Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Veela

Most folks who are new come onto this forum, say hello.. join in a few threads in a low key manner to get a grasp of who is who, and then start to exert their own style..

You came onto a forum, and started complaining about it, and still in a horrific colour which is not pleasant to read.. which considering how much you seem to be able to write is quite painful.

Regardless, welcome to the forum, a forum for mudders.. not their characters, hence no need to use any colour other than white.

You certainly seem to have a lot to say, and have an attitude which should go nicely in TMS as responding to the slightest.. slightly poking.. retort.. with waves of defensive / offensive text is the norm here :-)

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Sir,

I am a bardie, with an affinity for words and the guts to use them. I stand by my original post and try at all times to be fair. The only intention I had in returning was to modify the original, in your face tone, of the 1st post. It was not until I read all the responses that I chose to get so verbose. A quirk in my personality or a genetic predetermination from generations of celebrated artists in my family tree, plays out in my use of color. The intentionnal use of color was not to be offensive rather instead to be expressive. Now that it has been brought to my attention that it is difficult to read I have made modifications.

Veela
Sarcasm not fully utilized at this point.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

There is one rule about forum posters that I have found to be true in 100% of cases:

Any poster who feels their posts need to be in a special color is incredibly self centered and self important.

It is one thing to change one's own color settings. It is another to force a color setting on other people. That is just wrong on many levels.

Veela: If your bard has a signature color, then go into your browser settings and change the default font color to mangenta. But forcing magenta on other people, who expect and want the forum to have a consistent look (for readability) is just selfish in the extreme.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Agreeing with Threshold. :eek:

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

OK.. I may be gone for some time... Delerak just agreed with Threshold which must mean I am seeing things and have finally gone insane.. as we ALL know Delerak never agrees with Threshold..

I almost think I saw Proff115151541 (whatever) and Newworlds actually turning a flame war into a civil conversation again... and that is really my imagination

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

It's the end of the world! Quick! We must do something to stop it! Newworlds, you...you...um...you eat your soup with a fork! Now, Threshold and Delerak, say something about each other. We must restore order to the universe! :)

Seriously though, I too agree with Threshold's observation. I also find it funny that someone claiming to be a wordsmith would call themselves the larva of an insect.

"Bardie" is an Australian Aboriginal word for edible grubs. A "bard" is not the same thing. Shouldn't someone with "an affinity for words" know this? I won't go into the various punctuation and spelling errors littered throughout the post though.

There's no evidence of color preference being genetic so it has to be a "quirk" in your personality. However, I have to ask a couple of questions. If your role-played character is a bard, assuming that you don't role-play a grub, why should anything on the forum matter to them since this is a web forum in the real world, not in a game? Are you suggesting you have trouble separating your MUD character from reality? If so, that's not a quirk; it's a much more serious problem.

Jason

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

What Veela saw was one of two things:

1. Upon checking on the forum without being registered/logged in, a message letting you know that your *posting* access is limited until you are registered and logged in, with an invite hyperlink to the registration page. You still have full reading access.

2. Upon attempting to reply to a post, when not registered/logged in, a notice telling you that you need to be registered/logged in to reply.

There is no message saying that most access is blocked. Only that certain membership privileges are specifically for registered, logged-in members. Such as PMs, and *participating* in the forums (as opposed to simply reading them).

I don't ever log in when I come to TMS to check the forum. I just go to the main TMS page, and look on the "most recently posted" list. If there's a thread of interest I'll click it and read it. I won't log in until I decide to reply to something, and I'm logged out when I leave the site. So I see both of those "please log in" messages. Neither of them block me from reading anything at all.

Also, I believe Veela is actually claiming to be a bard. A real life honest to goodness bonafide bard. If this is the case, I beg leave to request that she give my fondest regards to Bill.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Nice! I didn't even know I could post in another color. This is my favorite color, and I thrust it upon you all.

