What Do You Want Out of a MU?

[Pyrephox]

I want:

• Regular, but fairly short, episodic plots with a variety of focus: combat, social, adventure (non-combat danger like environmental dangers, etc), or investigative.
• The above set in a persistent and coherent setting where the outcomes of plots make a difference in some way; it doesn’t have to be a LOT, but I love when, hey, our characters solve a murder, and there’s an IC news post saying Buffalo Bill was caught, or whatever.
• If there is a metaplot, I want a metaplot that is more broad than deep, something that’s a background that touches a lot of things, but not something that people are going to be ‘vital’ to ‘solving’. In fact, I prefer a metaplot that isn’t ever going to be ‘solved’ but rather that forms a key, ongoing challenge - the Dark Masters are always there, and if you kill a specific DM, another will soon rise in its place.
• If there is not a metaplot, I still want staff to be active in setting expectations and helping the game feel coherent, and not for everything to be PrPs that poof into smoke once they’re done.
• Transparency. I do like to run things, so I like to be supported in feeling I CAN run things without tripping over setting secrets - give Player GMs some explicit things they can use right out of the box - here’s a stat block for a typical Dark Master henchman, this area of the grid is haunted by ghosts and here’s what those ghosts can do, etc.
• A game that keeps pushing the fact that PCs are a small fragment of a much bigger world, and that NPCs matter. Regular updates on NPC activities, having NPC goals interfere with PC goals, having NPCs notice PC actions and even offer to help because it coincides with an NPC’s goals, etc. And I don’t mean that in a ‘use the NPC mob to punish player actions’ way, although consequences should be there and real. But more, I want a setting that feels vibrant, alive with more than just the 20 PCs I personally know, or whatever.

[somasatori]

Been thinking about this post since yesterday, and for a general game, I would say I just want everything that Pyrephox said combined with what Pavel said. Although I am in North America, my work and life schedule is such that the only time I have to myself is when I am doing the revenge bedtime procrastination thing from like 8pm to 2am. Also a lot of what was said by these two are things – and what I will mention – are what I learned as points of failure from developing The Reach. I’ve noticed that the WoD MU* community (I don’t have a long enough history with other genres, so maybe this is also true in other themeparks/genres) is the lack of failing forward or learning from mistakes. Often we just repeat the same problematic behavior from before. Anyway, this isn’t a “Please Soapbox Your Opinions on MU*s” post, so here we go! I tend to play a lot of Powered by the Apocalypse and Fate games these days, so I think my opinions are colored by that:

Game Runner/Staff Stuff

Spoiler

• I want staff who have the courage to say that they can’t take on new players in their sphere and to be aware of their limitations in how many players they can realistically handle. Although some players have limited interest in plot and story, there are still many administrative tasks related to the playerbase that staff must be able to do. Overloading oneself is neither health for players or staff.
• Additionally, staff should be understanding that there are other games that players may be on, which does not necessarily take away from their game. IMO competition exists only insofar as we view the MU* community as a consumer/producer dichotomy.
• If you’re doing WoD/CoD, please don’t try to shove in everything under the sun. This will lead to staff bloat and create a thinner, more abstract focus. Do you actually know how Mummy works, or does it just seem like there’d be interest and you’ll learn it live? You won’t learn it live fast enough for it to matter.
• If you’re not doing WoD/CoD, be mindful of your factions. Is it realistic to have the New Republic, Empire, Hutt Cartels, Independents, CSA, and so on? How many players do you expect to get in each of these groups? What is the minimum number of players you could have that would allow these groups to run without too much staff assistance?
• The big top dog in a faction probably shouldn’t be a player.
• Specific staffers probably shouldn’t have pet NPCs that they are the only people allowed to run. While there may be some stylistic differences between people, having a little ‘rp notes’ attribute on NPCs will help create a semi-coherent voice and prevent staff from playing an NPC as their PC.
• Grids are fine, but if the grid is too big and there’s not an easy way to traverse it, it makes the game feel very separated out. If you have a territory or faction system, having 2-4 grid rooms describing broad areas of your town or countryside, with players able to use a temproom or make their own builds feels less overwhelming than a city section of 15-20 rooms. The latter is absolutely better for immersion, sure, but that’s usually not as important.
• Immersion to me isn’t as important as the theme and story most of the time. I do like space systems for some reason, probably because I was born too early to be a space trucker.
• To the game runner, Staff are often seen as an extremely limited resource, and this is generally true. However, the best staff I have worked with were people who said upfront “I don’t want to be staff, but I will <work on this mechanic/write this code/build this section of the grid/run plots/etc>.” This also goes back to my first point about staff capacity. Don’t hire new staff unnecessarily.
• Check in with other staff when you’re making your cool custom rules so that they aren’t overpowered custom rules. Does your rule give a +1 or +2 bonus? Probably fine, but still check. Even if you think you know the system inside and out, there are absolutely people who know how to game it better than you.
• Staff should not be afraid to take criticism. Staff should also probably know how to separate criticism from trolling.
• You aren’t going to please everyone. Sometimes you might not please anyone. That’s usually okay as long as it’s not a trend or consistent group of people who are displeased.
• Subpoint to the above: if you find yourself only making one or a handful of groups happy with your rules, reevaluate if you want the other groups on the game. Are your New Republic players miserable but your Imperial players cheerful and doing constant RP? Maybe your game is more of an Imperial/dark jedi game than a larger Star Wars environment.
• Be a fan of the characters like you would a character in your favorite story. If you don’t like a particular character, a) why did you approve it unless you inherited them, and b) what could be done on your end – as in, how can you change your perspective, not force the character to change – to make the character interesting to you?
• Don’t be afraid to close the game when the story is done.

