I tried a mush for a while many years ago. It took me a while to understand that it wasn't really a game, it was just a structure for people to roleplay. There was no combat and there were no challenges. Want something to exist? You just create it. You could make your own house, however you want, containing whatever you want. You could make your own world if you wanted to. Once I realized that, I left and never went back.
Maybe not all mushes are like that, but it didn't feel like a game at all to me, just a structure for roleplaying and telling stories. If that's what you're into, then I guess it's cool, but I was looking for a game.
Yea, some of are very free form. I tend to stay away from those. I agree, that the sense of challenge, and sense of accomplishment isn't there. Most of those eventually turn into this odd quasi meta OOC/IC social thing. Nice and fun, but not really a game.
the TFOS Mux comes close to doing that, but it manages to to cling to its system with the admins doing various nifty TPs through the week.
I tend to choose games that have a system, and control what players and may not have, it never gets to the anal detail of a Mud, but that a far secondary concern, and Mushes are for role playing primarily. If you dont like to role play, then you wont like most mushes.
In general, they have some sense of in character, out of character separations rules, and in character actions equals in character consequence. How anal they with these vary, and how serve the punishment for breaking also very.
I remember when I was on a B5 Mush, I had a private eye/mercenary character. Some PC arranged to rub one of the implied stores, and an admin ran the scene for them, and they managed to get their goods. The store they robbed hired me track them down, and get back the goods. I tracked them down, and probably would have killed them, if I was able to without permission.
Since they stole diamonds, my plan to get back the goods, was to simple blow up the building. It would disable all the thieves, and leave the goods in tact more or less. It was a really fun scene, everyone had a good time. The game didnt have code set up in place to bomb a building, it was done with semi consent through out. I walked with the thief's out of the character, on how I would go about rigging the bombs, and when, with an admin casually there. We worked out how the scene would good based on a few small RPs. I was smart, I got lucky with my skill checks, and the thieves PC didnt feel cheated out of their diamonds.
I got a nice finical backer from it, allowed me to get some expensive items with a line of credit from the diamond store owners. My character got some nifty villains out of it. We had some excellent rps where we faced off with one another. None of it out of spite.
I felt like my character had his own story, that was unique to only me. On a mud, I find that you could simply replace me with joe whatever, since it doesn't matter how many of this mob I vanquish, or items I get. A personal impact really doesn't happen. The above character managed to turn his one man operation into sizable private security firm, with 7 and 8 other players under him. I left the game due to RL stuff, and I came back, I saw that my company was still their, when I read the game history, it made impacts on the game world, to players started after I had to leave. When I walked the grid, and was active on pubchan, there a few players that wanted to know if I was spoofing or really that guy.
You can gain a sense of fame, or infamy on a mud, but that not because when you leave the players are affected thereafter, but simply because grinded forever and day.
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Topic: MUDs Discussion Thread (Read 11232 times)