How did you discover your last three MU* ?

[Lotherio]

@faraday I'm totally offended, not really In fact, if someone did google pendragon online rpg and Valorous did somehow come up, I'd be impressed.

I don't know what the answer is without including more walls of text, I tried to point out on the new to MUSH wiki page (which could be more prominent even) thing to type 'help' once in the 'game' too. All the old systems have that 'help newbie' and 'help getting started' but to get to an RP tutorial or something on top of all that, its more text. Shy of saying 'if you're new, type 'new I'm new to this, please help me' as a cue to other players that the person is so new they might not even know how to page or use a channel/line. I'd be willing to offer that.

I'd like to incorporate the web client workaround from @grapenut even, on a page that could help newbies (which could include the type 'new Help I'm new' to receive help if you are unfamiliar with MUSHing).

It was pointed out recently on Valorous that my response on helping with wiki templates wasn't friendly, but I didn't want to spell out the answer because just as many would be offended if I assumed they had no clue. I honestly enjoy meeting new players to the hobby, I enjoy taking scenes with 'new' players when some vets may not want to go through that sort of process. I don't want to offend anyone either way.

A lot is overwhelming to someone crossing the threshold, but how does it get to less overwhelming and welcoming? Especially the cultural side of things, as you noted, no amount of tutorial/text walls will help either way in that regard.

[Apos]

@faraday said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

Also, looking at the game wiki/help/etc., most games are centered around the assumption that the people coming to it already know how to MUSH and just need to know the specifics of how this particular MUSH operates. Even someplace like Arx, which someone mentioned as being particularly open to other online gaming styles, is still geared this way.

I agree. What I found challenging is how to present information, because really people brand new need information before they ever connect to the game, and where to put it, and what kind of tutorial and where it should be, and how to make it not get in the way of people that already know that stuff. The last part is what I think is the most difficult, since if it's accessible but unobtrusive, it will often be missed. But if it's not unobtrusive or mandatory, that will annoy the hell out of most MU players. At least until the entire platform is changed to be more intuitive and accessible.

I think the most practical short term solution is to be as friendly as possible in game and encourage mentoring from MU players to people brand new to the hobby, but that doesn't help people browsing the web that wander over a MU website and have no idea how on earth someone plays it.

On the other hand, MUSHes and population are weird because every game has a different sweet spot in what they would consider an ideal population, for how many people the admin really would want on their game and how much they can handle, so judging games by population in my opinion makes no sense. So while sure we want the hobby to grow, it's super awkward in whether a lot of games would feel pressured or even collapse if that was successful.

[saosmash]

Lost and Found actually has / had a dedicated staffer whose job it was to help onboard people new to the medium. With help of newbies they had a cheat sheet developed for helping people who had never touched a mush before figure stuff out. Primarily they recruited by going to the fandom we are attached to and reaching out to tumblr rpers.

In order to help people who have never touched this kind of gaming before in my experience you really do need to really want to help people who have never touched the game before. We have all been playing in this medium so long it is hard to come up with stuff on our own to help those folks. A lot of them balk from the beginning just because what do you mean "client".

[WildBaboons]

A few months ago I spent about half an hour with the help of half a dozen other people trying to help someone new to MUSHing (came from forum RP i think) to understand the concept of a room and grid. They never did figure it out before they decided it wasn't for them.

Sometimes it's just.. hard to figure out the right terms for people.

[magee101]

@faraday hahahahahha you accurately described my first time on a MUSH. Even after years of playing MUDs the transition to MUSH was quite jarring

[ixokai]

@faraday said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

I don't know what to tell you other than we've apparently had vastly different experiences.

People on games are incredibly helpful to people who already know MUSHing, yes. Trying out a BSG game but don't really know Battlestar? Sure, there's probably a theme file to give you the gist of it and people helpfully steering you towards YouTube clips or whatnot. First time on FS3? No problem - here's the tutorial about how the system works, and a slew of people on the Questions channel to help you out. Having trouble with the scene system code?
Absolutely someone will chime in to steer you in the right direction.

But going out of their way to actually hand-hold some stranger who wandered in off the street and wants to learn how to MUSH? No, I haven't seen that. What I have seen is a lot of eye-rolling and general impatience/intolerance/avoidance towards people who don't know what they're doing.

