Plattitudes

Short Attention Span Review: "V" Pilot Episode

2009-11-05T17:57:00.002-05:00

If Morena Baccarin showed up on a big screen TV above my city, I think I'd happily surrender.

That said: While the new show improves on the campy original, the pilot episode is far too rushed. It introduces a lot of characters, a couple of not-unexpected plot twists, and at least one that surprised me. Good to see Alan Tudyk back at work. ABC is clearly becoming the network sanctuary for old Firefly cast members. When will Jewel Staite and Ron Glass get their own shows?

Return of the OtherVoice Podcast

2009-10-27T07:01:00.003-04:00

The OtherVoice podcast, official web podcast of the games at jointhesaga.com, is back in action at jointhesaga.podbean.com.

I'd done eight of these nearly two years ago, but got away from it due to scheduling issues. Now they're back. Hoping to do at least one a week. Got ideas for topics? Feel free to suggest them!

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 10/26

2009-10-27T06:53:00.003-04:00

One more chance. Karen jokes that I say this every week, but this time I'm SERIOUS!

The past couple of episodes have just been dull on top of boring for Heroes. Peter and HRG visit a kid whose power is basically stolen from Pushing Daisies long enough for Peter to steal the power and for the kid to be exposed as a freakish parent-killer. Then Peter leaves to help Hiro, who has gone off in time to save Charlie back in the first season, while HRG sticks around to play Big Brother to the new kid. He calls in Tracy for backup.

Naturally, all goes well, except for the part where the kid gets dragged to death through town by the cops.

Back at Camp Parkman, BrainSylar and Matt are vying for control of Parkman's body - and I think Janice would probably vote in favor of BrainSylar. Matt, let's face it, you apparently don't bring the A game.

At Sunnyvale University...er, wait, wrong school...Claire and her gal-pal make meta jokes about slash fiction sites on the web and endure a hazing ritual in a slaughterhouse that ends with impaling and one too many "OH MY GOD."

If this show goes on for another season, it really needs to undergo a massive purge. It's suffering from character bloat and crisis-itis. The bloat in this show is so bad that some characters have gone double to show up in almost every scene, like Sylar. I fully expect the third Tracy to show up any time. Maybe an evil twin for Hiro?

Short Attention Span Review: "Inglorious Basterds"

2009-10-27T06:44:00.002-04:00

Finally got to see this before it escaped theaters. I'm glad I did - it seems most worthwhile to see this movie on the big screen (especially the explosive finale).

That said: I didn't *love* this movie. My problem with it comes down to the simple fact that two storylines are leading to the same conclusion and diminishing each other as a result. Shoshanna's vengeful plan to blow up Hitler's top men in the cinema runs parallel to the Basterds' plan to blow up Hitler's top men in the cinema. A friend correctly noted that this is basically two movies competing with each other inside of one. Neither comes out the winner.

Some elements of the movie were winners for me, though. Christopher Waltz was a great surprise as Hans Landa. I most enjoyed the scenes where people just talked and tension built, and he was in most of those.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 10/12

2009-10-13T18:23:00.002-04:00

Slipping, slipping, slipping...into disinterest.

Ernie Hudson's inexplicable surliness toward amnesia-Sylar, the shrink woman's utter willingness to go along with the sad-eyed serial-killing superhero, and all the bleh dialogue that went with it bored me to the point that I was spending far more time paying attention to continuity problems (behold Sylar's ever-shifting beard growth and hair placement!) than I was to what they were saying.

Claire Bennett and Stalker Girl, plus Invisible Carny Girl who frames Stalker Girl? BORING. Bring on the snipers and special effects!

Peter and the deaf girl: More interesting without Peter. At first, I thought having the power to be a human game of Simon was the lamest superpower ever. But then I saw she could peel paint and remove wallpaper. She's hired.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 10/12

2009-10-13T18:19:00.003-04:00

This episode was certainly an improvement over last week's, although I don't exactly get why billionaire dad had to bankrupt himself (and his son) in order to save the kid.

