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Latest revision as of 18:06, 16 December 2023
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Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Whatever time of day it is for you as you read this. As you might have noticed it's been awhile since I've written one of these up and a lot has changed. As you might know there was this big event that happened in 2020 that no one was prepared for and it's changed a lot about online gaming and especially communities like ours forever. We thought for a time that it would be a new renaissance of role playing and in a way it was, but not for ye olde text-based games. But that doesn't mean we've died off. It just means the way we communicate has changed.
How to RP post-2020
I feel like this could benefit people outside TwistedMUCK, so I'm going to generalize things a bit. If you're an old hand at this sort of game you may not need this information, but I ask you to bear with me for those who are still new to MUCKing or haven't had a lot of experience with it recently.
Back in the golden days of MUCKing, everyone would gather on games and use a common public location or a public chat channel to communicate with each other, share little bits of information, or just generally joke around and have fun. The rest of the map (which we call the grid) was used for more private RP or social interactions usually with each room being described as a specific location. This never stopped players from ignoring those pre-built rooms and letting their imaginations run wild. After all, when role playing back and forth with someone who cares if you never literally leave the room you're already in? Not everyone RP'd like this but it became more and more common as time went on.
Now that we've all had to live past 2020 these ideas simply took a new direction. All of us have access to things like Discord which allows us to connect and carry whole communities in our pockets. We can be around 24/7 without ever having to log onto a MUCK. We can create any amount of rooms to RP in as we desire and everyone can be connected whether they are at home, at work, or out shopping. Needless to say this changed things. There was a moment in time where we seriously considered dropping the MUCK aspect of our game and dedicating ourselves solely to Discord-only RP. But MUCKing is in our blood (and our name) and we felt it was a disservice to those who came before to simply wipe the slate and move on. This is why we started what became our Multi-MU* Discord Server.
So how does it work now?
Since 2020 players don't really log onto the game unless they're in the middle of a scene. Sure there's some staff who keep an eye on things in case something is amiss, but largely "Public Chat" is now handled exclusively on Discord. When someone wants to RP they hop onto the Discord Server, or maybe directly out to one of their friends, and asks to run a scene. An interesting aspect of this is that not all scenes happen in real-time anymore. (This is why our log list looks empty these days) Now that people can come and go as their schedule permits, scenes can run at the speed of convenience; updating whenever players are available instead of rushing to get it done before everyone has to go their separate ways. A bonus upshot to this is that the quality of some scenes have improved dramatically as players now have time to proof read things before moving on.
This does not mean that old MUCK-style RP is gone. We know there are people out there who don't like this sort of "Forum-style" RP, and we're not going to force anyone to change. I know I personally prefer the classic live back-and-forth approach, but these days it's harder and harder to find people who are available for this type of RP. Please take this into consideration when asking about RP and try not to assume that silence means no one is interested. It just might take a bit before people notice the request now that so many have begun to switch over to this new mindset.
But I shouldn't have to ask others for RP. It should happen organically! Tradition!!
I agree with you, but we don't live in the same world we did before 2020. I still hope that one day things will settle down into something a bit more akin to our older playing styles and that's why our MUCK will never shut down unless absolutely necessary (i.e. updates, hardware problems, etc...). Try not to think of this as a change but instead as more options to make RP happen because ultimately that's what it means for everyone. It also means we're extremely lax on forcing activity checks and limiting the number of characters players can have - changes people have asked about for as long as we've been open. So give it a try. We've not gone anywhere, we're just lurking in a different window.
As you may have gathered I've already started shifting to another character, Monika, who has much the same sort of energy but in a less threatening package. There's also some personal reasons behind this particular choice, but I hope you can understand why I've felt the need to make this change without getting too heavily into things. Ultimately this a game, we are playing characters, and I thought Monika would be much more approachable than a insomniatic mad-man who murders everyone he speaks to. If you have any questions, my desk is always open. Take care, everyone!