@Coin Agreed. I'll play any codebase if the story grabs me. And none if it doesn't. I prefer codebases that emphasise roleplaying and writing over experience grinding and gold chasing, but I think I lost the right to complain about non-roleplay-oriented systems about at the time I did a five year stint as a guild leader on a WoW roleplay server.
@icanbeyourmuse I will expect that once the people trying to be funny but actually managing the opposite are made aware, though, they will cut it out. Because their intention was not to abuse or harass in the first place.
@faraday To be fair, the game was still accessible from a client. It was only the portal that was down -- and only for a few hours during a time frame where presumably you were asleep. 
@Coin Yes. Very much yes. In case of my WoW example, story and RP was done in spite of the system and code. Which goes to prove that somehow, idiots like me are willing to play a game company for access to their servers, to play a game they don't even offer.
I left that community as it gradually dissolved into an alt-right recruiting ground, but my point remains. Players will endure any game mechanics if they're hooked on story and community (and bail when either of them fail).
@Tinuviel They will. And they should. Games with untrustworthy admins end up dead in my experience. Which is as it should be.
@Cobaltasaurus Sorry to hear things didn't work out. This level of sci-fi is too sci-fi for my ability to immerse (which is why I didn't come over) but it sounded and looked like a good project. Thank you, 2020, for sapping people's will to live. 
I hope the next one works out better, and that 2021 will be kinder to it.
I'm not familiar with Evennia. But as a GMT+1 person, what works for me with Ares is the accessibility to people who aren't in US timezones. The ease with which scenes can be started and paused. And of course, the ease of logging and sharing.
@Arkandel Yikes. I mean, you're not wrong, but, yikes. Treating fellow players and admins with respect, and respecting their right to privacy, this is a hill I'm willing to die on. Pity it's such a contested hill because yes, people are assholes.
On the offices thing, a final note: The ironic thing was, we all had an office each, just, we weren't allowed to edit the file it was in. So, utterly pointless.
@sixregrets Beat me to it. We've got a small handful of European time zone players at least.
@Caggles AND WHAT GAME DID WE MEET ON?
@Derp It's certainly important to separate the two. One is the discussion of how we can make the game safer in terms of data and storage, the other is about how to encourage players and admins to not be assholes. They're both very important discussions, but they are not interchangeable at all.
What I need is players who want to be there. Anything else I can fake, work around, make shit up about, and sort out.
The other thing I need is, as Silverfox also points out, is to know what I'm not allowed to do. What kind of ideas am I allowed to seed? What kind of impact can I have? What kind of thinking am I allowed to inspire in characters?
@Auspice Spot on. Damp weather, dust, cold. I have barely left my house for a month.
@Derp ... You know, that might make me find somebody with a similar childish sense of humour and try to create the worst, most awful TS scene ever, just to send to you for the Ramsay treatment.
@Misadventure I can only say that I have sometimes have had a headsup about some metaplot development that might come in useful, but on the by and by, I don't know anything other regular players don't. I'm not a ST on Gray Harbor -- just a regular player who likes to run plots.
On Trelawney Cove I can't quite answer because, well, I'm staff there so yeah, I obviously do know what's in the works.
@Pyrephox I am tempted towards saying, take the course in creative writing first. Learn the basics of the craft. And then play a MU* in the same way that many writers use writing prompts -- to keep flexing the creative muscle. Because a MU* is indeed not a piece of fiction, and some of the fundamental mechanics are very very different. It's a way to stay sharp, but it is not learning how linear written fiction works.
@Auspice Makes perfect sense to me. Over on Ankh-Morpork, we're still a small playerbase and split between US and EU timezones. Some scenes happen at a glacial pace. It'd be utterly pointless to make them open because anyone wandering in, while welcome, would be standing there for up to 24 hours, waiting for somebody to get around to answering to 'hello guys'.
@Tinuviel said in What do player-STs need?:
@L-B-Heuschkel said in What do player-STs need?:
I need to not feel that anything I do may result in angry forum posts
Well. There's absolutely no way to ever guarantee that.
No. But there is knowing that the odds are 99% versus, it can happen but it probably won't.
@Kestrel He totally would, his audience likes it just the way it is.
Jokes aside, you make one very important other point: Writing fiction is LONELY. Mu*s are a way to alleviate some of that loneliness and get some creative juices flowing. Writing a 120k words novel is a process of literally 2-3 years for most writers, during which you get feedback of maybe 1-4 people at most. The rest of that time? You, just you, and nothing but you.