Theme stuff (a lot of this will be WoD-ish, but could apply to others)

Spoiler

• Setting. There should be some rationale for the setting other than ‘cool city-by-night.’ I think I am also slightly tired of California. I have to live here RL.
• Thematic inclusion. Why do vampires live in your small town with limited feeding options or, vice-versa, werewolves live in your big city where seeing a wolf would be deeply out of character for the area?
• Divination. This is a really overused trope and often kind of kills the vibe. If you must have fortune-telling or divination, make it vague.
• Teams are emphasized. I want my Decker to be able to link up with the Street Samurai while doing overwatch on the Matrix during a run. One of my favorite scenes from Neuromancer was when Molly and Case were talking to each other via one-way comm during the Straylight Run.
• Plot interest. I feel like I should hear about the cool stuff that my friends are doing rather than hearing complaints about how plots came out of nowhere or dragged on too long. Some kind of pulse check might be useful to evaluate whether the plot should continue. This also applies to metaplot. If it sucks, hit da bricks.
• Culture. If you’re an American making a game set in China or Russia or the Middle East (or frankly most places) be aware that there is a lot of propaganda that’s freely available and likely does not represent the culture appropriately. Propaganda isn’t always negative, so be sure to read up on the history or culture of a place from the perspective of those who have participated in those cultures, otherwise you’ll have some tropey Middle Eastern game (for example) with a lot of kitchen sink stereotypes that apply to very different cultures from around the area, only set in Cairo.

Mechanics

Spoiler

• Is your chargen understandable? Let’s say I never MU*'d in my life and I had never played the system you’re running if it’s a TTRPG game. Could I reasonably expect to make a character or would it be too complex?
• Do you have a reason to use the Reality Levels? Do powers make use of them? Are they useful powers and are people going to take them?
• Are you including a lot of extraneous material for the sake of completion? It’s probably not wise to do this. See point above about big multisphere games, but also examine this in terms of additional rules introduced in other books if you’re running a TTRPG.
• There’s an awful lot of cool code snippets out there, but do you really need a coded phone system or coded tarot cards? Physical code bloat isn’t a big deal these days since you can get several gigs of server space for very little (I’m mindful that this comment is very Americentric), but if I type +help and see a page-scrolling list of commands, I will never look at any of the ones I don’t need.
• Make it easy for people to connect with each other. If there is a team-building mechanic like Motley pledges or packing to a totem or whatever, it’s probably unwise to gatekeep the mechanics behind requiring staff-run plots or staff-observed scenes. Just like in life, a lot of times a meeting can be an email (+job).

