MU* concept oddities

Kay · Feb 25, 2016, 2:39 AM

One of my favorite things is a MU* that's different. When I was a complete newbie I had the fortune to play on Poddington-on-Slossip, an odd little place that unfortunately closed before I knew how unusual it was. It's been over sixteen years and I still remember it fondly. It was set in the British countryside between the first and second world wars, and it had this air of mystery and spookiness to almost everything.

The downside of oddball MU*s is that once they're gone they're gone, and there's usually no way to continue your character's story. I thought I'd put up a post and see what other strange birds others may have encountered, and if there are currently running I might check out.

As far as weird ideas of my own, I am eyeing this old scifi story and pondering how one might use it for a MU*: http://web.archive.org/web/20060719184509/www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/lafferty5/lafferty51.html

Coin · Feb 25, 2016, 1:19 PM

Not really a MU--more of a game that started on LiveJournal and then moved to a mix of LJ and private MU game when the majority of the players either turned out to be MUers or became such, but there was a game I loved where we all played the reincarnations of dead authors and poets. I met @Gingerlily there, along with many others. It's kind of irreplaceable. I'm pretty sure if I said "oh, I am considering restarting this" I would have a legion of people from the old game yelling "hooray", but I don't have the drive at the moment. Back when it existed, though, I couldn't really RP anywhere else--it was time intensive mostly because it was so submersive for me. Some people found it a lot more intense than others. Like all games, it had its share of crazy shit, but for the most part, even when there were hard OOC feelings involved, people tended to ... I don't know ... for the most part be civil, barring a very few crazy moments. I think it helps a lot that there was a lot of transparency in character action and even intent.

Kay · Feb 26, 2016, 2:40 AM

@Coin Was it a very demanding game in terms of gamemastering? If not, I've had some success when dealing smaller groups like that to set up a couple of rooms somewhere for people to play in. Mini-MU*. All the flavor, none of the stress, at least in theory.

Coin · Feb 26, 2016, 10:45 AM

@Kay said:

@Coin Was it a very demanding game in terms of gamemastering? If not, I've had some success when dealing smaller groups like that to set up a couple of rooms somewhere for people to play in. Mini-MU*. All the flavor, none of the stress, at least in theory.

No, it really wasn't. But the community is pretty particular, and it's a game with a lot of history. Also, it's been a while.

Misadventure · Feb 26, 2016, 4:08 PM

What did these authors DO? Be social, correct the time stream, lead social change, fight in martial arts tournaments a la Epic Rap Battles of History?

Coin · Feb 26, 2016, 4:49 PM

@Misadventure said:

What did these authors DO? Be social, correct the time stream, lead social change, fight in martial arts tournaments a la Epic Rap Battles of History?

Depends on the iteration of the game.

Its first iteration quickly devolved into weird time-traveling shenanigans with H.g. Wells and and William Blake (who were sort of together kind of maybe) fighting Daleks..?

But later on, those players fell away to write their own stories separately. And, more prominently in the relaunch (i.e. second iteration) there was quite a bit of emphasis on supernatural and weird shenanigans. During the first iteration, some of them had found out they were reincarnated authors, but as far as I can recall, during the second iteration, no one really knew. We still mostly used the authors's names for it--it was just a weird quirk, or "named after", or sometimes just ignored all together, like some sort of weird supernatural field of ignorance.

It was freeform--no stats to speak of--and usually the stories were just... played. Some people chose to just hang out and socialize and do "Bar RP" or whatever, while others chose weirder stories involving the supernatural and the actual nature of the game. Lovecraft and Tolkien were, for example, good friends, and Tolkien's player and I had a great time merging the themes in their works and creating a weird, insanity-inducing plot about a ... well, ring. And the plots tended to lead or direct towards the nature of the game--i.e. reincarnation, etc.

Thisnameistaken · Feb 26, 2016, 5:06 PM

@Coin said:

@Misadventure said:

What did these authors DO? Be social, correct the time stream, lead social change, fight in martial arts tournaments a la Epic Rap Battles of History?

Depends on the iteration of the game.

Its first iteration quickly devolved into weird time-traveling shenanigans with H.g. Wells and and William Blake (who were sort of together kind of maybe) fighting Daleks..?

