We don’t have storytelling staff in the first place. We have a plot that is very easy for players to tell stories in – and we expect them to do so. They do. There aren’t any rewards besides the joy of storytelling itself.

Of course, this works because no one expected our game to ever become more than a small handful of friends hanging out and telling their stories to each other. Keys is a sandbox, a framework for people to go off playing plots and stories of their own making and then returning to the central hub to interact and catch up. It probably wouldn’t work with a very large playerbase – we’re typically sitting around 30-60 active characters at any given time, so we’re hardly taking over the hobby here.

In short, I agree with others above: Players should help drive story and entertain each other. You don’t have to leave it all to them – but even if you were paid to sit online 40 hours a week, storytelling, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with everyone. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to perceive the hobby as a two-way street.

I need a mix. Depending on my mood and fatigue levels, I may want grimdark horror one day and vanilla slice of life the next day. My preference goes to settings that can accommodate most moods.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in The 3-Month Players:

Smaller but invested. It sounds harsh, but it’s not those March violets you need to invest in as a game runner. They come with great enthusiasm – and they bail with just as much enthusiasm when the next game opens. It’s the other players you need to invest in – the ones who will stick around for a longer time. Those who came looking for a community to move into and stay in.

I think this is where we see things differently. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but in my experience–the majority of players want to stick around. MUSHers come to tell stories and build IC relationships. That’s the long game. It’s not like a MMO or single-player game where everyone’s always drawn to “the new shiny”. The biggest reason they move on to a new game is that the one they’re on isn’t meeting that need.

But that’s my point, in a way. If your game doesn’t offer enough for them to become long-term invested, they will bail for the next shiny.

The real issue, as I see it, is how to make your game interesting enough. As BN said above – getting a cool idea for a setting is easy but what will people actually RP?

I don’t have a golden answer, unfortunately. Sometimes, you strike gold. Sometimes, you don’t.

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:
Then the next Ares game has The Bubble for a couple months… then the next, leaving the old game(s) with a much, much smaller player base of longer-term residents.

Smaller but invested. It sounds harsh, but it’s not those March violets you need to invest in as a game runner. They come with great enthusiasm – and they bail with just as much enthusiasm when the next game opens. It’s the other players you need to invest in – the ones who will stick around for a longer time. Those who came looking for a community to move into and stay in.

That, of course, begs the question of how to tell who’s who so you know where to invest your spoons.

@Faraday The way I interpret it is, the better your thing is, the more players will end up in cathegory three.

@Third-Eye I can relate to that. I used to look for older, established games too. Of course, that’s not exactly helping new games become established.

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

Is three months the sweet spot for a MU?

Actually, yes. It is. Story time!

Once upon a time when the Earth was young and I first became staff on a MUD (LegendMUD for ye curious) in the late 1990s, Raph Koster was one of the implementors (you may know him as Ultima Online’s Designer Dragon). No, I’m not name dropping here – I think I talked to him twice, it’s not like I know him. (His wife is awesome, though).

Anyhow. Raph Koster did a study on this and reported his findings. There are three cut-off points.

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.

Eight months: Those who were severely and firmly hooked have now done it all. They start to look for expansions, new things – and end up wandering off to elsewhere in pursuit of those things.

Forever: And finally, there is a core group of players who have found a home. Nothing short of pulling the plug on the game will get these guys to move on.

@Tez Keys did not invent the wheel re: portal, stargate, fanfiction, whatever term you prefer games. It’s a trope because it works: It gives you a lot of creative freedom.

I wouldn’t say that changes to the homebase region or overall story are entirely out of the question. As staff, we do quietly nudge things here and there. But on the whole, players seem very happy with having the peace and quiet (read: not being looked over the shoulder) to create their own storylines, some of which have consequences that can be felt back home too, through how the characters are affected.

There will likely come a time when the status quo begins to feel well tested and tried and maybe a little old. When that happens, we’ll shake the dice bag and pull some rugs out under people. Change is good, at the pace that works.

@Faraday said in Metaplot: What and How:

Can’t speak to LB’s game, but that’s how it was on BSGU. Folks could run missions of their own whenever they wanted. (Also other plots connected to the war, though folks rarely did so.) But they couldn’t affect the overall trajectory of the war without staff approval and coordination. This was spelled out in the game policies, so if that was a deal-breaker for someone, they could decide that before playing.