Okay, that’s probably enough.

[Pyrephox]

@somasatori So much in there that I really love and agree with.

I’ll pull out divination as one thing to illustrate what I’d like to see more of. And that’s to think about MUs as _MUs_ rather than as tabletop. One of the reasons prophecies and divination don’t work as well online is because GMs don’t have as much control over the story with 20-30 characters as they do with 3-6. It’s very hard for a MU* staff to keep track of ‘visions’ or ‘premonitions’ much LESS ensure that those things ACTUALLY HAPPEN.

I’d love to see more effort in adapting systems that really think about how play happens in the MU* environment, and capitalizes on the things that we have available (long term play, persistent environment, help from code in rolling/mechanics) while relying less on the things which are not strengths in the MU* environment (GM attention, strong and linear narratives, PC ability to Change The World) compared to the tabletop environment.

[Roadspike]

@Pyrephox said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

I want:

Yeah, all of this. Seriously, all of this.

Your second point really sticks out as key for me – I don’t need my RP to impact the overarching metaplot (if it does, that’s great, don’t get me wrong), but I want to see the world reacting to the actions of my character and those of other players.

Also, I want to be able to play more than 8:30pm-11:30pm Pacific Time three nights per week, but that’s not a problem for the game, just for me.

[Cygnus]

@somasatori said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

having 2-4 grid rooms describing broad areas of your town or countryside, with players able to use a temproom or make their own builds feels less overwhelming than a city section of 15-20 rooms

Fallcoast started with a broad strokes grid similar to that, on a slightly larger scale. One of that game’s challenges was that as it grew, each of these broad areas were replaced with smaller groups of rooms and so individual builds had to be moved around inside to populate them accurately which then required jobs, time, and clutter on top of the usual difficulties of building a grid. Zooming in is tougher than adding new areas wholesale, so to anyone building a grid I would suggest keeping this in mind–not to mention the increased development and maintenance of larger grids.

To your point though, my preference is larger grids on an immersion level, especially once map games come into play; larger grids should always have a map to help traverse the main areas of the game, plus they’re fun and dynamic on a gameplay level if controllable. There’s also something special about dropping onto a big new grid and experiencing it for the first time. It’s overwhelming, but in a good way. There’s something uniquely retro and MU* about a cool grid on a game which we have gotten away from in recent years with the advent of discord RP servers and play by post games, but that’s another topic.

[Jumpscare]

I want open scenes. That’s really the only must-have for me. Anything else is icing on the cake.

[Arkandel]

This post is deleted!

[Arkandel]

My twenties back.

When I think of a MUSH I think of the fun I used to have, the crowds I used to play with, the themes I enjoyed.

What I am probably really expecting, though, is to still be the person I was at the time with that kind of free time in my hands, the novelty of doing this new thing, and a lack of cynicism which I likely no longer possess.

[Cygnus]

@Arkandel said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

My twenties back.

/thread lol

[Pavel]

@Arkandel said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

My twenties back.

But with all the hard lessons we’ve learned still in our minds. More free time, less subtle back pain for no reason.

[somasatori]

@Arkandel said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

My twenties back.

When I think of a MUSH I think of the fun I used to have, the crowds I used to play with, the themes I enjoyed.

What I am probably really expecting, though, is to still be the person I was at the time with that kind of free time in my hands, the novelty of doing this new thing, and a lack of cynicism which I likely no longer possess.

There’s very much a hauntological element in MUSHing for me as well. Couching a lot of my wants in a “this is what I learned” perspective doesn’t discount the nostalgia I have for games in the past. In fact, it emphasizes it: imagine if such-and-such game could be improved? Well, it can’t be improved because it’s gone, as are my twenties – and soon so shall my thirties follow.

There were some great experiences and I knew some really great people back in the day. Except for a handful of them, I have no idea how to contact them if they even had an interest in being contacted by someone they pretended to be vampires with on a text game. I recently logged into my OneDrive and did a deep dive into folders that I hadn’t looked at for a long time, as well as the old email account I used when I was first starting TR back when I prematurely announced it in like 2009, and just the creativity and energy made me wonder what happened to that person. Your comment, Ark, made me realize that’s also the underlying desire I have from a MU*.

