Sometimes there’ll be a player you really like that you just kinda lose touch with after you both lose the connective tissue of the game you were on at any given time. MUSHing is a transitory hobby, I try not to get too down about it.

Then 15 years will pass.

Then you meet a player you really like a new game and you both think you’re a TOTALLY NEW FUN PERSON.

Then one day you’re talking about old games and you realize that, in fact, you played together quite a lot on that one random game 15 years ago, and the internet has now brought you back into proximity for the first time in this decade+.

Sometimes the smallness of the hobby is actually nice.

Thank you BMD mods for making it easier to rubberneck and preserve this trashfire…I mean stay informed.

NGL the thing I’m trying to wrap my head around is this pile of refuse passing as a game not having a WORA/MSB thread prior to this.

I voted no due to the potential for abuse by bad actors but get why the Magicians guy deleted his post and think the kind of reception is worth reflecting upon.

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

I wish people didn’t always turn this into “if you’re not in action/plot its because you just prefer social things” that is honest far from the truth a lot of the time.

I was once told - by someone in control of plot stuff - that because I was a ‘social RPer’ and in a decent number of scenes (many of which I asked for) that I didn’t need plot involvement. It was a hell of a thing and like five years later I’m still mad about it.

@Cobalt
Whatever worked or didn’t work about The Pack, I really hope the experience wasn’t too discouraging for you. Like I said lots of posts back, it DID seem like a game a lot of players responded to in positive ways, and I am really impressed with how you responded to an atmosphere that you didn’t feel good about being the gamerunner of anymore, because that was obviously really hard and Unfun to deal with this directly. I think it’s always constructive to reflect on why something didn’t work, or didn’t work for you personally, or get across what you wanted to get across, but I hope that doesn’t mean it was as wholly negative experience because you are a gamerunner lots of people like and respect and it’d be awesome to see another project from you in the MUSH space when you were excited to do it.

@Narrator
lol my dude did you just compare yourself to Jesus on a message board? Is that where we are now?

My beast from the Black Cat Army. She is the night.

@Selira said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

I’m still pretty shocked Derp made up a multiparagraph theory wholecloth and tried so hard to sell it. Why? What was the benefit of that kind of speculation? I realize I’m speculating here, myself, but he’s more than welcome to come here and provide the answers.

That was the first moment I was sorry I was banned (apart from every time I try to find something on that mess of a board because the bad search is even worse if you aren’t logged in) because I would’ve enjoyed enthusiastically and repeatedly reporting Derp’s own post for violating his ‘you need to bring receipts’ and ‘no personal attacks’ rules.

I thought about going back but end of the day I came to the same conclusion I did a while ago: I left my most active period on Arx on a really good note and that’s the experience I want as my strongest memory of the game. It’s cool to see a chapter of it get a conclusion, though, a lot of MUs don’t, and I’ll be interested to see how it ties it up.

Whelp, now to add ‘Please don’t feed my scenes into an LLM’ to my +finger, too…

LOL so do the kind of players who only stick around for 3 months think social RP is evil or want social RP and are these at all the same thing or two totally unrelated questions?

The Network did essentially recreate ‘the Bubble’ every new season. This was part of why it wasn’t my thing, but it maintained a decent playerbase and closed on its own terms.

OK, but specifically on the New Game Bubble thing.

There is a pattern.

New game opens. The theme at this point almost doesn’t matter. The appeal of it at this point almost doesn’t matter.

It is mobbed by the same 40+ people, most of whom evaporate in 3 months.

The cycle repeats at the next new game, the XYZ of which almost doesn’t matter.

There are a LOT of reasons players don’t stick with games. I think 3 months is a pretty reasonable, and probably more-than-reasonable, time to see if something is for you or not. But the Bubble is its own thing and it’s exhausting and it keeps happening and I want it not to happen again on the next project I undertake.

ETA: I guess I’m interested in the ‘I only like new things’ mentality because it’s so foreign to me and so counter-productive to the kinds of environments I enjoy over the long term.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

Ares also makes it easier to discover games. This arguably could lead to bigger initial bubbles, magnifying the effects of the collapse.

If this is any more of a thing in Ares than it always was with PennMUSH games, I think this is a lot of it. Tons of players scan the Ares listing pretty frequently in search of new games (to play for 3 months than not play anymore lol) and even back when MUDConnector and stuff was functional, it felt a lot more fragmented. It feels like the only comparable thing available right now is Evennia’s listing, which doesn’t have new games pop up as frequently.

@Ashkuri
One thing I’ve thought a lot about this year, and do not have an answer to, is if there’s something unique to Ares that drives this phenomena more than other MUSH-like formats, or if the transparency just makes this all more visible.

I don’t know!

I’d love to see what others think, though.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Why MUSH?:

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.

A tangent but this is why I find the ‘new’ stage of a game exhausting. I know I’m basically RPing into the void with people who won’t stick around or develop anything, but who’re also 200% extra about everything OOC. I tend to be very wary of anything that hasn’t hit the six-month mark.

For me it’s:

A) The real-time nature of it, both the IC improv aspect and the OOC social aspect, you lose both as an environment drifts further away from it

B) The ability to build an entire world and a shared narrative, and develop a character and larger narrative over time

C) The OOC convenience of having everything centralized and the commands relatively streamlined

I think it’s kind of remarkable that, given how popular ‘RP online’ actually is, nothing else quite replicates this. I read attempts to RP on Twitter! I hope those poor souls are all right, somewhere.

The version of WoT I want isn’t an L&L game but idk what other people would want.

@Pyrephox said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

2. If your game relies on themes (like, say, conflict between factions or internal societal tensions) then you should not rely on PCs to enforce those as leaders. Most players won’t enforce theme, and the ones who do often end up burning out and miserable because they’re thrust in a position of “fun police” that isn’t actually very fun (ask me how I know).

On top of it not being fun, it’s also how a lot of theme drift happens, or how an environment can grow OOCly toxic. When you off-load theme enforcement to players, the people who are Loud and Around end up doing it. Sometimes those are people who are actually helpful, a lot of times they’re not.