What's missing in MUSHdom?

[Runescryer]

@tinuviel Right. Which is why you need to subdivide a MU into smaller groups or 'spheres' like WoD games do. I view it like a staffer being an editor on a comic book that's part of a larger publishing group. The staffer works with a group, sometimes brings in another staffer or player with a fresh event idea for a group, and discusses with the other staffers what's going on and how events they're overseeing interact with the larger world.

Tennebrae (a Pathfinder system MU) does this rather well; they have a good number of staffers whose job is to run events/missions on a regular basis, and the events run a large sample of level ranges (1-4, 4-8, 8-12, etc.). And the events all tie into an overall story arc.

[Tinuviel]

@runescryer said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

need to subdivide a MU into smaller groups or 'spheres'

That works only up unto a point. Nothing exists in a vacuum on a MU, wheras it can on a tabletop. The rules for one TT group don't apply to the rules of another group - but the rules of a MU are often all-encompassing. I'm talking about rulings and administration here, not running stories. When one splits a game in the way WoD often does, you take one committee and make fifteen committees all making decisions that then report back to another committee... it's not really what the system was designed for.

[Arkandel]

@runescryer said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@tinuviel Right. Which is why you need to subdivide a MU into smaller groups or 'spheres' like WoD games do.

On the flipside, that's destroyed some WoD games because when they were subdivided, staff neglected to give them a thematic impetus to interact with each other (in fact often enough they were explicitly told not to due to reasons), essentially dividing the playerbase into islands.

That's never a good choice.

[Kanye Qwest]

@thenomain said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Thought of two other IPs that I'd like to see as Mu*s. Wait, three.

• The Last Of Us
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Mass Effect (yes, I know it's been done, but can continue to be done)

I may have a penchant for situations where humanity is buffeted around by the situation or environment. I think it makes for compelling stories to be told.

What a rich and fertile ground for storytelling! Problem: no great setting or narrative element survives (a lot of) players. So if you do it well, and it's popular, you'll have people doing social scenes and bar rp and sleepovers, etc, in your stressful/limited/dangerous environment. Unless you have a team that can commit to offering NON STOP STORY to keep people from drifting into these comfort zones to amuse themselves. Maybe even if you do.

Solution: ???

[Arkandel]

@kanye-qwest My whole life I wanted to play on a Lord of the Rings MU*.

My whole life I have avoided doing so because players will destroy the fond feelings in my heart about the setting.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

What a rich and fertile ground for storytelling! Problem: no great setting or narrative element survives (a lot of) players. So if you do it well, and it's popular, you'll have people doing social scenes and bar rp and sleepovers, etc, in your stressful/limited/dangerous environment. Unless you have a team that can commit to offering NON STOP STORY to keep people from drifting into these comfort zones to amuse themselves. Maybe even if you do.

I've never understood this objection. Social RP is what drives MUSHing. Like... what do you think people should be playing instead when they log in 4-5 days a week? Scenes where they wander through the forest looking for berries? Or through houses scavenging for another can of soup? Boiling water? Tending crops? Day to day survival is tedious and freaking boring. I don't blame anyone for falling back to drinking moonshine around a campfire and socializing whenever there's a lull in the zombies/bandits/plague/whatever. I don't even find it that unrealistic - I think people in that sort of environment would crave connection and normalcy, or at least the illusion thereof.

[Haven]

@arkandel said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@kanye-qwest My whole life I wanted to play on a Lord of the Rings MU*.

My whole life I have avoided doing so because players will destroy the fond feelings in my heart about the setting.

Elendor was really good around 2002. You're welcome for this non-solution. Find a time machine.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Like... what do you think people should be playing instead when they log in 4-5 days a week? Scenes where they wander through the forest looking for berries? Or through houses scavenging for another can of soup? Boiling water? Tending crops? Day to day survival is tedious and freaking boring. I don't blame anyone for falling back to drinking moonshine around a campfire and socializing whenever there's a lull in the zombies/bandits/plague/whatever. I don't even find it that unrealistic - I think people in that sort of environment would crave connection and normalcy, or at least the illusion thereof.

I don't think that's what KQ's getting at, but it's something that I am interested in.

What do you do when the resources you need to live on run out? It's a MUD issue, and there's no reason why it can't be a MUSH issue. Put in mini-game systems to keep people occupied, is my suggestion. For RfK, this was the Territory System. For the Dark Ages game I'm cooking with a couple of others, it will be a Task System.