Yeah, we've had vastly different experiences. I've almost never seen anything I'd call "eye-rolling and general impatience/intolerance/avoidance towards people who don't know what they're doing." to such a degree I don't really know how to make sense of the difference. I've seen people go out of their way to help people who don't really know how to mush. It doesn't happen often only because the hobby doesn't get a lot of newcomers. But when I've seen a newcomer, I've seen both players and staff bend over backwards to help and explain.

Also, looking at the game wiki/help/etc., most games are centered around the assumption that the people coming to it already know how to MUSH and just need to know the specifics of how this particular MUSH operates. Even someplace like Arx, which someone mentioned as being particularly open to other online gaming styles, is still geared this way.

I'm going to put myself in the shoes of somebody who's never played a MUSH before and doesn't have a buddy who invited me and is showing me the ropes. I've googled "Pendragon Online RPG" and somehow stumbled onto Valorous Dominion's website.

OK umm... now what? It says it's an online roleplaying experience, which sounds cool, but I don't see any clue as to how to actually play. There's a cryptic IP address, which I don't know what to do with. There are some policies and world articles and characters pages but how do I play?! ... oh, wait, down at the bottom there's a cryptic link titled "What is MUSH", I wonder what that's all about. Okay that tells me about MU clients and connecting and whatnot, so I manage to find and install Atlantis, connect to the game and get a welcome screen. It says 'create <name> <password>' ... okay, easy enough. Woohoo I have a character. I get spammed with a Great Wall of Text including a room description (but I don't really know what rooms are), a MOTD with a list of BBS posts. It does say (+bbread) after it and I'm smart enough to guess that I'm supposed to type +bbread to read messages. But all that does is give me a list of subjects. Where are the posts? Now I see someone say <Newbie> RandomPerson says, "Hello Guest!" Are they talking to me? How do I talk back?

I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty overwhelmed at that point.

See that's an entirely different issue, IMHO. Are MUSHes hard to get into if you've never done something similar? Yes, no argument. But in my experience people are very supportive and helpful when the new folks show up.

[Bristled Thistle]

A year or two of Firefly mu's and I was sick of admin corruption, lack of rp and overly elaborate (and required) coded systems. I checked Mudstats, and after filtering out the adult ones, The Reach had the most people of any mu.

So I learned nWoD in 2012. After that, people I rped with invited me to Reno and Requiem for Kingsmouth. Unfortunately, RL got in the way, I haven't rped since 2015, and apparently my earned goodwill dried up in the process. It's humbling, I have to admit.

[faraday]

@lotherio said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

how does it get to less overwhelming and welcoming?

Well, I think changing some paradigms in our tools will help. Like, it's a heck of a lot easier to say "click here to play via the web browser" than trying to explain how to install a MU client and whatnot. People will more easily grok a web-based game forum than Myrddin's BBS commands. And it's a heck of a lot easier to say "scene/start <location> starts a scene" than to try and explain the grid and rooms, as @WildBaboons mentioned.

Beyond that, I think staged tutorials are better than Wall O Text. Have an 'escape chute' from your welcome room and your wiki landing page that screams out: "If you're new to MUSHing - start here" and walk them through the necessary topics bit by bit.

Bonus points for multimedia. Storium has a really neat interactive tutorial btw, and I did one for FS3 Combat. I tried to do a series of Youtube videos for my Ares introduction but they kinda sucked. It's not my forte. But I think that would be a great project for someone with a good "announcer voice" who's comfortable speaking on-camera.

Double bonus points for folks who are dedicated to mentoring. Again, to use Storium as an example, they have dedicated "beginner games" run by mentors who help people learn the ropes. (There hardly ever are any, which is sad, but it's still a sound idea.)

Having an in-game way to self-identify as a beginner might help too. Then if you wander into a private scene, folks know that you don't know better and hopefully won't bite your head off.

Then we need more games and a way to find them. I hope that Ares and Evennia will make it easier to build a game, and both come with dedicated game directories.

[magee101]

I have seen games using the click links system more and more lately and while personally I find it gimmicky I bet it does help newbies ALOT

[Lithium]

@faraday does have a point here, the intro room for a person logging into a MU is rather sparse on /what/ to do. I think a good way to deal with this is have a very small desc'd intro room/creation lobby that had just to exits and an explanation that read just simply like:

If this is your first text based online role playing game, then type <exit name> and it will walk you through how things work here.

