This game ran well before most of the games we have today. Different era of gaming. Different mindsets.
The only plots were really:
- New batches of recruits to the planet.
- Big storms (usually while the recruits were going through adaptation).
- Every so often Staff would come up with a new plot.
With a small player base, you didn't want to fracture people off on other planets.
So it was a lot of social RP, a lot of letting people do their own thing. But the game never suffered for it because back in the late 90s / early 00s, people didn't just sit on their hands and wait for Staff to tell them what to do so often (sort of like how most WoD games continue to be active even tho Staff rarely runs plot). Crystal MUSH / Crystal Dreams MUSH were heavy code. You had code for Singers (to find / cut crystal), code for Sorters, code for Tuners, all the support roles (sled/cutter techs, medics, etc) had code to do their thing.
So it was also a game where if you, say, worked 3rd shift and had nothing else going on... you could still do something and that was a large part of the lure. No one else on? Eh, I'll go cut crystal.
And the vast majority of the claims for crystal were puzzles (Myst-like, almost; hidden exits, have to have this object, do this in sequence... some v. simple: just read the desc to find the right phrase to use) to solve, written by other players. So it could be a lot of fun to do.
It's just lately I've had a few people comment to me how they want a MU* where there is some level of code like that, but also social RP... without being a MUD. That's why I keep going back to hmm. Maybe it's time to bring it back.