This. It’s on the landing page of Keys’ website. If not being able to ‘solve’ the metaplot is a deal-breaker, there’s no point in wasting your time with the rest.

@Warma-Sheen said in Metaplot: What and How:

If the metaplot can’t be affected by the players in any meaningful way (or at least work towards being able to affect it), that’s not a metaplot (usually). Its just a setting.

I think that part of this discussion is what exactly constitutes a setting and a metaplot respectively. For us, in the design phase, setting was the where and metaplot was the what. Those are obviously not the only options in design so I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong.

@Tez The conflict between order and chaos works as a metaplot / backdrop because it’s a backdrop – and because anyone who wants to GM can do so.

That means players designing stories within the framework that they want to pursue. And because they design the realities they want those stories to happen in they

• get to decide which rules apply there
• what the theme/setting is
• whether this is a oneshot or a brick of a novel size plot

and nothing they do there can affect the main setting (besides the characters themselves). This way, we have a buffet of stories and a diverse cast of stories. But most importantly, we don’t have anyone sitting around waiting for storyteller-type GMs to make shit happen when they’re around and remember to include them.

Is this the solution to everything? Nah. But it does help with the ancient quandary of not enough GMs. Obviously, not everyone wants to GM. But a lot of people feel comfortable running a scene or three for a few people at a time, without taking on an official mantle and having to run everything past staff.

@Tez You want names and examples, so, I’ma toot that horn.

On Keys, the metaplot is a never-ending conflict between stagnation and flux, order and chaos. The metaplot overlaps heavily with the setting in our case – we use it to create numerous storylines that have conclusions (as opposed to the metaplot which will not be solved because, well, it’s never-ending).

Our setting, on the other hand, is the small town island of Chincoteague. There’s ponies and a lot of swamp grass. And a secret community of people who spend a fair bit of their time fighting back against increasing stagnation, and try to preserve magic across the multiverse. And get a decent cup of coffee.

The two are different because the metaplot (law! chaos! drama!) triggers the many storylines whereas the setting is the anchor for those storylines. Whatever happens, in this reality or another, you always go home to Chincoteague in the end.

Of course staff should play their own game. Not just because why the hell invest so much time into something you don’t get to enjoy – but also to have a first-hand knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

What kind of GMing can staff do? Any. If you want to run a game that’s essentially about how great your character is and how everyone else are just mindless, fawning minions, do it – you’ll see a lot of tumbleweed and not many players but you do you.

After all, that’s the beauty of the hobby: We vote with our feet. If you feel that a game – or a GM – is pulling a complete Mary Sue and turning you into a member of a forced audience, leave.

My vote goes to two options: Channel block and traditional block.

Channel block blanks the ‘offender’ from channels. Used for when somebody hasn’t bothered you per se but you find their communication style / dad jokes / venting sessions / soap opera babble / whatever annoying and don’t want to see it.

Traditional block, well, as always. Block pms.

@junipersky No clue, alas. Just wanted to say that we miss you, too!

@Pacha Old, but good.

I’m still waiting to wake up and realise that this was a nightmare.

@Buttercup I know we have a couple of sight impaired folks on Keys who use various devices. Unfortunately, I don’t know which devices.

But if you want to pop by and talk to them, look for Rhia and Araminta (character names, not player names).

@RightMeow If you ever feel like just ranting at somebody and venting, you know where to find me. Anytime.

Random observation: The telnet access is what makes Ares accessible to visually impaired players. Which of course doesn’t rule out having the coolest web portal ever.

Come back and visit us on Keys sometime, Jin.

I prefer live scenes where the immersion is 110% and the speed is breakneck for four hours straight. It’s just – health, age, and real-life geography make that pretty much a utopic fantasy most of the time. Sounds like I’m not the only one, either.

So to me, Async (and Glacial, the ultra-slow asyncs) is the lifesaver – I can do those or I can step away entirely. I balked some at first, I’ll admit – but I have also come to appreciate, as a writer, that having more time sometimes also means being able to provide a more interesting narrative.

I advise against large asyncs, though. Passing the speaker token around between six people like that is… well, little short of torture. Three to four seems to work, with room for an extra if enough of the three to four are faster.