And there were always crazy people. Never bothered me much, but still. Ewww.

On many places, the application requirements were getting excessive, requiring you to write a whole massive document (upwards of 100k!) on everything your character can ever do, get it approved by staff, then be held precisely to that document for your entire playing time (unless you submit any equally detailed amendments to it).

The stated goals here were to let other people know what you can do, to ensure you’re serious about playing the character, and most importantly, to weed out the “twinks”, or “powergamers”. These were players who messed up the otherwise harmonious consent-based roleplay (you tell me what you’re trying to do to my character, I decide whether it succeeds or not) by always having to get their way — perhaps by overstating their powers, or by always being insanely lucky, or by even just pulling new powers out their arse.

The trouble was the sinister agenda behind these applications. The real goal, even if staff didn’t consciously realise it, was to have a document that they could beat players over the head with should they stray (purely in the eyes of staff, of course), and even more importantly, to force players to invest heavily in their characters, so that staff have leverage over them right from the start.

(Nor did the applications weed out twinks. Ironically, it actually made them worse, because now they had more ammunition with which to achieve their power fantasies or whatever goes on in their heads.)

Worse, I was part of staff on several occasions, and even found myself slipping into the same mindset as all my fellow clique-y staffers, believing that our job was to be bouncers and police rather than administrators and facilitators. Thankfully, my specialty was code and my position always either codewiz or hosting provider, so I don’t have any real instances of player abuse to look back upon in shame — though I did partake in some of the behind-the-scenes grumbling about players the staff didn’t want around any more, and were looking for reasons to get rid of.

So yeah, I pretty much have to agree with HopperUK that I stopped roleplaying on MUSHes around when I discovered that “everyone on the internet is completely insane”. I do still hang out on a few, but only for chatting with old friends. I don’t really see myself getting into that scene again, especially since the superhero MUSHes don’t seem to have retained their player counts to anywhere near the degree of e.g. the aforementioned Transformers MUSH.

Sunder2k5: I admit, when going to look at the site, I had a bit of a glow at seeing the timeline – seeing where I’d play up to, and the events afterwards which I only really could guess at the full import. It’s a big ol’ story.

Tom: Ditto. My time on the MUSHes is, I suspect, why I don’t go completely into modern MMOs. I’ve disappeared down that hole once before.

KG

I’m interested in the Geoff Tuffli thing for several reasons. First off, he was incredibly good at setting design, and was responsible for three of the best original-themed RPG MUSHes out there: Pandemonium, HellMUSH II, and Gohs. I’m pretty sure he was involved in some others, but the setting design was pretty immaculately done.

Also, unlike most gods, he did most (or all) of the code himself. I think he may actually have been the only admin on Gohs.

Second, I’m largely just interested to see how a MMORPG designed by MUSH people differs from an MMORPG designed by MUD people. Though I suspect the majority of people involved in the design of Champions are MUD people (or actually probably MMORPG people), there’s a chance that story isn’t going to end up an afterthought, and that systems designed to [i]support[/i] storytelling might actually exist.

I’m not confident that the graphical medium is well-suited to all that, but interested to see what they come up with.

I remember my elation the first time I was given a ROYALTY flag. My introduction to procedural code through @ commands, and the creation of silly things like hand mirrors that would show you other people’s @desc statements. I went to CWRU in the early ’90s, meaning that I was involved in TinyM* back in the day; from there, I made my way to a number of others.

That said, the all-time time-waster for me turned out to be a MUD after all, albeit a very MUSH-like MUD: DiscworldMUD, which as I understand it is still around.

MUSHing is like helping to write a big story. :)

Kieron is right, 2k5 is still going strong and hell, we’ve even upgraded the combat system. I’ve been playing there forever, I’d be curious to know who you played there Kieron. :)

As for some of the other comments; yeah it is mostly about friends and a big nerdy chatroom, but there is some amazing roleplaying that goes on. Some structured, some not. Way better than most of the messageboard junk that I have seen. I won’t shamelessly plug, but you can google around for the wiki and check out any number of logs going back 12 years or so.

If anyone is curious, hit up Hazard when you get there.

“I” before “E” except after “C”…

KG