Once in a long while a game comes along with a unique theme that makes me sit up and pay attention, and looks awesome enough to pull me out of retirement. Something that genuinely excites me to play, rather than merely "I'll make something and try it out".

This is what this game feels to me.

Well if we are sharing our geeky collections....

A bit of a random thought: I believe we have Surreality to thank, but this game has the slickest Wiki I've ever come across. It takes all the proverbial Japanese out of the instruction manual.

I don't know when Faraday started coding, but I know when I first met her, I thought she was just a fun partner to RP with. Then some years later she mentioned she was building the initial foundations of Ares, and I was like... wait, what? How did you even do that??? I was pretty mind-blown by what she was building, because it was so revolutionary for Mushing.

And it was done by someone whom I thought was just another regular player. That was a pretty awesome blindside.

@BetterNow Plus, a common platform makes trying out new games that much easier. It takes away a lot of the learning curve from the old Mushing days.

Again, playing the merry-go-round.

So kind of a funny story... I actually logged on to see how populated Fate's Harvest is compared to Darkwater 2.0, and when I did, I suddenly remembered I made a character there when FH was in alpha/early-beta (thanks to @skew!) but never played. Of course the PC bit no longer exists after all this time, so I was reminiscing on the public channel and Annapaura suddenly chimed in. She remembered me and apparently had my PC on archive, which she copied and pasted over and all of a sudden I have a fully CGen'd, pre-approved character whom I don't remember much of!

I guess I am playing on Fate's Harvest now! Laziness wins again.

@Cobaltasaurus I for one am glad that you brought back Darkwater for a bit. It let me revisit my old PCs: to see how one of them has changed and progressed in 10 years, and another actually saw a major development this time around. Not to mention the Assault on the Fraternity House - finally got to see my Ling in an actual fight. That was both memorable and awesome.

Darkwater 2.0 never picked up the way 1.0 did (probably because of the 1e system), and the playerbase remained small all along. That being said, that small playerbase was inordinately active, and ironically you could usually find more RP there than much larger games. Short as it was, I think it was a damn good run. You should be proud of it.

Long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I tried a couple of original Sci Fi themed Mushes. The main problem I found, was the each setting required extensive reading to understand. Furthermore, none of the games provided enough documentation to fully explain every aspect of their settings -- this is not a knock against them, because it's not even remotely realistic to expect a comprehensive write-up of an entirely original universe. Common examples were: what specific technologies existed? How common were they? How did the economy work? How did people obtain material goods? Who built starships? Etc. etc. The few scenes I got into almost always ended up on hold until we got clarification from staff, which was a bit of a hassle.

In my estimation, that's why SF games based on Star Wars or Star Trek are more popular: simply because they use shared settings that are popular and well-defined, which take the guesswork out of the roleplay.

Updated 2021-01-20

Whoever came up with the playlist idea, kudos. This gives me a reason to compile a list, which is only to get less complete as time goes on. My mushing days started back in 1995/96? and lasted until mid-2013, with acouple of long breaks in there. The list below is roughly chronological (at least, the WoD part), as much as a I recall...

Cajun Nights: Chantal (mortal), Saralee (mortal), Hadrian (Ventrue)
Metro: Janice (Ravnos), Hadrian (after he left Cajun Nights)
Tempest: AJ (BSD, I think?)
Santo Domini: Isabelle (Tremere), Sachavelli (Giovanni don), Quickstrike (BSD)
Due Rewards: Arkady (Brujah), Liane (M+ CSI), some others I can't remember
Denver Dark Destiny: Isabelle (ported from Santo Domini), Marianne Beaufort (the ridiculously verbose Ventrue), Victor (Gangrel)
Generation X (That 80's Seattle one): Scissors (Bonegnawer Ahroun)
Shadowed Isles: Seanna (Fianna), Rain (Hakken), Aunt Ana (Troll)
Metro v2: Lillian Hayes (Technocracy intern)
Masquerade: Sasha (Corax)
Arctic Rage: Victor (Get of Fenris)
Darkwater: Sydney Rae (mortal, federal agent), Mr. Quiet (Ogre)
City of Hope: Sjovold (Get of Fenris)
Oathcircle: Elisha/Nibbles (Pooka), Mad Jack (Redcap), Megan (Children of Gaia)
The Reach: Marie (Wolfblooded Cop), Poison/Aunt Sigi (Crone/Kross), Oscar/Electro/Sparky (Free Council Obrimos), a couple of others I never got around to play much.
From the Ashes : Ivy (Redcap)
Bump in the Night: Anthony, Olivia.
Fate's Harvest: Svetlana

Non-WoD:

