Posts made by Ghost

Jesus, just think about the threats of small-claims lawyers contacting you for the month you played (though didn't pay for) because staff forgot to freeze your character.

Fuck that.

At the end of the day, all you have is trust that the staff are ethical. There are no staffers ABOVE staffers. The hierarchy comes to an end. All you can do is hope they are doing what they say and are holding to the standards they seek to enforce.

I know that I tend to reference Mal and Inara from SerenityMush a lot, but they are a good example. Ultimately, they would do unethical things, but when they were caught would side on the "we pay for the game, so this is OUR house and you are a guest in it" angle. They spied constantly on their players.

So proving staff is spying is easier than getting them to admit it, and both are easier than getting them to punish themselves for it.

I would welcome staff being dark during an open RP scene with the intent of throwing unsolicited plot their way. After all, things happen to people, wrong place, wrong time.

However, 90% of the time I hear of staffers spying, it's because some bent out of shape staffer with a grudge wants to prove that players are talking about him/her behind his back OR are spying on TS...which is lame, sad, and I don't know what other words to use to describe it.

I think Three-Eyed Crow hit the nail on the head.

The moment your p2p Mu* starts making money, and is using either an intellectual property OR dice system that are not open source, you open your game up to all kinds of trouble ranging from actionable cease-and-desist letters to lawsuits. If the IP owners allow a p2p game to exist, it could set a legal precedent that would remove their protections if someone decided to make an MMORPG using their IP. They MUST act or risk losing protection of their IP.

Having said that, I also think about the number of Mu* I've been on and some of the self-obsessed, batshit crazy staff I have met. Sure, I'm sure Mal and Inara from SerenityMush seemed okay at first...and then months later I was getting calls from Mal begging me to login and entertain his RL wife.

I wouldn't trust 60-70% of any musher I've come across with my personal phone number let alone to believe that any money I paid for a mush would be used they way they promised. People are needy and greedy and the Mu* community is loaded with people who are at-home shut ins with warped concepts of the way actual humans communicate with each other. Rational, mature adults are in the minority. So would I roll the dice to pay for a Mu* only to find the owner of the Mu* was using the cash to cover his rent so he could stay home all day and harass women for TS? Fuck no.

I've heard good things about Kushiel, though I've got zero experience with the books. I'd also play the ass off of a Mass Effect game, Gany.

Don't get me wrong, folks, that above post wasn't some pessimistic projection. I really do regularly play with a bunch of people who write others off based on what they see on their wikis, have lists of players they refuse to associate with, often ask me if I think some random player is one of the people from that list and if they are unable to determine for sure...they avoid that person just in case. I've tried telling them that this in NO WAY hells the Mu* community or a hobby, but Meh...

...I think I need some fresh air and nice peeps to write good stories with.

Any suggestions, Sunny? I'm not the insular sort, but I think I've fallen accidentally into some kind of cliqueish crowd that I should probably break free of. I love to involve people and share the rp love, but lately I feel as if getting these people I've been doing with to get involved requires a lot of convincing due to them having this LIST of people.

I, for one, never buy the "it's the holiday season, and finals, and vacations" type response when attendance is attendance is low. A drop in 10+ players and only one posted to the "Vacations and Leave" BB? I could attribute maybe 30-40% to being away but not posting to the board, but in my experience almost every Mu*er I come across is on 2-3 games with multiple alts per game. I think if people wanted to be communicative and keep in the loop, they'd let plenty of people know that they're on vacation/finals/etc.

Lately on the game I've been playing, people have been "busy with RL" for 4-7 weeks and then show back up to let a couple of people know they left for a different game. I'm pretty sure "everyone" is still out there, they're just nomadically migrating in search of the RP Buffalo and have abandoned the games that aren't giving them the output they hoped for.

I think the mutually assured destruction of "people who have a list of people they won't roleplay with" has come to roost. The mushing pool is getting smaller as it is, but I know at least 6-7 whiny fuckbags who constantly worry over trying to figure out if X player is someone they used to know and swore off rp with. For almost every one of these players is a list of 2-3 "safe" players they focus their home base rp with and very rarely do they squeak outside of that safe zone. People continually get added to that "avoid" list and - give or take a few months - they wonder why a game has become stale.

MU*ing has become very insular over the last few years and in many cases if I do not guarantee relationship/TS rp, the player tends to move on until they find it.

In the end, I think a lot of people just spend a lot of time playing nomad, trying to find the game that isn't like this until their "no play" list shows up and "ruins everything" or...they're simply moving on to things less addicting with a better time:output ratio.

• Matrix
• Firefly
• Cthulhu Tech
• Original theme space horror
• Pacific Rim
• Mad Max
• Mass Effect/Dragon Age