Eddie is certainly doing a good job of making the original accusations seem very likely to be spot on.

@Coin 500 words a day. Every day. It worked for Terry Pratchett.

Moreover, it worked for me. I finally published my first this spring.

@kalakh I had somebody pull the ‘some people expressed concern to me’ line on me as late as last week.

There is only one appropriate answer. If these people will not stand up themselves and voice their concerns, or at the very least allow their names to be used, then their complaint is invalid.

People with concerns should go to staff and make themselves known. At the very least they should allow the person they pick to talk to staff to identify them. Because it’s bloody easy to pull ‘some people agree with me, actually everyone does’ out of your arse, and there is no way to verify that these people even exist.

Being a disabled person who can only leave the house with a helper and isn’t even able to drive a car themselves – and still being able to be part of a community of people and have a social life.

That’s what Mushing is for me.

Agreed. Tone policing is essentially a tool to silence those whose polite protests got them nothing, in order to maintain the status quo.

I had one of those sleepless nights where old stuff finishes ruminating in your mind and finally bubbles to the surface. Now to unload it so I can go on to other ruminations.

Red flags. I’ve had a few experiences in this hobby with people who I would, without being a medical professional, definitely armchair diagnose as malignant narcissists at worst – and players who use and discard other players like NPCs at best.

If somebody says this to you in a private conversation, run.

“I have a black belt in charm.”
“I am/we are the darlings/power couple of the game.”
“I can win anyone over.”
“Many players are jealous of my success but I know you’re different.”
“I play for me, others will have to find their own fun.”

And other things like them, I’m sure.

These statements aren’t all one hundred per cent wrong: We are all responsible for finding our own fun instead of having it served up on a plate, for example.

But they’re also all direct quotes from people who – well, let’s just say that I don’t need to talk to any of those people again.

Personally, my experience is that people are willing to accept amazing and terrifying amounts of consequences, even very negative such, as long as they feel that it matters.

No one wants their character to lose a leg and no one cares. But if losing a leg means the villain gets outed and everyone goes around all ‘thank you for your sacrifice’, then it’s juuuuuust fine.

People want to matter.

On popular request: The story of the girl who thought she was marrying my partner.

So, this was back in the 1990s – 'round 96 if I remember correctly. The date matters because cybersecurity and whatnot really wasn’t a big thing yet. Partner and I both played on LegendMUD.

Partner hung out a lot with a chick from Detroit and her friends. I had my crowd I went stabbing things with so nothing unusual there.

One day, a large care package arrived. Chocolate, a vinyl with ‘our song’, Red Sox kit (partner has no interest in hockey), scented candles.

In retrospect, this is where we should have started to question but, we weren’t really sure what to think.

Then she announced to partner that she’d bought the plane tickets and was arriving in a couple of weeks. Couldn’t wait to get married!

That, of course, rang all the alarm bells and set off an investigation on the game – where I was a builder at the time so I had a pretty decent rapport with the admins.

Partner had complained a few times that they lost gear or logged into the game somewhere else than expected. They’re a forgetful type though, so…

So the admins looked through paging history and private correspondence. And it turned out that some other guy from Denmark had been logging the character in and, to be blunt, convinced this American girl to come to Denmark to marry him.

This is where the obvious question is, how the hell can I trust partner to not be the culprit? Well. To be just as blunt again – partner’s English levels aren’t up to what those pages and letters contained.

Needless to say there was quite an uproar. Girl accused partner of abuse and gaslighting – other guy denied everything – and obviously, the trip to Europe was cancelled, more so when girl found out that partner and I were in fact already married.

https://twitter.com/lbheuschkel/status/1536026867471466496

Have to link the video rather than a picture. Those are my girls, running around for the joy of life.

Not just youth. Also standards.

When I was 25 and had all night and nothing to compare with, I would jump into anything. Even the most atrocious, brain-numbing roleplay was good roleplay.

Now I’m 51 and I don’t have all night and I’m not going to waste time and energy on stuff that’s boring the hell out of me while hoping that a miracle happens.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in The 3-Month Players:

Smaller but invested. It sounds harsh, but it’s not those March violets you need to invest in as a game runner. They come with great enthusiasm – and they bail with just as much enthusiasm when the next game opens. It’s the other players you need to invest in – the ones who will stick around for a longer time. Those who came looking for a community to move into and stay in.

I think this is where we see things differently. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but in my experience–the majority of players want to stick around. MUSHers come to tell stories and build IC relationships. That’s the long game. It’s not like a MMO or single-player game where everyone’s always drawn to “the new shiny”. The biggest reason they move on to a new game is that the one they’re on isn’t meeting that need.

But that’s my point, in a way. If your game doesn’t offer enough for them to become long-term invested, they will bail for the next shiny.

The real issue, as I see it, is how to make your game interesting enough. As BN said above – getting a cool idea for a setting is easy but what will people actually RP?

I don’t have a golden answer, unfortunately. Sometimes, you strike gold. Sometimes, you don’t.

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:
Then the next Ares game has The Bubble for a couple months… then the next, leaving the old game(s) with a much, much smaller player base of longer-term residents.

