Part of the issue I have with ever staffing again is that I’ve had such bad experiences with other staffers on TR, FC, HM. It can be a very weird, very cliquish experience where everyone that gets a sliver of power thinks they have a say on every little thing that happens. This always gets compounded when players are also staffers and have IC problems with other staffers.

Headstaff in particular has a problem with this, and also the disappearing for months at a time thing only to come in and give a swirly to the staffers outside of their TS/Discord groups before poofing into the aether once again for six months and not approving literal years-old jobs before doing so.

Or worse, the dreaded system of HR approval in some games where every staffer was able to add input even outside of their spheres. I am very glad for games like Liberation who don’t even let other staffers outside their spheres see unrelated jobs for this reason. These kinds of jobs become grudge matches where reason goes out the window and people fight because their character bits had a spat a decade ago.

It’s really quite annoying and not conducive to a good experience as a staff member especially when ‘job monkeys’ and ‘general staff’ become a thing; doubly when those staff members don’t pull their weight and only get online to talk shit on staff channels and post negative stuff on jobs that they have no business reading at all. This combined with obvious favoritism killed most of the games I staffed. In actuality, this problem is exacerbated when spheres and games have TOO MUCH staff, not too little.

Too many cooks, and none of them are actually cooking–just standing on the line, judging the way you cut your onions.

Why would anyone want to be a staffer after OOC experiences like that?

@Kestrel said in MU Peeves Thread:

its policy of permitting underage characters (and sexual scenes involving them)

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

My twenties back.

/thread lol

Thank you for sharing this, Cobalt. LAMush was the first World of Darkness game I ever played, and the first MUSH. I was 17 when I first signed in. There were bad things that happened there which I have heard about over the years, including the infamous meetup. I experienced a few borderline things myself in pages and scenes. I thought it was just how things were, like hazing or I was just new to the MU* scene, and since I was too young and didn’t want people to know I was too young I made the mistake of not speaking up.

I’ve often had an overly rosy view of that place which I may have shared with you on occasion later on other games, and now that I realize how oblivious I was, I feel awful. I’ve been out of the hobby a long time, but I’ve always liked roleplaying with you when we’ve come across each other over the years. So, I felt compelled to say thank you for your courage and screw LAMush. And thanks for making the scene a safer place.

My dream MU would have…

-Large staff and playerbase that is active 24/7
-TinyMUX / PennMUSH / RhostMUSH
-World of Darkness / Pathfinder / DnD
-Both self-starter RP and storytelling encouraged
-Complex ASCII maps because I’m a nerd
-OOC Masquerade: I’ve always preferred games with this ruleset
-Large and descriptive setting/grid with character
-Player-buildable rooms and objects
-Full PvP of various kinds with rewards for respectful play
-Controllable grid squares
-Obfuscated players, room sweeps, door locks, and other stuff to encourage spying/intrigue
-A cool rumor code that is sorted into spheres. I’ve only seen this once and it was awesome
-Good old fashioned retro +bboards and +events
-Danger zones / Peace zones, Night zones / Day zones
-No discord, I’m in like 50 of those already
-MediaWiki for player pages / game info
-Generous but balanced homebrew content
-Lots of colors and QOL bits and bobs from ye olden days

I’d settle for the top 3, everything else is a bonus

@SuspectHound it’s hard to blame Sundance for trying to catch a falling knife. After years of terrible staff leads that caused myself and many of my friends to leave MUSH for several years, the way Sundance runs things is a breath of fresh air and the way Liberation is set up is the main reason I’m back in the hobby at all.

I feel that the childish actions of one person is a hard lesson learned, not a weakness on Sundance’s part. She stepped up to get him out of the situation once and for all and made the right decision, and the destructive actions were 100% on Polk, no one else. It would have been fair to expect someone with such ties to the game to be an adult and hand it off responsibly, no matter what kind of personal problems between the two, but that is not what happened. Few of us can truly know what happened behind the scenes but I suspect that this was a slow burn of bad behavior that finally reached a peak.

