What is a MU*?
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To avoid (further) derailing the MU client thread let's split the conversation here. I think it can be a fruitful one.
What is a MU*?
Why is Arx a MU* but World of Warcraft is not? Both allow players to pose, feature persistent worlds, character sheets and an evolving storyline. You can roleplay in both.
What makes a MU* a MU* ?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I won't say it's the only thing that defines a MU* compared to an MMO -- but one of the things is story impact.
On a MUSH, your story impacts the long term story (hopefully). The story develops in form of a back and forth game between you and the storytellers (be they game runners or other players or whatever).
On a game such as WoW, you can roleplay around the story, but the story marches on no matter what you do, and without taking your actions into consideration.
http://keys.aresmush.com -- Come to Chincoteague, we have ponies.
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I don't think there exists a strict set of criteria that can definitively categorize the different types of online RP. Nor do I think there are even clear categories in the first place. It's more of a continuuum. Was Firan a MUD? A MUSH? Both? Neither? Does it even really matter?
Some of the hallmarks of why I prefer MU-style RP over other things like Storium, MUDs, play-by-forum, etc.
- Scene-centric narrative writing (full paragraph, cohesive stories)
- Continuous time (moves the plot along at a fixed pace relative to RL... this tends to drive more synchronous RP, though it's never been a requirement)
- Ongoing narrative (more of a TV show than a short story)
- OOC community and coordination
- RPG-lite chargen systems (don't get in the way, but allow some structure)
- A persistent world than can withstand (to a point) players coming and going.
I realize not all MUSHes have all these things, and some other styles of games have some of them too. I think it's like diagnosing an illness. You don't have to have ALL the symptoms, but the more you have, the more likely it is.
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Man, I can't even tell you what makes one acronym different from another.
Why is Rhost better or worse than Mux?
What makes Penn special compared to, say, TinyMUSH?
What even is a MOO or a MUCK? Are they closer to a Mush or a Mud?
I think that the only thing that any of these have in common is that they are an online RPG platform which may or may not require actual roleplay and/or have actual systems for resolution of story situations.
So it's like -- a chat room. Potentially with some extra features.
Beyond that it's been taken apart and put back together so many times I'm not sure you can really draw a cohesive circle around it. Usually but not always contains one or more of the following features... isn't exactly the most helpful metric.
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@carma said in What is a MU*?:
People who are blind or people with other disabilities must be able to play it just as well as non-disabled people.
I'm not sure that I would agree with this one.
I mean, yes, in an ideal world that would be the case, but expecting gamerunners to know enough of the accessibility standards to be able to create for this, especially when they aren't getting paid to do so, might be a bridge too far.
It's nice if they are, but that certainly shouldn't be a requirement just for the game platform, or to create a game.
If someone out there with that knowledge volunteers it to make it more accessible, fantastic, but I don't think we should be putting the onus on the creator in the standard creation process. They aren't bad people if they don't know enough to make it available to blind people. That's not a skill that almost anyone needs in their daily lives, and it's already a tall order learning just the code, much less accessibility standards. People get whole degrees in that.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@derp @carma Or to know that there were even things that could be done to do that in the first place, which...I did not, until roughly 6 seconds ago. I've met blind players, I just thought they had an assistive hardware device of some form that took care of this. I mean I'm glad I know better now, but it def. wasn't maliciousness that kept me from doing anything special in that direction on games I launched. Just ignorance and...barely being able to remember how to stick someone else's code in the box to begin with, let alone knowing there might be additional features required so everyone who wanted to play, could.
He/Him
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Let's perhaps look at it from a different perspective.
Take an Ares game.
What is a feature or limitation you add to it (or what do you take away from it) so that it is no longer a MU*?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in What is a MU*?:
What is a feature or limitation you add to it (or what do you take away from it) so that it is no longer a MU*?
Seriously, I don't think this is a good place to start since it presumes universally-accepted attributes of a MU*.
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@arkandel There are those who have claimed that I shouldn't have called it AresMUSH because it's "not a MUSH". It doesn't have softcode, doesn't require a grid (though it allows one), allows asynchronous RP, has a web portal built in, etc.
At the end of the day, it's a MUSH because I created it and I named it a MUSH. Why? Because I personally felt that it had its roots in the same playstyle you'd commonly find in Penn/Tiny games.
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"I know it when I see it" is about the best definition you're going to get, I think.
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@faraday said in What is a MU*?:
It doesn't have softcode
I hate to be that pest, I is/was/am, this is what a MUS* is to me. A MUD is a bit more hardcode on the backend. It was more likely you had mobname|stat1|stat2|etc on files in the shell, the ingredients are established in data files, then the recipes come together (this room1|mobslist|treasure) and MUS* was the sort you logged right into 2 rooms and a Godbit and what system and all that went in while you were live on the game via softcode. That's oversimplifying it all but about the gist of it.
A MUSH is anything the creator wants it to be and the story/etc is anything the players went with the creation. I still enjoy/enjoyed players learning and contributing to code in the early days. LIterally, TrekMUSE (TOS) and its 'code' school for each race made it feel community to me (I made a Romulan puzzle box that shuffled the order to touch various sides, when you did it right it flashed some victory lights via emit).
On the player end, it all plays the same. All the acronyms don't mean much at all. Just for me its how data handles from the hardcode into the softcode and if I can softcode is all. Versatility and adaptability to change the box for me.
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@carma said in What is a MU*?:
I find myself agreeing with half of the posts you make on MSB, Derp, and the other half just make me retch to hear the equivalent of, "Hey now pard'ner, we don't have to spend any time letting blind people play our games."
That does not mean that what Derp is saying is incorrect, though. We don't have an obligation to consider certain disabilities when making a game. I agree that designing for disability is a process that should be woven into the design process. Whether that should be an obligation we all ascribe to is another question.
For instance, we have heard others talk in another thread about how having a blinking notification is helpful to know that activity is occurring elsewhere. But what if a player may be triggered by such blinking into a mental fugue? Does that mean a portal designer has an obligation to use a sound instead?
So, if a game does not have support for the blind, I am reluctant to make a value judgment as to the game designer. And I think that is what Derp is getting at.
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@carma said in What is a MU*?:
"Hey now pard'ner, we don't have to spend any time letting blind people play our games."
Which is not at all what I said, but alright. I said that there is a difference between a professional coder being held to accessibility standards and an unpaid hobbyist being held to those same standards, as they likely have no education or experience in those matter, if they've ever been taught design in the first place.
I'm not saying that we should keep blind people out. I'm saying that the how dare you sir reaction to not having it built in from the get-go is a bit much given the difference in who is actually creating the game.
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@carma said in What is a MU*?:
Evennia even comes with accessibility options built in to its code.
So does Ares. Penn/Tiny/Rhost are effectively accessible because they're text-only without a web component built in.
So I'm not really sure there's any actual controversy here - we're just talking about what some potential future hypothetical game server that may or may not be a "MUSH" might include.
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I like Faraday's list the best.
But if I really think about it when I think MU for me anyway the root is text based. Not video or picture or visual in the actually seeing it vs mind's eye thing.