Birds of War: Mlle. Solace, The Contessa, Jurgen Schlag
Steel and Stone: Alise, Rutger Nayland (the first one, anyway)
Sweetwater Crossing: Lucy Vancamp, Andrew Cash, Elena Avery
Cold Space: Illyanna Shevchenko
The Triangle: Lena Valk
Lantern Hill: Troy, Sophie, Eve
Kushiel's Debut: (briefly) Regine, Vallis, Marilene
Coral Springs: Koa, Bam-Bam
8th Sea: Beppe, Mako
Arx: Veronica Keaton, Vercyn Halfshav
Calaveras: Nina, Eve, Franklin
Savage Skies: Ling, Jericho
Welcome to the Euphoria: Tannen, Jessica

Current:

Uh....

A bunch of others I was on briefly, but just can't remember enough details to list (Memoirs of Betrayal, Fallen Leaves, Hint of Malice, Mountain Cauldron, some others). I had a string of different Black Fury characters but I can't recall any of the games they were on. There was also a handful of comic book MUs that I was on for about 6 months (it was a phase), but I can't recall their names.

Did some sporadic staffing over the years, on Due Rewards (can't remember the staff name) and Tempest (sorry Gany, I was Ms. Orange, unless you took up the mantle later on). Never wanted to staff ever since.

Just one thought about Actives versus Casuals: As someone who got sucked in MMORPGs BIG-TIME for the last two years, I have a new appreciation for the very cyclical nature of online gaming commitment. A lot of players go through alternating phases of very active play and barely-playing-at-all, so from a practical point of view I think it would be difficult to lock someone into an "active" or "casual" category.

Game Update: Opening Events starting on Saturday, March 18 2023.

6ix Remains is set to move forward into official Alpha plot launch with a trio of Opening Events this coming Saturday. In the past month the survivors have been busy securing their community-building and finding supplies to sustain themselves through the crisis. The opening events are now set to allow them to explore beyond the safety of their haven, and attempt to find out what is happening in the rest of the city. What they find may well shake their views of the new reality that they think they know.

Will things improve for the survivors? Or will things get worse before they get better? Come join us and find out!

@Cobalt Hey, saw that you're closing the game. It always sucks because you put in all that time and effort, and it all seems to go to waste.

I wanna apologize for not actively playing. I only played one scene with each of my two alts, but the general vibe of the RP just wasn't working for me. I think my expectation was this would be WoD-esque, prime-time supernatural show, but what I saw was mostly daytime sappy/skeevy-romance soap with fur. Might be fun for some folks, but not what I was looking for.

I also feel certain individuals involved in the sappy/skeevy-romance RP are kinda sus... they might even possibly be the bad actors you were referring to. Sucks even worse that it's because of these bad actors that you are forced to throw the game away.

In the larger scheme of things, this is not an isolated incident and we've all seen evidence of this in several other games in recent years. I'm pretty concerned with these individuals sneaking their way into games and repeating their manipulative/abusive behavior, and staff everywhere end up spending more time policing (and mole-whacking) than actually having fun.

Having much fun here so far. Thumbs up from me!

Oh well, I spoke too soon. Even though I could connect via Mushclient on a USB stick, it's still constantly disconnecting me. It looks like the corporate firewall is set to periodically shutdown telnet connections everywhere, so I may be SOL.

Mushclient on a thumb drive worked! Take that, IT.

Thanks for the awesome advice, all!

Thanks for the replies guys.

Then maybe it's not a WebMu issue. It may be some changes on my corporate IT side that now blocks WebMu connections.

I've tried Duckclient but my corporate firewall is definitely blocking that.

I'll give Mushclient on a thumb drive a try, though!

The WebMu server went down a couple of months and never came back up. I checked Cheese Software's site and it looks like the blog+forum are both gone, so I'm not sure if he's decided to stop hosting WebMu. Does anyone know?

WebMu is the only client I can use on the company computer because it's browser-based, so it's really my only option. Potato MU client kinda works, but it constantly disconnects me so it's not really sustainable.

I am gradually turning into a misanthropist thanks to DownWithOPP and his ilk. My logical brain simply cannot fathom how someone fails to decipher that they are not wanted or welcomed after repeated bans. Or that creating a new alias to sneak back on is an amateurish trick which does not make them look smart.

Get a CLUE already. Then get a LIFE.

After yet another hiatus.... Updated for Euphoria.

It's morbidly fascinating to read about this sort of behavior. The fact that when this guy's loudly blaming people for not having "adult conversations" with him, there is a complete and utter lack of self-awareness of the irony. I mean, even a dog will recognize its own reflection after looking into a mirror enough times.

Can people really be this blind to their own faults? Sometimes I think it is by choice.