a part of the culture, but they aren't on the MUSH I'm playing on. And I think that, no matter the MUSH, when you allow for so much OOC communication, it's inevitable that people are going to want to be demanding and expect you to be more open. On most MUDs I've played, where simulationism and IC are king, 'find out IC' is a refrain held to a much higher regard than 'communication is key'. And thus, IC mysteries are much better preserved, and are more fun to unlock.

I don't think this is restricted at all to MUSHes. If people know a secret, they want to share.

[Lotherio]

@Kanye-Qwest said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

So I find it kind of sad, and I feel very cheated, if someone messages me OOCly to tell me all about their character's hidden motives. And if they ask for mine, my instinct is to just reply, 'fuck off'. @Lotherio claims that on MUSHes he plays, secrets are very much a part of the culture, but they aren't on the MUSH I'm playing on. And I think that, no matter the MUSH, when you allow for so much OOC communication, it's inevitable that people are going to want to be demanding and expect you to be more open. On most MUDs I've played, where simulationism and IC are king, 'find out IC' is a refrain held to a much higher regard than 'communication is key'. And thus, IC mysteries are much better preserved, and are more fun to unlock.

I don't think this is restricted at all to MUSHes. If people know a secret, they want to share.

I'm good with either, if you want to share a secret and plot from there for RP, let's do it. Just some places enforce secrecy, which is just as fun learning icly.

Even on MUDs, they do like sharing. I. Star Wars, I've had a tendency to play an Ithorian barkeep named Rixt, who just talks and listens and eventually ends up the local infochant.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

See, to me, this is a lost opportunity. I personally would so much rather have my character approach yours and say, 'Hey, can you teach me this thing?' To which yours would respond, 'No, I would not teach that to anyone.' We can then try and haggle with one another, or enter a political discussion about why your character is restricting the education of this, etc. If the goal is story, and not to just game your way to a win, isn't trying to control things first OOCly counterproductive?

To me the game is about story, but the story does not get added to much by the asking and the refusal. Like I said in the initial post I would have been fine handling the request as a scene. In this case the main difference would be the pages took about 2 minutes the IC would have been likely 30 minutes to an hour.
If I have the choice I will use that time on more meaningful scenes or rather for scenes with a higher potential for meaning since I actually have had characters lives changed by hey person I don't know lets meet scenes. In fact that is how my current PC met his best friend.
If the player asking would have said I really want to RP out the request cause I think I could ICly convince you. I would have done the scene. That could lead to interesting things possibly, but the Other player was like that's cool, and the matter dropped which is equally cool with me.

[Pandora]

@ThatGuyThere said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Then how was the time of one hour decided on? Just because something is the same for everyone does not mean it is not arbitrary.

1. If you get stabbed in the abdomen and have one hour to live starting immediately.
2. If your finger gets chopped off, you're already beaten half to death, and you're bleeding, you have one hour to live starting immediately.
3. If you have cancer, you've had it for 2 years intermittently, and now it's spread so badly you're dying, and you now have one hour to live.
4. If you're 102 years old, haven't been ill even once since that hooker in 'Nam, dying of old age, and you now have one hour to live.

All of these would be considered 'critical' on the MUD. It's the point of time - not an arbitrary point, but the specific point of time in your injury/malady in which you now have one hour left to live that is considered critical. If this is a vocabulary debate though, sure we can call it arbitrary if we're also calling having 24 hours in a day arbitrary, or 60 seconds in a minute.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Pandora
I don't doubt these numbers but I am asking the reason an hour was chosen.
Something can be universal and arbitrary at the same time.
Ninety feet is the distance between the bases in baseball this has been true for well over 100 years. It is also completely arbitrary since it was the number picked by Abner Doubleday when he first published a codified set of rules for the game. There were many other distances commonly used in play at the time but that was the local rule he was used to.
There were many other options, just like you could just as easily set the critical would time to forty or eighty minutes, to say something is not arbitrary you need to point to a reason it is not 40 or 80 but the sixty it is.

[Kanye Qwest]

@ThatGuyThere To be fair, my daddy always told me if you shoot someone in the gut, you have one hour to decide if you want them to live.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Kanye-Qwest
that is probably fair enough. And that is also a point against it being arbitrary where a laundry list of things that are all an hour til death are not.

[Thenomain]

@Kestrel

We're talking about the same thing. In Mushes, knowing who is a vampire and where they are means mobbing them with your Werewolf friends. Talking openly about secrets because they are in another language means that people don't know about your sordid past if you don't want them. No, we're talking about the same kinds of secrets. I'm talking about it from a code aspect because to me, code is probably what people are going to lean on to have systems for having and discovering secrets. (Spy code. Invisibility code. Eavesdropping systems.)

I don't think that Mush is otherwise adverse or antagonistic towards the "secretly a serial killer" kind of secret, but to keep it a secret from other players is a trick. Keeping it a secret from other characters is easy. Doing the latter without worrying about the former is one of culture, trust, and responsibility.

Not code.

I repeat this to everyone reading this thread: NOT CODE.

Never in my twenty-some odd years in this hobby have I ever seen code stop people from abusing information, or complaining about unfairness.

---

A note to Qwest: I recall that I wanted to say I agree with you on something, but not what. You sounded like you were saying MUDs were better than Mushes because "at least MUDs aren't unfair". Anyhow, truce.

[Pandora]

There's no game on which not a single player thinks something is unfair, or hasn't had a single player abuse information. That has nothing to do with code and everything to do with human beings being on the internet.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Kestrel
Since you are so new to mushing to help understand hte openness i will give a thumbnail of what was before the openness.
Back in the day there was an Official OOC Masquerade on most WoD games. Meaning you were not allowed to talk about what you were, and by extension what anyone else was. This was done to promote mystery and IC secrecy. It failed mainly because it provided benefits to those willing to blur IC lines to come up with the answers they already knew through alts and the fact that in general humans are bad secret keepers, the other big effect was it monetized OOC knowledge, since the info about who was what could and was used as a bargaining chip on an OOC level.
So as a result it has been changed. How on a lot of other genres secrets still exist and happen. And keeping a secret is still doable on WoD you just have to actually keep it a secret. Expecting others to keep secrets about themselves however is likely not going to happen.

[Ninjakitten]

@Ganymede said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@surreality said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

"What do you want to do?"
"I dunno, what do you want to do?"
"Anything's fine."
"Anybody got any ideas?"
<silence>

This sounds like the beginning of a scene to me; likely from a Cheech and Chong movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZDo-udXmgQ