One of the tenets of Liberation is to leave baggage from other games and situations behind, and she must have extended that to Polk. That he chose to prove everyone else right is his cross to bear. The game be better off for losing the short fuse.

@Pyrephox I’ve been fiddling with Rhost in my spare time, I do have a cool concept for a game like this. But about halfway towards amping myself up to learn Rhost’s finer details, I started learning Unity for a video game and have put my creative juices there for the moment. This has been a constructive conversation about what is needed in a MU* with pvp though and I’m thankful for those that helped me notice some of the stuff I may have missed; I’ve scribbled various house rules trying to tackle many of the issues that were brought up today.

Maybe the ease of newer systems comparatively is why so many devs go towards those languages, or maybe from the various reasons Ashkuri posted. I do get the pain of doing it from the ST side of things, been there as a staffer and it’s not always fun and sometimes outright painful.

I do completely agree though that the game I want to exist cannot exist unless I make it a reality. I’ve basically given up on most games at this point because they don’t hit the way they used to. There are no turn-key solutions, I just have to get my hands dirty with the code and challenge myself past what I’m comfortable with code-wise. And making games is challenging no matter what it is you’re making.

Great game when it was great. One of the best IMO, but Sundance stretched herself too thin. She’s quiet quit for well over a year now, and without others to make decisions, things sort of fell apart.

I had a few bad interactions with Sundance, many in my group also did and most left because of several things that sucked –

1. Unkillable NPCs/unwinnable plots – these took the wind out of everyone’s sails, and make the game feel like a novel. Granted they were great NPCs with great plots. But in this medium sometimes you gotta let that stuff go when there’s player fatigue. A prince that never actually held court but no one could question this? A Sabbat Ductus who was able to kill players freely but couldn’t be defeated? An ancient and racist evil character that even bringing up in RP could get you ganked? Yeah no, that stuff isn’t too fun.

2. Uneven decisions – This was more part of Sun not being available IRL; in the beginning, she’d go through backgrounds with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that things fit the game’s narrative. Later, random and conflicting things were approved. When confronted with these mistakes, it tended to be a gaslight type of response. Sun was very rigid in her decision making, often at the expense of players over her carefully crafted plot.

3. Slow jobs – I’m not talking one month, I’m talking 6 months no response and sudden closures; full year open jobs with no answer or explanation as to why they aren’t getting answered, plots with no resolution, and more. Just overall not the best in terms of actually playing the game.

4. Entrenched cliques – this isn’t something that’s directly Sundance’s fault, but I do feel that it’s the job of a game owner to at least try and break these up a bit and foster crossplay. That said, Sun had her own clique which also happened to be part of the unkillable bloc, so good luck attempting to do anything plot-wise that involved those NPCs.

5. Power imbalances – WOD games don’t put people on equal playing ground, this is true of all WOD games. But approving some players with 300-500 XP and others with 50 with no regard to how much effort or activity they bring to their sphere always felt like a kick in the teeth to people that Sun didn’t like. What was felt and what was true are two different things though, and it was likely more of a ‘too long didn’t read and I’ve got shit to do IRL’ kind of thing, though this doesn’t explain the XP differentials.

There were some really great things about the game too, like awesome plot, great writers, and truly a large amount of nice players that were fun to be around. One of the things that Sun was best at was conflict resolution between players, and I truly loved the way she set up the MUSH in terms of job privacy and overall OOC masquerade.

Even with all the negatives, I think the good outweighs the bad. If and when she gets her RL resolved I’d love to see her write up a new game or refresh the setting with a plot that was a bit more malleable and collaborative, learning from the mistakes she made the first go. I would absolutely play it, doubly so because truly a lot of these issues stemmed from Sundance just not being able to give the game the amount of attention it needed the first time. But she would definitely need to delegate way, way more. Running a game of so many people just isn’t feasible with one person. On top of this, she’d need to distance herself and her own RP from the plots, and be willing to let players win sometimes and enact some changes to the setting with their RP or else things will return to the same static problem.