Smaller but invested. It sounds harsh, but it’s not those March violets you need to invest in as a game runner. They come with great enthusiasm – and they bail with just as much enthusiasm when the next game opens. It’s the other players you need to invest in – the ones who will stick around for a longer time. Those who came looking for a community to move into and stay in.

That, of course, begs the question of how to tell who’s who so you know where to invest your spoons.

@Faraday The way I interpret it is, the better your thing is, the more players will end up in cathegory three.

@Third-Eye I can relate to that. I used to look for older, established games too. Of course, that’s not exactly helping new games become established.

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

Is three months the sweet spot for a MU?

Actually, yes. It is. Story time!

Once upon a time when the Earth was young and I first became staff on a MUD (LegendMUD for ye curious) in the late 1990s, Raph Koster was one of the implementors (you may know him as Ultima Online’s Designer Dragon). No, I’m not name dropping here – I think I talked to him twice, it’s not like I know him. (His wife is awesome, though).

Anyhow. Raph Koster did a study on this and reported his findings. There are three cut-off points.

Three months: The average time a player will spend on a game, any game. Once the new shine and sparkle has worn off, many move on to the next new thing.

Eight months: Those who were severely and firmly hooked have now done it all. They start to look for expansions, new things – and end up wandering off to elsewhere in pursuit of those things.

Forever: And finally, there is a core group of players who have found a home. Nothing short of pulling the plug on the game will get these guys to move on.

@Tez Keys did not invent the wheel re: portal, stargate, fanfiction, whatever term you prefer games. It’s a trope because it works: It gives you a lot of creative freedom.

I wouldn’t say that changes to the homebase region or overall story are entirely out of the question. As staff, we do quietly nudge things here and there. But on the whole, players seem very happy with having the peace and quiet (read: not being looked over the shoulder) to create their own storylines, some of which have consequences that can be felt back home too, through how the characters are affected.

There will likely come a time when the status quo begins to feel well tested and tried and maybe a little old. When that happens, we’ll shake the dice bag and pull some rugs out under people. Change is good, at the pace that works.

@Faraday said in Metaplot: What and How:

Can’t speak to LB’s game, but that’s how it was on BSGU. Folks could run missions of their own whenever they wanted. (Also other plots connected to the war, though folks rarely did so.) But they couldn’t affect the overall trajectory of the war without staff approval and coordination. This was spelled out in the game policies, so if that was a deal-breaker for someone, they could decide that before playing.

This. It’s on the landing page of Keys’ website. If not being able to ‘solve’ the metaplot is a deal-breaker, there’s no point in wasting your time with the rest.

@Warma-Sheen said in Metaplot: What and How:

If the metaplot can’t be affected by the players in any meaningful way (or at least work towards being able to affect it), that’s not a metaplot (usually). Its just a setting.

I think that part of this discussion is what exactly constitutes a setting and a metaplot respectively. For us, in the design phase, setting was the where and metaplot was the what. Those are obviously not the only options in design so I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong.

@Tez The conflict between order and chaos works as a metaplot / backdrop because it’s a backdrop – and because anyone who wants to GM can do so.

That means players designing stories within the framework that they want to pursue. And because they design the realities they want those stories to happen in they

• get to decide which rules apply there
• what the theme/setting is
• whether this is a oneshot or a brick of a novel size plot

and nothing they do there can affect the main setting (besides the characters themselves). This way, we have a buffet of stories and a diverse cast of stories. But most importantly, we don’t have anyone sitting around waiting for storyteller-type GMs to make shit happen when they’re around and remember to include them.

Is this the solution to everything? Nah. But it does help with the ancient quandary of not enough GMs. Obviously, not everyone wants to GM. But a lot of people feel comfortable running a scene or three for a few people at a time, without taking on an official mantle and having to run everything past staff.

@Tez You want names and examples, so, I’ma toot that horn.

On Keys, the metaplot is a never-ending conflict between stagnation and flux, order and chaos. The metaplot overlaps heavily with the setting in our case – we use it to create numerous storylines that have conclusions (as opposed to the metaplot which will not be solved because, well, it’s never-ending).

Our setting, on the other hand, is the small town island of Chincoteague. There’s ponies and a lot of swamp grass. And a secret community of people who spend a fair bit of their time fighting back against increasing stagnation, and try to preserve magic across the multiverse. And get a decent cup of coffee.

The two are different because the metaplot (law! chaos! drama!) triggers the many storylines whereas the setting is the anchor for those storylines. Whatever happens, in this reality or another, you always go home to Chincoteague in the end.

Of course staff should play their own game. Not just because why the hell invest so much time into something you don’t get to enjoy – but also to have a first-hand knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

What kind of GMing can staff do? Any. If you want to run a game that’s essentially about how great your character is and how everyone else are just mindless, fawning minions, do it – you’ll see a lot of tumbleweed and not many players but you do you.

After all, that’s the beauty of the hobby: We vote with our feet. If you feel that a game – or a GM – is pulling a complete Mary Sue and turning you into a member of a forced audience, leave.

My vote goes to two options: Channel block and traditional block.

Channel block blanks the ‘offender’ from channels. Used for when somebody hasn’t bothered you per se but you find their communication style / dad jokes / venting sessions / soap opera babble / whatever annoying and don’t want to see it.

Traditional block, well, as always. Block pms.