Sorry for vibe killing with this comment lmao

Third Eye: super cool question that’ll drive engagement, what do you want out of a MU?
me:

[Pavel]

@somasatori said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

imagine if such-and-such game could be improved?

Firan, but without all the Firan in it.

[icanbeyourmuse]

Another thing I thought of:

Something to do in ‘downtime’. It is one of the things I like(d) about Firan and Arx. Some of the code I was/am like ‘Why do we need this?’ I guess I like the hybrid of MUDs and MUSHes that Arx and Firan fill(ed). It would be nice to have a semi-social and crafting system on Atharia. Or messengers for when people, due to RL/time, can’t connect for RP, messages give a lovely avenue for people to communicate in an ic method. An NPC where people can ‘ask questions’ of that gives them information about current plots. Maybe it even has a ‘generate a job if person hits on this new plot info’ aspect so staff can follow up with the player and see if they want to chase the new plot info. Even if it is just new plot info to them. Maybe a semi-limit on how long they can ‘talk’ with the NPC so they don’t ‘get everything’ right off. ATM, I just tell my players they can nudge me for RP on my NPCs even if it has no ‘game plot significance’ and is just ‘spending time with the parent’ or ‘Talking to their preferred God about nothing’, etc and I usually drop plot hooks to people in the scenes to decide if they want to look into it or not. I guess in my jibber-jabbering way I am saying I would like to see a /little/ extra code that is more about flavour/accessibility/able to generate something for people to bite on.

[Snackness]

@somasatori Upvote for Barbie

[Ashkuri]

Anymore, part of what I want out of a MU is a positive player base. People who like to cooperate instead of compete, share info and introductions and plot info, chat and have fun together, and ask openly and often for RP on the appropriate channels for doing so.

A playerbase that enjoys being on the game instead of complaining about everything they hate about the game – this is ideal for me.

[Third Eye]

@somasatori said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

me:

NGL I am America Ferrera Existential Crisis Barbie 95% of the day, and the other 5% I wish I was some form of America Ferrera.

I try not to be too seduced by nostalgia because at least for me it’s a mug’s game. I read old logs and sometimes they’re great, but also sometimes the experience was clearly better in the moment than it feels in retrospect. Sometimes I have great experiences with people I met like 8 months ago while being kinda bummed out by people I’ve known for a decade. It all sucks if you do it long enough, but also all surprises can be pleasant. IDK.

[Wizz]

@Third-Eye said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

I read old logs and sometimes they’re great, but also sometimes the experience was clearly better in the moment than it feels in retrospect.

I did not expect this sentence to resonate as much as it did, looooool.

this is why I leave OOC chatter in my logs if I have the choice, because half of the fun for me was just hanging out with a solid friend. I’ve def had a log’s sentimental value salvaged by reading our commentary when the stuff happening in the scene itself was not actually all that compelling to Future Me.

[somasatori]

@Third-Eye said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

NGL I am America Ferrera Existential Crisis Barbie 95% of the day, and the other 5% I wish I was some form of America Ferrera.

Same.

One thing I was wondering lately, given that there’s a decent amount of discontent with some games and a lot of questions about “what makes a MU*” and “what do you want” and so on, back in the 2000-2010s when that would happen there would be an explosion of new games. In the WoD and Shadowrun spaces, you had Metro, HM, and the Seattle MUSH, then attrition and ennui about those settings got players making other games (not necessarily Gold of My Own, but “ugh this again”). I think the same thing started to happen with Fallcoast and TR. Not sure if that’s going to be a thing now as a lot of the older players seem to have less energy and even less time, but there are many tools that make it relatively easy to create new games given Ares, RhostMUSH, and Evennia. The barriers to launch is much lower than before.

I say this while realizing that Ares has a very vibrant scene going on, btw. Just something I’ve kind of noticed in traversing various spaces lately.

[Pavel]

@somasatori said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

back in the 2000-2010s

Why do you hurt me so?

[somasatori]

@Pavel said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

@somasatori said in What Do You Want Out of a MU?:

back in the 2000-2010s

Why do you hurt me so?