@Faraday You weren’t paying for the MUD, not really. On AOL, you were paying for the hours you used to dial up. The games themselves were free. I believe the same thing for Gemstone on GEnie, you were paying for GEnie and not for Gemstone itself. @kestrel you had a different experience than I did. No one ever promised me a paid position with IRE, or dangled it in front of me. I did spend a lot of money on the game but I was pretty young, stupid, and didn’t have any parental oversight. I don’t know how much money I spent, but I didn’t have a job so it couldn’t have been that much, it just felt like a lot of money for someone who didn’t really have any. I was also a God (Cassiopeia), I think on Aetolia but it might’ve been Imperian. Maybe I wasn’t a great one, I surely didn’t have a fanclub. I’m not saying that IRE MUDs weren’t toxic or the things you are saying didn’t happen though. I dealt with a ton of toxicity as a player and was admittedly pretty toxic myself back then. I have a lot of bad memories, but a lot of good ones too. And all in all, it was 20+ years ago now and I’d like to think I grew from it. I’m not discounting your experience, just telling my own. I think the things you are expressing aren’t exclusive to IRE though.

@Prototart said: People will 100% try to impose their will on others even on places where they can’t be killed for doing so. I doubt there’s any meaningful difference. I’ve played on PVP games and I’ve played on PVE games and I’ve absolutely seen a meaningful difference in the levels of cooperation and antagonization between players depending on the type of game. YMMV obviously.

Lindaaaa is styled Lindaaaa even outside of MUdom in the GoT fandom. “Blood of Dragons”, Lindaaaa and Elio’s MUSH, is specifically approved by GRR Martin. He even linked it. George R. R. Martin began to write this epic series and did not make a concordance, bless him. There are interviews of him kinda bragging on this, tapping the side of his head and saying “It’s all in here.” Westeros.org was originally the BoD’s game page and wiki. It expanded into a general fan-site with news and forums and a wiki that’s a really fantastic concordance. By 2000 it had gotten pretty good and L & E shared it with GRRM, who uses it. Or, if you take him literally in an interview, just telephones Elio about any continuity thing an author or writing team usually looks up in a concordance. Linda and Elio didn’t work on the show, except for the Swedish subtitles. For five seasons of it they did do commentaries for every episode. As far as I know, they consisted mostly of casting complaints that came across as racist and complaints where the show deviated from the novels. It didn’t seem to go over well. They did spend a lot of time trying to say that BoD being approved by GRRM means any other MU is disapproved. I doubt that GRRM, a TTRPG player, could fail to understand that some people might prefer another set of GMs and another in-world scenario and setting. I had a lot of fun running Game of Bones MUSH and miss it, though it wouldn’t do now since inconsistencies with House of the Dragon would make a mess.

If something is advertised as a bar scene, a karaoke night, or auction, I just don’t go. Avoid contributing to boring RP by not being there. Otherwise it helps if you do a passable imitation of somebody who is paying attention to what people are saying to you. I use Pyrephox’s method of a) reacting to what people give me, then b) do something that takes the action further and give other people something to react to. RP is a game of catch. Catch the ball and throw it. Don’t sit there gormlessly hanging onto it.

@bear_necessities Probably because the people interested in building one are also backers of the upcoming TTRPG and waiting to see if the TTRPG can be converted to a MU.

I refer to resolution systems outside of the standard resolution system that rely on player skill as “mini-games” like in video game design. I think of things like Yahtzee Locks in OSR D&D or using the Mastermind board game to resolve code breaking or hacking computers.

congratulations, you all passed age verification.

@renaveleigh Naturally.

@Imagicka I’m sure @Jihgfed will eventually chime in, but it was not cancelled! About 25 people showed up to his in person presentation!

@Jihgfed Yay, glad it went well! Thanks for spreading the word about the hobby!

@Ominous said in When is the last time you played?: To find out how the story resolves? Just because everyone knows all the details of a setting doesn’t mean they know how it plays out. Quite. If the PCs have agency you can’t know how the story will resolve because you don’t know what they will do. It’s not a ‘I don’t care because I already how will things play out’ issue, it’s a potential-cheating issue. Like how we had to make up new monsters for our HS D&D campaign because one player would read the Monstrous Compendium and then somehow his character knew the weaknesses of every monster. If the PCs don’t have agency and are just watching NPCs and weather cause events to unfold, then yeah, they will lose interest if they know what’s going to happen by reading the game lore pages. But they will probably lose interest without reading the lore pages, too, because they probably think reading novels is a lot less frustrating than RPing as a character who is utterly incapable of affecting the world, and that if all you can do is watch, most published novelists produce better stories than most MUSH STs.