Anyway, to get back to the topic (though I'm seriously late), we have about 10 players on Threshold that actually move back and forth between Threshold and a Kushiel MUSH rather frequently. They'll usually play one or the other depending on what intertests them most at the moment. All of them started on Threshold first and decided to play the Kushiel based MUSH because of our interests in those books. Though many of the players on the MUSH welcomed them with open arms, they did meet with a lot of disdain from a few players because they came from a MUD. In a MUD, especially an RP-enforced one where politics matter nearly as much as levels, you learn to plan your character's actions in a lot of details because you know there are some "real" consequences to slipping up. (I put real in quotes because losing a level doesn't really give you real life consequences, but it does give your character in-game consequences.) Thus, the players were more than ready to deal with the challenges of a MUSH. Most of the challenge came in simply learning the particular "culture" of the MUSH they chose. This included things like setting up scenes, how to pose, what was an appropriate length for posing, and learning how to wait some time before posing.

On Threshold, everything happens about 10 times faster than it does on a MUSH, even with the people who spend a lot of time writing elaborate poses (or emotes as we call them). You can easily wait 15 minutes between poses on a MUSH while on Threshold, you'd wait at most 3 minutes. Some people don't even wait that long and will cram in as much as they can before their opponent can get anything in edge-wise. That statement alone shows one of the biggest differences between the "play" of many MUDs and MUSHes. In a MUSH, you are playing cooperatively even when you're in opposition. You are agreeing to play the opposition to see what comes out of the story you're both telling. In a MUD, because of its coded elements, you can have a ton of opposition with very little RP, even if the rules demand that you have RP. Both of these are roleplaying, and it's a mistake to believe that people on MUSHes work out every word to every scene and how it's going to play out. They simply agree to come together to play a specific scene. The outcome is not necessarily determined nor is it always scripted.

On Threshold, we've encouraged people to get together to plan large events and even to coordinate with the administration on these events. All players know that they don't get to tell us what the outcome is going to be. They simply tell us their planned event, how they think it is going to turn out, what they hope will happen, and their RP and logic behind it. Sometimes things turn out pretty well, and other times, a tower lands on someone's head. I don't think that getting together to agree to play out a scene on a MUSH is that different.

In the end, the RP on a MUSH and the RP on an RP-enforced MUD is not all that different once it gets going. RP is a tool in which different people get together to tell a story in tandum. How it is accomplished differs greatly and the settings are vastly different. In the end, what players are learning are simply different cultures of the game. (I sit around mocking people who RP on WoW, but in the end, what they're doing is not THAT different than wanting to RP at a table top game, a LARP, a MUD or a MUSH. I should probably shut my piehole.) So, your FAQ needs to deal with basic commands and the basic culture of MUSHes vs. a MUD.

Not sure that really helps. I'm feeling sort of rambly.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

I think this observation sounds like a pretty good generalization, with the caveat that there are certainly more competitive MUSHes out there, and probably less competitive MUDs.

Yes, I am thinking now the command side can be pretty basic (and in-game, I am considering what sort of things can be given aliases to make them easier to find), but that the culture is where it could help with some longer write-ups. Though a lot is game specific, so a general FAQ could be shorter.

Definitely helpful, thank you. :)

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Right, so this had nothing to do with my post? Wow, you arrived at the exact same number I typed -- the world is full of wonderful coincidences indeed.

Still, if you weren't referring to me, all's good then. :)

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

pffft cant remember to be honest.. magenta has a wierd affect on me....

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

I think the biggest challenge for a mudder on a mush is how to deal with all the wankers, and mushers on a mud in turn have to deal with all the morons.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

As horrific as I must admit magenta is, there was none in my quote of you. Only bad spelling. :/

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Since MUD commands are different across games, it might be more confusing to provide resources specifically comparing MUDs to MUSHs. But if you explain your game and its environment well enough in general that will be a great boon to any new player!

I believe the key to enabling any new player to get acclimated to your game (mudder or not) is to structure the game and game website in such a way that new players have quick and intuitive access to whatever help mechanisms you have in place. Their first moment in creation or on the game should point to how they can obtain help on the basic and essential commands they will need to get started. You might need to remind new players in many different spots how to access the help files or web pages you have created to aid them. In my experience, Veteran gamers tend to get easily frustrated with a game if the information they need to play isn't easily accessible.

Looking at the Blood of Dragons website you seem to have a lot of help files and helpful articles there. That is great! I'd find that very useful if I was trying out your game.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Excellent post Milawe.
I thought your statement "In a MUSH, you are playing cooperatively even when you're in opposition. You are agreeing to play the opposition to see what comes out of the story you're both telling. In a MUD, because of its coded elements, you can have a ton of opposition with very little RP, even if the rules demand that you have RP." was right on target.
All in all a excellent post.