I WISH I had a game to play like Liberation was at it’s best. But it’s just not there at the moment. I hope that changes, and if anyone can do things justice, even with everything that happened there, I still have faith that Sundance is the person to make it happen if she comes back and puts in the effort.

@MisterBoring Most are or can search it up no problem. Better yet, they don’t pressure you for RL pics or out trans people they don’t like. Probably more fun to RP with a bot than be on most of the WOD games these days

@MisterBoring In my own experiences, I’ve never encountered a ‘job monkey’ that didn’t have access to everything and all the same powers as other staff. Occasionally these job monkeys can grow to become as big of a problem as VASpider. This is not always the case, but hard-coded limitations on what they can see + what they’re able to comment on could potentially help this issue.

Really, when the issue becomes paramount is when Headstaffers are absent for months at a time and then rely on job monkeys/VASpiders to be indispensable so they don’t have to do things, and corruption starts to run rampant.

It has real potential to turn a job monkey into Planet of the Apes if you don’t put hard lines in the sand.

Not really rough or rowdy, but I’m hoping to get my login soon because this game looks active and fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve played oWoD but Liberation’s setting looks great so I’m excited to try it out and see if I can get a character rolling

@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:

I’m going to go on a little rant here but stick with me, I promise it is on topic.

DarkMetal was the most well designed WoD MUSH to ever exist. Wanna fight about it? Here we go!

The reason your players are burning out after 3 months is that there are no stakes in your game.
I hate to sound like one of /those/ people but… game devs today are too soft on their players.
It practically takes an act of God to kill off someone’s character so they get stuck with the same character for long periods of time, or they make alts and that results in burn out just as quick because they can never find in-depth character development with their focus divided between multiple alts.

Dark Metal got a few things right that no one else did.

1. Anyone could die at any time.
2. There were safe zones for each sphere if you wanted to just do soft RP. You never needed to be in danger as long as you stayed in your zone.
3. Making a new character was fast and easy! If you died it wasn’t a big deal.
4. Staff didn’t give a s*** what you played, as long as you played, so approval was automated.

On Dark Metal you had to fight tooth and nail to survive long enough to get to a point you could walk in the mixed spaces without being in danger of being made into someone’s midnight snack and you were never fully safe.

You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.

People want their actions and choices to matter.
When they don’t, people get bored and they wander off.
It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.

If you want your game to survive, learn to crush your players hopes and dreams. Learn to let players kill each other off.

Character churn will save your game from player churn.

I couldn’t agree with this take more. It’s frustrating that overall, there is no real active game at the moment in the WoD genre at least where things are truly dangerous. The stakes are abysmal, and those of us who crave actual danger and grimdark stuff don’t have any PVP-focused options. There’s a lot of talk on this thread about how you don’t -need- to have PVP to make a fun game, and how PVP isn’t for everyone – but what about for the people that it is, and who crave conflict and competition?

This issue is amplified by the general disdain non-conflict players have in relation to PVP. Even if you have no problem with people who want to play on WoD games with low conflict, low conflict players tend to have intense issues with those who want a game with stakes and higher conflict, and yes, PVP. There’s been a significant trend of WoD games moving towards low-conflict type setups over the years, and game runners get surprised when people don’t stick around. How can they not see that what attracts so many gamers to World of Darkness is the grittiness of the setting, and the fear that comes with it?

There needs to be a game that embraces PVP instead of tossing it aside and acting like there isn’t a real audience for it.

@somasatori said in Liberation MUSH:

@OnceWas said in Liberation MUSH:

It’s a guy with a mall wakizashi, his elder brother’s castoff trenchcoat one size either too big or too small, and faux-Lennon sunglasses with a red tint, trying to use a “demonic” voice to pick up girls.