@Jumpscare The short-desc stuff is what I was meaning. I forgot to elaborate my thought in the previous post, but that’s exactly how it worked in a few of the RPIs I played.

Our latest plot has wrapped up! The wingleader of the rogue dragonriders was killed in battle. [image: 1781799742253-fiery-shitsplosion.jpg] The ambitious goldrider behind it all has been defeated and imprisoned while her dragon waits to lay her eggs. The Weyrs are still navigating the sustainability and resource-sink of this arrangement, as well as how exactly they want to hold her and her supporters accountable. (There already aren’t enough dragons, and the rest of the world does need them to survive.) The next leg of our rogue dragonrider plot begins to kick off in August, and the next hatchings are slated for early July and mid-August. For anybody on the fence, it’s a good low pressure time to ease into the theme.

I tend to be (I hope) rather nice, understanding and malleable as a player. I tend to yes and for the most part. Which is how one of my chars got married in a pub on a quasi-maybe-date. It leads to some great RP. I also try to go towards the funny and just see what happens. That said. I have also played a very arrogant full of himself asshole. He was a great character to play, but he also had money and power behind him so it made him more than a little insufferable. I would OOC disclaimer that as the pilot of my char, I could come up with a reason for him to be there. I can’t guarantee it’s going to be enjoyable for a few different reasons. I was also willing to tone down or full send the jerkfaceness depending on the OOC person and I did check in a lot, BUT the char was designed a certain way. If you weren’t part of his chosen few, you weren’t worthy of air in his eyes. I still had amazing RP and one of his IC best friends started as one of his nemesis at the beginning. It means I can see the ‘my guy’ as also writing for the the story line and where/how your char fits into the story.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP: Also, if you approach IC conflict in a fully RP MU (so a MUSH or MUX or whatever) as though it’s a round of all slappers in Goldeneye, I would suggest that you’re in the wrong place and would better be served by a PvP MUD. I promise you I am in the right place lol. Also - my bros and I never demanded no contact orders from our parents after a round of GoldenEye slappers. So maybe we had it right after all? @Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP: There are players who enjoy playing weird little gremlins or satirical characters they see as totally separate from themselves, where they get to have fun at that character’s expense. This is me. @Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP: …is basically a service you’re providing other players… you’re welcome.

@Wikibara said in Tales of Zalanthas: @Juniper It’s for people who want to live in both denial and sadness simultaneously, I guess. Ah. Marriage.

Not a scene, but I have to give shoutouts to Arx staff because multiple action responses to me led to some of the most impactful character development I’ve ever had in MU*ing.

Big things for me: Is the house rule clearly explained so I know how it is likely to affect my play? Does it pass the “smell test”? Which is to say, when I read the rule, can I see what it’s trying to do, do I agree with what it’s trying to do, and do I think it will actually accomplish that? (And, honestly? WoD/CoD generally DOES need a little more houseruling than it gets when trying to blend spheres that have conflicting powers/themes/foci.) Do I think it’ll be fun and fair to all players? If those three things are a yes, then I’m willing to run with it. When you’re talking about big changes–adding or removing or completely rehauling a system like pledges or whatever–then I do want the new rules to maintain the theme and appeal of the game for me. Like, HR rules to streamline making spirits and how they interact with the world from the rather complicated setup in CoD? Sure, I’m in, as long as spirits are still CoD spirits in recognizable ways.

@Pavel right and i think it’s better to focus on creating culture/implementing rules that determine how those systems are utilized rather than scrapping a nice thing

@bear_necessities I think it’s more just a clash of expectations. Some people see async as merely a “last resort” when you can’t sync up to play live, but still expect a degree of responsiveness to get the scene done. For example, even back when folks were doing async with LiveJournal or Google Docs, it could be considered rude to let a pose go three days without a response. At that point, it’s not really about syncing up timezones and can start to feel more like the other player just doesn’t care enough to reply, isn’t engaged in the scene, etc. (Or they, aka me, just have ADHD and forgot the scene exists. ) Other people (including those who are influenced by other, slower RP modalities like forum RP, storium, etc.) might not even think twice about going days between poses.