@xCroaker I think most of us genuinely are just doing our best to accomplish this, while juggling other things specific to our games. In the end I don’t really think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. More of iterative, incremental improvement, or at the very least striving for it.

@xCroaker I really was just posting the meme to be a little silly, but I can do my best to give you an earnest answer. Though I doubt it will really be a satisfying one, and it’s really just one person’s perspective. I can’t speak for every staffer on every game.

I think “overworked” is kind of not the right word to describe it. Fatigue is probably the closest I can find. Everything MisterBoring said is true, but I personally find that a lot of players think that the fatigue happens due to administrative tasks. Things like build jobs, xp requests, character apps, etc. But for me, I think the fatigue mostly comes from what I’d call a “creative tax.” When you tell stories for folks, you put your love and energy into it. But you are not drawing from an endless well. Creativity comes in bursts and windfalls, and there are droughts. The ask is that you basically draw from an endless well, though.

I’d also say that point #4 of MisterBoring’s message is very true. OOC drama is probably mathematically rare, but these interactions feel the most weighted because they’re the most stressful. And to continue the metaphor, it draws from the same well as creativity, but uses much more of the water.

MUSH Staffing in current year

@catzilla

But in all seriousness, I could elaborate on it. I just vastly prefer the theme of nWoD changeling to oWoD changeling and think it fits the mould of a pet project of mine… which is kind of a small-town Americana murder/mystery thing. I could actually read nWoD werewolf, but I don’t wanna and I like Apocalypse more!

If I could somehow jam Werewolf: The Apocalypse into Changeling: The Lost I’d be a happy kitty. Does someone want to do all of that intellectual legwork for me? I don’t pay in anything but affirmation and soothing gifs.

@somasatori said in Multisphere pressure:

@Pavel said in Multisphere pressure:

@Noraaa I don’t have the ST ADHD but I definitely have the character concept ADHD, wherein a character concept kicks down my door at three am and screams in my half-awoken face “HELLO YOU ARE NOW OBSESSED WITH BRIAN FUCKING BLESSED FOR NO REASON HERE MAKE A CHARACTER AND MAKE IT FIT WOD.”

Unfortunately I have both ST and concept ADHD.

YOU DON’T SAY

I think some of this is also our storyteller ADHD coming out, and getting distracted with shiny new opportunities without having the discipline to understand we’ve taken too much onto our plates and cannot possibly deliver on the promises our brains make to us when we’re having all of these cool shower thoughts.

I am immensely guilty of this myself.

@somasatori I support this side hustle for you and myself.

@kalakh Yeah, we had to stop a major plot involving the assassination attempt on a polarizing political leader in the summer of 2024. It was a real Apollo’s Gift of Prophesy moment, a bunch of others too. This hobby frightens me at times…

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.

@scvm actually yes

@Third-Eye As a circle-backer, I can say I was mostly just feeling a creative pull to return to Star Wars and I genuinely do enjoy the coded systems / GM tools they have for storytellers on that game. Though it’s pretty clumsily-implemented, I actually think the space flight / cargo system COULD be really cool to help drive plots. You get to fly around to a bunch of diverse settings, after all.

Though I’ll say the playerbase now has definitely gotten quite small. You can still sort of fly around and if you can find some of the active folks who are fun writers (there are some!) I bet you could get some good small-scale, crew-based stories going. My own efforts to draw folks into little scuffles and Star Wars dust-ups have been met with mixed success, but then, that’s most of telling stories for folks. Sometimes they resonate, sometimes they don’t.

It’s also some of the same morbid curiosity that keeps me checking this thread. This newest revelation that someone might be the infamous panty-poser (I never got to witness this myself) is actually posting IN THIS THREAD is sadly only making me want to come back for more.

Insidious!!!

@SpilledBeanz said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I’m not really trying to argue, I do understand your underlying point, I just wanted to make mine… that AoA’s staff are the weakest link on that game and that has consequences.

I actually think that is largely my point as well, honestly. If I could just hop into that game, have its key systems, and do some storytelling stuff for friends I think I’d have a blast. I just sadly think that ship has largely sailed, and would just be too difficult to kickstart given staff policy and decisions on… basically everything.

Also I do think folks can have different perspectives on a thing like this. I don’t ever see folks having different thoughts an opinions as arguing, anyway.

What’s crazy to me about the game is how difficult it is they make returning to it. I had actually had some weird itch to go and assemble a tiny crew of friends and ST some dumb Star Wars fun (since the coded NPCs are actually kind of neat) and then I remembered that I’d basically have to slog it through months worth of work before we could even do the basic stuff.

I’ve got a lot of complicated feelings about AoA. It was one of the first MUSH games that I really got to play in a shared game world. I learned a lot from storytelling for people there, too. But it wasn’t without its issues, some of them far more damning than others.

I hope those that left for good find something they love. I hope the folks who stuck behind still find joy in it. Kind of crazy that this thread is still so active, after all this time. I guess it really does speak to… well, something about the game, anyway.

Maybe we’re all just annoyed at how good it could have been.

@kalakh kills u

Liberation’s website, wiki, and game are all back online, with very little in the way of loss. Thanks for the well-wishes, everybody. What a journey!

@Muscle-Car We’re aware of this and working on getting the website and wiki back up. I’d caution folks against logging on while we spin this website back up.

I don’t want to say “wrap it up”, but you said “barebacking” and it’s very tempting to.

Hello folks! As Alamias has said, we are back up! It happened much faster than I thought this morning. Folks are beginning to connect in.

5.161.78.92:2020

This may be temporary, and we might need to shut down for a short time to migrate, but for now, you can hop on in.

Hey everyone,

Some updates, before sleep takes me at last. We expect to make a full recovery of the game, website, and wiki, with minimal impact to people’s stuff. I wish I could give you a more solid timeline of when everything will be back into place, but unfortunately we just don’t have that yet.

Again, my heart’s with folks who lost out on play time tonight, or are concerned about not being able to contact their friends. We’ll be back up and running soon enough, and I’ll do my best to keep in touch here when I can.

Please be kind to one another.

@Hinotori We don’t have any official Discord. I’m hanging out here, and will post more meaningful updates when we have them. We still don’t have a timeframe for when the game will be up and running, but I promise to pop in here and let folks know when we do.

If anyone has any questions, they can poke me in messages too.