Obsevations of mine - the MUD part from a long time ago and from reading various posts, I could be wrong:)
In a MUD one can play for hours without having to interact with another player character.
In a MUSH solo playing is really not feasible.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Thanks, Liosliath. I had my eyes opened when some of our hardcore RPers started playing heavily on a MUX. Thankfully, these players still stayed on our games and let me know what drew them to MUXes and MUSHes even with their 10-year mudding histories. It's something I've never really tried myself except for doing historical research to aid a friend's RP.

Ultimately, it often seems that it's the content that draws them. Most MUSHes that are very successful seem to be centered around the works of authors where the world is fully detailed and known by almost all the players before they even enter the game. I think that's what allows for cooperative play so well. Almost everyone is starting off on the same footing knowledge-wise because everyone has the same access to the lore. The discovery comes in the individual characters that are created rather than exploration of the game world. Setting the scenes become really important to get everyone on the same page, and thus, cooperative play (even in opposition) becomes a necessity.

With MUDs finding things out about the world is usually a vital part of the game regardless of whether or not there is RP involved. You're discovering where each piece of gear drops, which monsters are hardest to fight, what piece of gear sells the best in the current market, what recipes craft which items, how many seconds you have to wait between this ability and that ability, and the list is endless. So, yes, you could essentially play for hours with the game world itself without ever talking to another player, and part of the thrill of playing is learning about the game and the world itself. Knowledge is power, and you've got an advantage over other players if you know something about the world that they have yet to discover.

In a MUSH, I think the discovery comes when you're playing out a scene to see how specific characters would possibly evolve in a very established world that is usually loved before a player ever gets online. You get a lot of purists who want to uphold the integrity of the world lore, and everyone operates with the same end goal really. Sometimes, you do get the super twinks on a MUSH but not as often as you do on a MUD because in a MUSH, players are 95% of the content of the game. (Obviously, I'm generalizing a bit because there ARE successful MUSHes that are not based on the works of Tolkien, Lucas or some DnD world. They're just not as common as the successul MUSHes that ARE based on someone else's writing.) Alienate enough players, and you really don't have a game to play. Thus, pre-planning a time and scene makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, rambling again. I think for a certain set of players, moving between MUDs and MUSHes can be pretty natural and painless.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

In the hope of getting this conversation back on track, here's a little information on the three main MUD families (TinyMUD, LPMud and DikuMUD) and how they're interconnected:Thus you can see the relationship between MUD and MUSH as follows, where each box represents a new codebase and the lines represent inspiration:

As I touched on earlier in the thread, I would personally be interested to see comparisons such as:After that the comparisons could be extended to other codebases, including some of the many MUDs that fall outside of the codebases listed in the above diagram. For example the only other MUD I've encountered with a movement system similar to mine is a MUX, while death in my MUD is similar to the result of the TinyMUD 'kill' command (banishment back to your home) - but my command syntax is more like DikuMUD, with argument parsing a little like LPMud.

I think it'd be really interesting to compare different custom MUDs with each other as well, as no game is designed in a vacuum, and you can often see striking similarities between independantly developed MUDs. It'd also be worth checking out the Morder codebase, which was primarily inspired by Scepter of Goth (developed around the same time as - but independently from - the original MUD).

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Mud Dungeneer,

I agree, presenting information in an easily accessible way is crucial. What I've struggled with, and continue to struggle with, is selection of information. When you have an information-heavy game, what do you give players first? Ideally, I guess you structure everything from low to high detail. So that when someone starts out, they can get what they need in an overview, and then they can look a little deeper and get the same information in a more comprehensive format.

I am not sure I've quite succeeded with that myself, I think a lot of the time people are confronted with too much information too soon, but it is always a work in progress.

Milawe,

Some interesting points to consider, definitely. Especially given your experience of players that play both MUSHes and MUDs.

KaVir,

Thank you, that's a very nice break down. Though in itself, I guess it doesn't really say much about what you can expect from the different codebases, except possibly that the more closely related are more likely to have things in common than those further apart. But as a basis for further analysis, its very helpful as a reference.

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Don't forget NiMUD!

Re: From MUDs to MUSHes: FAQs, etc for the players
 

Locke, MOO doesn't belong in the TinyMUD box, as it's not derived from the same code.