[prof1515]

I'd suggest it's a bit of "we want an audience so we can show off our poses" and "we want extras in the background to fill in roles that are beneath us". I've logged into many a MUSH and the prevailing attitude has been that if you're not a member of their little clique then you can kiss any RP good-bye. In many, RP seems to be pre-arranged for certain times between the members of the clique and if you happen to log in during any of the other 20+ hours of the day, you're S.O.L. as many such games are vacant. If you log in at the right time, you can often expect to be ignored unless you're in the clique. I have often wondered why these games advertise and the "audience" and "extras" seem to be the two reasons.

Something which hasn't been my experience but which has been the common experience of a friend of mine is that in some setting of MUSH (WoD), you get the same group of players who go from game to game playing the exact same characters doing the exact same things. As soon as a new game opens, they create their exact same character and immediately begin plotting the same plot they had the last time. They've "researched" (I use that term loosely since the research is sometimes based on inaccurate stereotypes and employed incorrectly rather than via a plausible method) what they want to know to try and achieve their goals. Their characters are built around those goals and those goals are all they focus on and RP in pursuit of achieving. Same character, same goals, same methods, same reactions and same RP (maybe new poses). The clique goes through their routine and the MUSH closes down having ended in the same outcome over and over again with only the GM's dice determining which of the same set of possible outcomes succeeds.

I noticed this when he would complain about the RP he was seeing in MUSH after MUSH in this setting. Mind you, his particular experience may be confined to this setting alone as I've never noticed it in the past when I'd try out MUSH (as I said, I typically couldn't get into the clique in the first place, he's learned tricks of character design that get him noticed inevitably because each of the character types played over and over will seek out the same types of outsider characters time and time again). He's explained it to me many a time and there's a distinct strategy to it but it's not RP, it's a form-letter. That said, he also says that when you do find a good clique of players and you know the strategy, you can find some excellent RP, though this RP is predictable as it follows the same pattern. Sometimes I'm not sure why he puts himself through MUSH after MUSH if they all end the same way: one of several variations based on which strategy reaches its goals first, then him complaining to me on AIM about how they always do the same thing and finally me typing "LOL Then why do you keep playing them?"

:-D

Jason