@Third-Eye For what it’s worth, from what I’ve seen, this is basically all setting and premise, the stuff that’s just going to be on the website once the game opens. No real spoilers, since the non-Arx powers are open for player characters right off the bat.

@Pavel The deep lore of Arx 1.

I can think of some history related things that I’m not sure were ever made clear to players, such as how the war between the elves and the dragons started, Tyrval’s mom, wtf the Thicker was (I don’t know what the Thicker was), that the Primordia were all female, why Diamond lost his fool mind.

There’s a lot of stuff that I think only a few characters knew, like the entire deal behind the Castle of Yesterday, the origin of the spirit’s hatred of blood magic, White Bear’s existence, or, iirc, that the bottom of the ocean led into the Abyss.

@Solstice said in Memorable Scenes:

@kalakh GarouMUSH, when an entire hive of giant hornets were corrupted and rampaging, and the only way to get them to stop was to kill the queen and smuggle out the uncorrupted queen larva, and my coward of a ragabash stealthing through the entire complex tunnel system, grabbong the queen larva and bolted like he was carrying a football and running for his life while being trailed by hornets while all the fighty types kicked ass outside of the hive.

I have the log of this posted, lol The world’s deadliest werewolf relay race.

RedwallMUCK, the entire earthquake event, rallying together with survivors to try to make sense of the disaster and plan what was going to happen next, with a bunch of people who really didn’t hang out together living in close refugee quarters, and the ensuing squabbles.

This is 100% my pick for RedwallMUCK too, particularly the winter. It was just an incredible amount of really fun RP that tumbled into an organic storyline that lasted for, uh. A few years, I think.

I’ve also used it as an example for when sometimes it’s really good to shake up the status quo of a game by just pulling the rug out from under it. Not always, not often, but when it works, it works really well.

I thought I had some specific ones for both GarouMUSH and Arx, but sitting and thinking about it, it’s hard to settle on just a few. I really enjoyed the character arc of what turned out to be my longest played character on GarouMUSH, a permanently base strength newly minted fostern Glass Walker metis who showed up in town answering the werewolf equivalent of a help wanted ad, discovered she was somehow the highest ranking person there, and was then told in no uncertain terms that if she was staying she was leading. Thus a wild, decade long rollercoaster where she effectively pig-headed her way from ‘bad at being elder of this crazy tribe’ to ‘not so bad at being elder of this crazy tribe’. When I put in a request for a Willpower learn, all I provided as a reason was ‘Is Glass Walker Elder’. I was told there could be no better justification.

I cannot possibly choose even a small number of stand out scenes from Arx, I had more fun RPing on that game than I have anywhere else. So I’m going with character arc again. Shard started as a mouthy, bitter little shit obsessed with getting revenge who hated every last little thing about Arx and the Compact. She was only a sellsword because she followed Audric, and she hated that too. I figured she was probably also going to follow Audric right into Team Evil as a means to an end, and thaaat…is not what happened. Instead she tripped from the wrong crowd into the right crowd when Audric told her to go ask Aleksei and/or Aislin about her mystery talisman.

Mouthy bitter murdering secret werewolf thief who wanted nothing to do with anyone ended up a reluctantly-royal werewolf leading the Red Wardens, who didn’t necessarily like most people but who was pretty dedicated to protecting them. I mean, she also kicked off the end of the world, so her definition of protecting people might not always align with everyone else’s.

@MisterBoring Yeah, it’s been offline for a few weeks, I think, so the url probably got snatched up.

This is probably the wrong place to put it, but MSB seems to have come down with a bad case of Redirect To Likely Internet Herpes-itis. No idea what happened there, but steer clear.

…If I can trust the GM.

@Noraaa said in MU Peeves Thread:

My current MUSH pet peeve is being an ST for a WoD game and trying to come up with horrific contexts and situations, with whatever nightmare scenario that I come up with in my head immediately being outpaced by something happening in RL.

Maybe this is less of a MUSH pet peeve and more of an existential cry for help, though.

In 2020, we had to scrap/put on indefinite hiatus a major plot line on Arx involving a big bad that was looking to unleash a magical plague. Then a few months later we quickly closed out a more minor plot involving city riots.

Those weren’t the only times we’d start some story that was then followed by somewhat similar real world events, to the point that it became a running joke. So if the whole world ends up being devoured by a godkiller demon made entirely of smiling mouths, our bad.

@NotSanni said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@Kestrel said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

One side is accidentally doing Nazi salutes twice

And the other side suddenly cares now that it’s not their side’s cause du jour doing it

I’m stressed. I’m concerned.

lol “accidentally”

Look, sometimes you just caught up in the moment and invade Poland.

It’s been two days and I’m kinda back to the post election night state of “I don’t know how I’m going to do this” dread. That, and I’m angry. I’m really, really angry. It’s not fun to be in my headspace right now, is what I’m saying.

Anyway, shamelessly stealing this from a Discord channel:

@Arik No idea!

@Solstice said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

@Testament said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

The peeve is that I miss you. It was nice to have a place to go if nothing else to hang out.

Fuck you.

To expand on this peeve, a long commute means that I finally have an excuse to get back into reading for the first time in an embarrassing while (or listening, but whatever), and the first book I picked up was “The Way of Kings”, and now I have such a freaking longing for magical fantasy again.