The thing about necessary resources is that you can compel players to interact with it. That's why such systems are of interest to me.

[faraday]

@ganymede said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

The thing about necessary resources is that you can compel players to interact with it. That's why such systems are of interest to me.

I'm sure there's a niche for that. It worked for Firan. But personally I wouldn't play on such a game. When I want to play a resource management game, I'll play Sims or something. I play MUSHes to tell stories, and if I can't tell an interesting story because I'm forced to spend my limited play-time gathering berries to avoid starving (or managing some complex task system to say "Yep, gathering berries"), I'm just not going to play. A character exists in the world 24/7/365. Why is it so horrible to just assume that they're doing the boring eating/sleeping/avoiding-starvation stuff off-camera?

[Haven]

I am down with super automated systems for everything from XP spends to text messaging code.

[The Sands]

@arkandel said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@kanye-qwest My whole life I wanted to play on a Lord of the Rings MU*.

My whole life I have avoided doing so because players will destroy the fond feelings in my heart about the setting.

Honestly, LotR is not necessarily a very good setting. It has a lot of problems similar to Star Wars as a setting (N.B. this isn't a knock on the series. It is an excellent series. I'm simply discussing why it doesn't work well as a MU*).

The problem is that many of the characters in the story are uniquely or at least nearly-uniquely powerful. Gandalf isn't just some human who spent times studying old books. He's a divine being of immense power (but with restrictions on using that power). Aragorn isn't just some guy who spends a lot of time out in the woods. He's one of the last descendants of the Numenorians who were humans who were basically able to look out the window of their homes and see Heaven (and he's not even just a 'regular' Numenorian but is the 'chosen one' of the Numenorians). Legolas is an elf which in Tolkein's setting are all semi-divine beings (they can't even die, instead if their physical form is destroyed they simply wake up in Valinor).

The only reason these guys don't curb stomp Sauron is because Sauron was basically the right hand of Satan and because they are forbidden to by Eru (though they can mitigate Sauron's power so that mankind can chose between good and evil).

All of which works really well for the book but not so much for a MU*. Even for a tabletop game you can handle the 'small group of extremely special characters' but for a MU* you would be dealing with hundreds if not thousands of these types of 'special snowflake+' characters over the life of the game and most likely you would have them confined to a fairly small area of the 'planet' such as a large city.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Why is it so horrible to just assume that they're doing the boring eating/sleeping/avoiding-starvation stuff off-camera?

It depends on the nature of the game.

A vampire must drink blood to survive. This is part of the horror of their condition. You take that out, and you gut a very viable and core plot element, if you're playing in the World of Darkness. Vampires use their powers of persuasion and knowledge of politics to protect their feeding territories, which are necessary to hide their existences.

This is a huge flaw in many of the Vampire games I've played on.

If you're running a post-apocalyptic game, survival is kind of important. Why overlook the struggle to survive by making food and water an after thought? You may not need to force people into a harvest mini-game, but threatening the PCs' collective existence should be part-and-parcel to how the game works. If not, then, again, I think you're missing a chunk of a game that could yield interesting RP situations.

And, in my experience, this is exactly what is missing from many of the games that peter out.

For a BSG game? It's not important because that's not the thrust of the game; BSG:U was about war stories from the front. For a L&L game? It's not important because that's not the thrust of the game; Fifth Kingdom was about questing and defending the countryside from invasion. Even for another World of Darkness splat like Werewolf, it's not important because that's not the thrust of the game.

Whatever resources one chooses to have in the system depends on the game.

For The Last of Us? Junk for weapons; food; water; alcohol; fuel; anything like that. Horizon Zero Dawn? Food; water; wood; usable metal. Mass Effect? E-0; weapons; medical supplies; drugs; AI; anything that could be traded.

So, it's not always about food. It could just be that, to gain influence and status on the game, you need to deliver 5 tons of Vanadium to a neighboring system. Unfortunately, along the way, these Batarian raiders intercept your ship ...

[Thenomain]

@faraday

The solution to this that is currently being experimented with is off screen systems., systems that inform how the character interacts with the environment, which is there’s to create some pressures on people.

Of course I’m not one to say that any of this is easy; I’ve been swearing at strange code systems for the past few days in code, but in this thread which was apparently about wish fulfillment, I’m going to cheer for settings of either entirely or slightly apocalyptic nature, settings especially where the world is a living thing and your role in it is more than just a character description.

