This is an idea I came up with January 2006. The usual things happened that prevented it from actually getting built and opened: Primarily lack of Coder.
MUSH outline (Just mulling it over here; this is a framework)
System: To Be Determined
Theme: Homebrew, conflict-driven, Good vs Evil as a thematic point. PCs vs alien evil will be a thread through the theme.
The whole thing is Conflict-driven, external and internal. Humankind vs itself as humans try to cope with the strange things like shifters, vampires, mages / Conflict between the Highly Territorial vampires, conflicts over territory for the shifters / Humans and their allies vs the Outsiders, who surely haven't given up on their plans to get in
History – (Future-earth) (More needs written) In the year 2012 the Outsiders attacked the Earth dimension. Think Lovecraftian Critters, trying to break through. They failed but -barely- so...all the 'legendary and supernatural' creatures were forced out of hiding and into fighting to keep the world from turning into something that would have been quite uncomfortable. Humankind knows the shifters/vampires/ect are there, and have reached a kind of uneasy accommodation. There's always a danger that some jackass is going to take an Outsider bargain and try to open a rift for them to come thru.
‘Races’ for lack of a better term: (This is what we’ll have playable)
Human – pure humans are the only ones who can access magic, the only ones who develop psi powers. They’re also the only species that can actually hear and be tempted by the Outsiders. (Mages, Psionics will always be human and only human.)
Vampire - Vampires as they exist on this MUSH are not dead creatures animated by some force. They are living creatures linked with a symbiotic organism that seeks its own survival by enhancement of its host. Only pure-strain humans can become vampires; the symbiote cannot contend with the forces that make up a mage or the fluxes in form innate to a shifter. Animals can temporarily ‘host’ a symbiote but that can only endure as a short term situation; to reach full power and maximum development the organism needs to link itself to a human body and mind.
Shifter (Species) – A number of separate bloodlines have diverged and evolved from mainline humanity, creatures different enough to be infertile with humans. Human in appearance, they still possess strong animal instincts that will cause them to react as per their animal type in stressful situations. I’m thinking wolves, jaguars, bears…what else occurs in legends? No infection by bite, this is a bloodlines thing; no one can ‘become’ a shifter.
Shifter (Cursed or Magical) – Generally these are people who are forced into wolf form on the full moon, by a curse on their family line. Or sorcerers donning a wolfskin cape to become wolves. Unlike the subrace of shifters, there is no culture here. This group is afflicted humans and mages acting on a generally non-good impulse. (Do we want cursed wolves to have an infectious bite, with the bitten becoming weaker wolves under the control of the biter?)
Fae – They came from ‘elsewhere’; a world parallel to ours and almost touching ours. When I think ‘fae’ I think Celtic fae; the beautiful and terrible Danoine Sidhe. They’re innately magical creatures, and innately tricksy and fickle. Anyone have any thoughts?
Supernatural Creatures – Unicorns, Phoenixes, Dragons – Sure, I like the idea. Restricted to people who’ve already demonstrated RP ability and reasonable sanity tho.