But later on, those players fell away to write their own stories separately. And, more prominently in the relaunch (i.e. second iteration) there was quite a bit of emphasis on supernatural and weird shenanigans. During the first iteration, some of them had found out they were reincarnated authors, but as far as I can recall, during the second iteration, no one really knew. We still mostly used the authors's names for it--it was just a weird quirk, or "named after", or sometimes just ignored all together, like some sort of weird supernatural field of ignorance.

It was freeform--no stats to speak of--and usually the stories were just... played. Some people chose to just hang out and socialize and do "Bar RP" or whatever, while others chose weirder stories involving the supernatural and the actual nature of the game. Lovecraft and Tolkien were, for example, good friends, and Tolkien's player and I had a great time merging the themes in their works and creating a weird, insanity-inducing plot about a ... well, ring. And the plots tended to lead or direct towards the nature of the game--i.e. reincarnation, etc.

That actually sounds pretty fun.

Coin · Feb 26, 2016, 5:26 PM

Admittedly, a lot of it was "who's dating whoooooooo" but--but--but it was kind of hilarious in that sense, because the pairings sometimes were hilaaaaaaaarious. There were a lot of gneder-bent reincarnations, too--mostly men-to-women, though I think there were some in reverse? Not prominently, though.

I remember having ridiculous amounts of fun trying to figure out how Jane Austen and H.P. Lovecraft could possibly date--and they did, for a while. Hemingway and Dorothy Parker--which ended badly... several times--or a black reincarnation of Mark Twain (whose name was Mark Twain, but who wrote under the name Samuel Clemens because lulz) completely failing to seduce a female reincarnation of Aristotle because she was head over heels for one Will Shakespeare.

Never mind the whole Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Godwin, and Polidori contingent. Oy vey.

I mean--it was crack. It was roleplaying crack, and it was a lot of fun.

Thenomain · Feb 26, 2016, 5:57 PM

@Coin, look up Clone High.

Coin · Mar 1, 2016, 4:22 PM

@Thenomain said:

@Coin, look up Clone High.

I don't need to. The tagline of the original game was "It's like Clone High on opium!"

Thenomain · Mar 1, 2016, 2:31 PM

@Coin said:

@Thenomain said:

@Coin, look up Clone High.

I don't need to. The tagline of the original game was "It's like Clone High on opium!"

Then I am insanely disappointed that I never played this game, and would love to see someone do it again.

Gingerlily · Feb 29, 2016, 4:23 AM

@Coin said:

Not really a MU--more of a game that started on LiveJournal and then moved to a mix of LJ and private MU game when the majority of the players either turned out to be MUers or became such, but there was a game I loved where we all played the reincarnations of dead authors and poets. I met @Gingerlily there, along with many others. It's kind of irreplaceable. I'm pretty sure if I said "oh, I am considering restarting this" I would have a legion of people from the old game yelling "hooray", but I don't have the drive at the moment. Back when it existed, though, I couldn't really RP anywhere else--it was time intensive mostly because it was so submersive for me. Some people found it a lot more intense than others. Like all games, it had its share of crazy shit, but for the most part, even when there were hard OOC feelings involved, people tended to ... I don't know ... for the most part be civil, barring a very few crazy moments. I think it helps a lot that there was a lot of transparency in character action and even intent.

This game was so weird but cool but weird, I didn't even know how to play and half of the time I did I think I was mostly making fun of my own character. I didn't play for very long at all, a few weeks and I got distracted. I don't even know how to describe it except once I was describing how weird it was and a super silly thing I did there on these very boards and @Coin was like "THAT WAS ME" and that's all you even need to know.

Roz · Feb 29, 2016, 4:38 AM

WELL THANKS GUYS now I'm desperate for a Clone High game

Derp · Mar 1, 2016, 2:31 PM

@Thenomain said:

@Coin said:

@Thenomain said:

@Coin, look up Clone High.

I don't need to. The tagline of the original game was "It's like Clone High on opium!"

Then I am insanely disappointed that I never played this game, and would love to see someone do it again.

+1

I could get behind a game like this.

Coin · Mar 1, 2016, 2:38 PM

I think the game only really works if you keep the very transparent nature of it and the journal entries/journal interactions. It was a huge part of the game, and the less people did that, the more the game died down. I think one of my favorite parts was having characters post "private" entries that others couldn't read or comment on IC, but that everyone could read and comment on OOC (for lulz) or even "friends-locked" or "locked to [specific people]" entries. It allowed a very deep, layered understanding of other people's characters and made for some really fun reading, honestly.