Yeah, we’ve all met Josh the Obtenebrous.

I feel so attacked right now.

broods on a rooftop

@catzilla That’s cool, have fun!

There’s still players who want this in WoD though.

@Pavel I’ve seen the game at its best, and it was really great. The question is whether or not Sundance will actually do better or not; I believe she has the capacity for that, but can’t currently recommend the game. I further explained my reasoning for this in the OP -->

@Cygnus said in Liberation Drama!?:

Even with all the negatives, I think the good outweighs the bad. If and when she gets her RL resolved I’d love to see her write up a new game or refresh the setting with a plot that was a bit more malleable and collaborative, learning from the mistakes she made the first go. I would absolutely play it, doubly so because truly a lot of these issues stemmed from Sundance just not being able to give the game the amount of attention it needed the first time. But she would definitely need to delegate way, way more. Running a game of so many people just isn’t feasible with one person. On top of this, she’d need to distance herself and her own RP from the plots, and be willing to let players win sometimes and enact some changes to the setting with their RP or else things will return to the same static problem.

@sao said in The 3-Month Players:

Pvp doesn’t drive story conflict, it drives player conflict.

Characters with conflicting goals creates interesting situations. Players with conflicting goals creates butthurt. I am just too old for this shit.

This is the kind of absolutism I’m talking about, I completely reject this. I’ve had much better stories on games that supported PVP almost always. But you wouldn’t see me go to a non-PVP game and talk about how they don’t have PvP and it’s boring to me. I just don’t make characters there.

Low-conflict players always feel the need to come to PVP games and try to change how they are because they are usually quite popular and they want to be involved without any of the risk. This starts the slow slide into tone-policing and blandness which affects games that try to cater to both sides of the community.

Some people dig a more bland game without risk. All the power to them, all the games are like that now so no shortage of spaces for them. But we need a space built for PVP-oriented players that does not cater to the PVE mindset.

This isn’t just a MU* problem by the way. Check out the Dune: Awakening discord to see how modern triple A games also have this problem. They tried to capitalize on the hardcore PVP players as well as the PVE players, and that entire discord is just people fighting about how PVP or PVE is superior.

Neither is. Both are valid.

@spiriferida how is it weird to not like the current games out there for different reasons? You’re right that this one is less specific and more just a bad impression, but why are you policing what I can and can’t say on a public forum about criticizing MU*s? THAT is weird

@MisterBoring There is also a fourth kind of person; the PVE players who are incredibly toxic, but use the protections of PVE-oriented game policies to get away with bad behavior. Without PVP acting as a failsafe, these players often cause games to fail because no one can stand not being able to meaningfully stand up to the bully.

If left unchecked, they cause WAY more problems for staff and the playerbase than they’re worth.

I think the OOC-PVP people are the minority, and easily caught/dealt with. No one is advocating for them on games, least of all me. Toxic PVE players are really just as bad though, if not worse because they often fly under the radar, and often are left alone by staff due to the whirlwind of shit they cause with brigading and such.

Outside of these outliers, most people realize that competition is fun, and so is losing sometimes. There should be a place for mature players to throw dice at each other and still be friends afterwards.

@Warma-Sheen When the alternatives for WOD MU*'s are such slop, it’s hard not to want to return to the glory days of Liberation. But it’s definitely not a plea, I don’t think Sundance reads or cares about what is said here. It’s just commentary

@MisterBoring We’re both talking about IC toxicity right? Because that’s what I’m talking about.

If someone does something toxic to me ICly, they should fully expect to get capped ICly.

OOC toxicity should be handled by staff, but let’s be real. That toxicity doesn’t usually happen in the open in ways that staff can easily handle. That’s assuming that the staff who made a game which caters to this type of thing isn’t in on it. Sadly that is often the case, see RetroMUX, Haunted Memories, Fallcoast, or the Reach for examples.

Anyway, the laws of FAFO are a great equalizer. If everyone has a gun, everyone is a lot more polite.