I also think the answer of “something to do” has been covered to death, so I’ve not been following suit in the echo chamber. I will add to it, tho; we used to create our own characters and made our own things to do. It’s not unlikely. It’s not even hard. The only thing that’s difficult about it is having the time and resources to follow through, and staff willing to allow it.

To me, this is a far better answer than custom tailored plots, scheduled and doled out when maybe enough people can join and appreciate it. Log in, check mail, respond with others, win.

[The Sands]

@ganymede Arguably in your examples those activities are no longer 'boring'. It isn't just that drinking blood reinforces the fact that the character is a monster in a vampire game. It's that there is a real risk to it since the character may get caught. In fact, once something establishes that there is no longer a real risk (such as getting a blood doll) it does tend to move to an 'off camera' activity in which the character simply automatically gets a certain amount of blood per day.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

What a rich and fertile ground for storytelling! Problem: no great setting or narrative element survives (a lot of) players. So if you do it well, and it's popular, you'll have people doing social scenes and bar rp and sleepovers, etc, in your stressful/limited/dangerous environment. Unless you have a team that can commit to offering NON STOP STORY to keep people from drifting into these comfort zones to amuse themselves. Maybe even if you do.

I've never understood this objection. Social RP is what drives MUSHing. Like... what do you think people should be playing instead when they log in 4-5 days a week? Scenes where they wander through the forest looking for berries? Or through houses scavenging for another can of soup? Boiling water? Tending crops? Day to day survival is tedious and freaking boring. I don't blame anyone for falling back to drinking moonshine around a campfire and socializing whenever there's a lull in the zombies/bandits/plague/whatever. I don't even find it that unrealistic - I think people in that sort of environment would crave connection and normalcy, or at least the illusion thereof.

Why do people need to be logged in to the game 4-5 days a week? I don't think a game that wants to focus and MAINTAIN a setting of scarcity, danger, and discomfort can measure success in the same way others do. I'm not objecting to social Rp. I'm saying some settings are damaged by it.

[Ganymede]

@the-sands said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Arguably in your examples those activities are no longer 'boring'. It isn't just that drinking blood reinforces the fact that the character is a monster in a vampire game. It's that there is a real risk to it since the character may get caught.

On RfK, the feeding code had a provision for a failure or dramatic failure that could have resulted in a scene that had to be played through. It was a good example of automation with consequences.

[Lotherio]

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Why do people need to be logged in to the game 4-5 days a week?

Two quick comments. First, if they only play one place at a time to focus on one character, who's to negate their idea of social fun-time, some people like to log onto places and RP daily, its their fun. And second - game vs RP as has been put up in a few threads lately. MUs are not game by default, some people are logging in for the RP part first and the game (if even present on a MU) is secondary to them. Some people are on for writing and story telling, not game playing. As noted if I want a good strategy game or survival game, my PC or console has plenty of those to choose from, my phone has plenty of good game apps for that too.

Of course, someone can set up a game that is all action/survival oriented, and the 4-5 day a week player has the option to RP elsewhere just the same.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Why do people need to be logged in to the game 4-5 days a week?

Why shouldn't they be? The game is "on" 24/7 and some folks who have nothing better to do like to play when they can.

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

I'm not objecting to social Rp. I'm saying some settings are damaged by it.

A solid 80% of RP on every single game I've ever seen is social RP. If you want to try build a game without it ... hey, go for it, but I don't really think it's practical. And I think that we've seen as much with every post-apoc game that's ever been attempted.

@ganymede said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

If you're running a post-apocalyptic game, survival is kind of important. Why overlook the struggle to survive by making food and water an after thought? You may not need to force people into a harvest mini-game, but threatening the PCs' collective existence should be part-and-parcel to how the game works. If not, then, again, I think you're missing a chunk of a game that could yield interesting RP situations.

Oh I agree that the struggle to survive should be a part of the game. But I think you need to address that in a fun and interesting way if you want people to engage with it. Computer games (not just MUSHes) have been trying to "force" people into menial tasks since the beginning. Players as
a general rule hate it. They avoid it whenever humanly possible and they resent it when it's not possible to avoid. If you can make a survival mini-game fun for the majority of the population, or if you can figure out a way to make "foraging for berries" interesting, then as @Thenomain said, there's no reason not to go for it. But taking something that the majority of your game's population isn't interested in (as demonstrated by what they are playing) and trying to force them into it sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

[Thenomain]

Okay, so let me ask the question:

What is "Social RP"?

[Haven]

@thenomain said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Okay, so let me ask the question:

What is "Social RP"?

Banging. In a coffee house.