If you are not new to MU*'s go <other exit>

Something very simple.

Then you put in a room or series of rooms that explains the way the code works, teaches them how to go forwards and back, etc.

That is not a bad idea at all.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I came from MUDs so the text-based navigation wasn't completely alien to me, but on my first MU (Tales of Ta'Veren FTW) there was a full walk-through you could take that introduced you to basic commands, bboards, and posing.

I feel like that's gone out of fashion as the hobby's become older and more insular but, through the foggy mists of time, I remember it being quite helpful.

[Roz]

@lithium This is definitely a good idea, and one some games have done. One of the problems comes, hilariously, from people welcoming the newbie and the helpful instructions scrolling right off the screen with channel chatter. (And this wasn't even on a game where guests or unapproved PCs had access to the Public channel.)

[faraday]

@three-eyed-crow said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

I feel like that's gone out of fashion as the hobby's become older and more insular but, through the foggy mists of time, I remember it being quite helpful.

Yeah, my suggestion was hardly an original idea. Twenty years ago it wasn't uncommon for folks to just wander in from MUDs or from BBS RP or whatnot, so I think we as a community were better at bringing those people on board.

The technical issues we can solve. The cultural ones are harder.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@roz
I sometimes wonder if web clients that spawned/separated OOC channels to a separate tab by default would help with this. But it also might just confuse newbs even more, idk. Spawns weren't something I knew I wanted as a user until I was reasonably well-along in this hobby.

[Arkandel]

@three-eyed-crow said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

@roz
I sometimes wonder if web clients that spawned/separated OOC channels to a separate tab by default would help with this. But it also might just confuse newbs even more, idk. Spawns weren't something I knew I wanted as a user until I was reasonably well-along in this hobby.

That's one of the many, many interface improvements that even become possible with web-based clients.

Newbies wouldn't be confused if the UI is right - it wouldn't be the first chat client they've seen. Something that looks and feels like Hangouts or Whatsapp but with persistent rooms isn't a huge paradigm shift from what they're used to.

Obviously it'd depend on the implementation, but that could be refined the traditional way - looking at the mistakes someone else made and refining the interface from one game to the next, trying things out until something sticks.

[krmbm]

@three-eyed-crow said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

I sometimes wonder if web clients that spawned/separated OOC channels to a separate tab by default would help with this.

Like what Ares does?

[faraday]

@krmbm said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

@three-eyed-crow said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

I sometimes wonder if web clients that spawned/separated OOC channels to a separate tab by default would help with this.

Like what Ares does?

I think @Three-Eyed-Crow maybe meant something more like what you'll see in many MMOs - a dockable chat window that can be chucked out of the way when you don't care, but otherwise stays unobtrusively off to the side somewhere.

Like in WoW for instance. (I can't believe I still have a screenshot from ages ago.)

Of course I'd love it if Ares had something cool like that. But at some point the web portal would just become so complex that maintaining it would be a full-time job. I already have one of those, thanks.

[faraday]

@arkandel said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

That's one of the many, many interface improvements that even become possible with web-based clients.

Double post sorry. But it doesn't even need a web-based client. It just needs a client that's smarter than telnet(*). For instance, if there were a standard way for the game to say "yo, here's a room description" versus "here's some chat text" and "here's a pose", then the client could handle those things more sensibly. Right now the client just gets ((blob of plain ASCII text)) and we need pattern matching and other craziness to try to attach semantic meaning to it.

Once you had a standard, "smarter" client API then you could build web clients, mobile clients, and PC clients to utilize more advanced features for the servers that supported that API. (I put "smarter" in quotes because it's really not a client problem. Right now the clients are limited by the server interface.)

(*) Yes, telnet purists, I know you could technically implement a smarter API on raw telnet, but that would just be silly IMHO. It's 2018, just let telnet die already.

[krmbm]

Ohhh. Yeah, I guess I could see that being a thing. Forum/PbP games often have a dock-able chatbox.

[magee101]

@lithium most MUDs I have seen do this, you drop into the game directly into a tutorial that walks you thru what a MUD is, how you interact with it and how to get more help if the tutorial isn't enough by itself or you're just interested in learning more. I have seen a few MUs with it but not nearly as many as compared to MUDs