I miss Arvum, I miss how scary magic felt, I miss Adepts, I miss the people I played with all the time, and I am cursing my total inability to get it together enough to want to try to bother to sandbox.

Popping by the Murder for a drink and a truly questionable stew, or the Training Center and bouncing around and hero-worshipping the folks who were kicking butt, or were brave enough to step into the ring. Miss lurking by the beach on a cold winter’s day, perched on a little rocky outcrop and gazing in the general vicinity of Cardia. Slipping through the darker places between the boroughs into the expansive world between and feasting on a truly unhealthy amount of wine and lemon bars.

Curses, y’all.

Definitely in the same nostalgia boat. I’ve been missing it all year (though given the damn year I had, I’m not at all sure I would have had the energy to actually RP, let alone staff). I’ve got much more time and brain now, and hooo boy I’m going to miss having the outlet/distraction this year.

@KarmaBum said in Your Latest Batch of (Silly) Drama:

Really old drama.

I almost put this in the “Good Things” thread just as an example of things I’m so glad we decided as a group to stop doing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040204025308/http://southern.silvertree.org/southerngoldapp.cgi

14 general questions, then 33 questions on the gold application and 26 for bronze.

Question 24 on the gold application is amazing.

24. During your first hatching that you’re running as a Junior, you hear on the grapevine that your Weyrleader is flirting with prospective candidates and promising them search and/or impression on acceptance of TS. Your Weyrwoman is his RL wife, and has no idea any of this is going on, and in fact, you know, told him on a number of occasions not to TS. What do you do?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen vaguebooking in the form of an application question before.

@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:

Salutations!

I know for me that I have in life been told I’m too much. If you know me, then you know what I mean. I get very VERY excited when I’m excited about things and I babble in pages or I want to RP. I’m just very excited to write a story with the other person or find out what happens next, etc. I am also very hyper and optimist IRL and it carries over to my paging. So, as someone who has been told that I need to calm down. I take that as a part of my personality to fix. I’ve been told it IRL and MU life. Thus, I don’t always know that line on how much is too much and get stuck in a paralysis pattern. Then in an overthinker pattern. Online is worse because I can’t see the other person’s non-verbal cues. I can’t see if you smiled when you saw me. If you frowned or hesitated, etc. Thus I’m left with words that I have to figure out and probably not well.

Oh, hello, it me (minus the optimism I guess, lol). I’m well aware I’ve got no brakes when I get into a certain level of mood, but there’s being aware I don’t have them and actually finding out where I left them. It means I go off onto long tangents on things everyone else isn’t necessarily remotely interested in, then I realize it and get all anxious over “oh my gosh I wrote like three paragraphs/talked for ten whole minutes on Thing, no one will ever want to interact with me ever again forever”. Which is entirely a me problem to work out, but does mean I’m very, very, very bad about actually asking for RP scenes, because I worry I am being Too Much.

I’ve had some folks be assholes about it in the past, so that certainly hasn’t helped (haha, let me tell you about the time someone backed me into a literal corner to tell me everyone at the guild meet up we were attending was talking about me behind my back), but I’m confident my brain would be making this stuff into a whole deal regardless.

@Rusalka said in MU Peeves Thread:

When your PC has a unique ability that helps out with the current major, year-long plot, this is what’s known as an RP hook. People who have their characters ask yours to use their ability are trying to include you in things.

But, by all means, continue to complain on channel about how nobody wants to play with you (and maybe you’re just a bad writer who should pick another hobby) and are just using your PC for their ability, all the while having said PC sit by themselves, speak in a language most other characters don’t know, and be passive aggressive whenever anyone with IC rank tries to be friendly.

For some reason this gave me the mental image of a fuming Klingon sitting in the shadowy corner of a medieval tavern. I don’t know why Klingon specifically, but Klingon.

@Snackness said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

My mom doesn’t remember my name. I knew it was coming, but…still sucks.

I lost my dad to this sort of thing this year, it’s awful. I am so, so sorry you (and your mom) are having to deal with it.

Achievement Unlocked

Scattered thoughts.

It’s okay to be tired. I am so, so, so, so, so tired. Thinking about this is just exhausting, and right now I can’t stop. I am so tired of these fucking people, I’m tired of dealing with them, tired of hearing them, tired of them sticking themselves into every aspect of my life, tired of them threatening my friends and my strangers, and I’m tired of being afraid of them.

It feels like nothing matters and nothing has mattered. I’m tired of that too.

I’m tired of 2024 in general, and looking ahead doesn’t offer any break from any of it.

So.

It’s okay to be tired. But what these folks want from us, more than anything, is for us to give up. That’s their victory, and for all that they win, they haven’t won until that happens.

If you’re feeling hopeless, which I am, then I’d like to offer that spite can also be a fine motivator. It’s okay to be tired, it’s okay to rest, and it’s okay to get back up with nothing more than a desire to keep these fuckers from getting that last thing from you.

That sounds like an empty platitude, but it comes from the heart. If you’re in a dark, dark place right now, I want you to know that I am too. There are other people in here with us. Millions. You’re not alone.