Enjoyed seeing House back to his old tricks of manipulating his minions, while also demonstrating why he doesn't normally interact with patients. (But interacting with them anyway!)

I really couldn't care less about Thirteen's whole "will she or won't she?" plot. If she could go to Mars and stay there, that'd be awesome. Her relationship with Foreman doesn't do this show any favors. Ever.

Lessons I've Learned No. 4: One's a Lot of Fun

2009-10-11T10:20:00.001-04:00

As much as I've enjoyed the "group" epic adventures on OtherSpace throughout the years, the artifact tournament events remind me how much more I prefer running activities for an individual player.

Team events are still great for allowing people to work together, but often it's a challenge - usually not terribly successful - to make sure that everyone involved in the group event gets their moment to shine and has a good time.

In a solo event? Well, that's different. It all comes down to the interaction between the player, the ref, the +sheet, and the story that's being told. Through these solo events, I learn more about the characters, their capabilities, their strengths, and their weaknesses. I also experience first-hand whether a player is a good sport or not.

It can be argued that I get more bang for my buck if I throw a lot of effort into an epic event that a dozen players can experience. But, I don't know. The buzz I'm hearing about the artifact tournament, which can be viewed live in the Last Orders Tavern when bouts are in progress, is that more people wish they'd signed up because of the cool stuff they've seen their fellow players doing on a solo basis.

So, expect me to look for more excuses, whenever possible, to run activities that just involve one player at a time.

Lessons I've Learned No. 3: Objects in Motion

2009-10-11T10:19:00.000-04:00

The life expectancy of a MUSH that isolates the playerbase to a single relatively small area can be measured in months.

Mathematically, it makes sense to consolidate the players into one area, thus forcing them to roleplay with each other. However, this logic is fundamentally flawed due to the fact that behind those players are humans, driven by free will, and ultimately it is impossible (and futile) to try to force them to do ANYTHING they don't want to do.

It could be argued that, with a dedicated enough staff running events around the clock or aggressive players generating their own activities without administrative assistance, the life of a tightly centralized MUSH could be extended. I suppose that's true. However, it's unlikely that it would grow much larger than a somewhat ambitious tabletop RPG group. It's not a growth industry.

Back in 1999, we threw all of OtherSpace aboard a massive colony ship called Sanctuary. We had some refugee starships aboard, so that gave some folks places to hang out. The colony vessel itself was a pretty huge grid by most standards, with the hangar level, command deck, and massive domes for inhabitants to dwell. You could even zip back and forth on monorails. Originally, I planned for this experiment to last a full year. However, plot fatigue (on the parts of both staffers and players) and player attrition due to boredom, RL, and other issues led to an acceleration of the planned return to normalspace. We had a decent-sized playerbase, but most of them were hanging around in the out-of-character area rather than roleplaying.

In January 2009, we threw all of OtherSpace: The Farthest Star, OtherSpace: Millennium, and Chiaroscuro aboard a modestly-sized sentient starship known as Comorro. Now it's September, and although we've got a decent-sized playerbase, the foundations of a crafting system, and numerous possibilities for players to generate their own fun (or call on staffers to help make fun for them), we're starting to see the trend toward people hanging around OOC when they could be on the grid. Also, we've seen a resurgent complaint about the lack of things to do for players who are in time zones that are well offset from most of the staffers.

We're not, at the moment, in a position to enter a strong growth mode for OtherSpace. But we are very close. With the arrival of HSpace 5.0, we'll open the door for players to have their own ships, fly trade missions, and explore. That'll mean new worlds to visit - including some to claim, colonize, and call your own. Trade runs and exploration opportunities should be a huge help in generating "instant" crew activities. You don't need a staffer to ref your run from Hekayt to B'hira. You don't need a staffer to help you map the star charts and discover unsual alien worlds. But those activities WILL be something that can be done around the clock, no matter what time zone you're in.

It's been said in the past that spreading out the grid too much can be the death of a game. I'd counter that the lack of activity to draw people together, and the unwillingness of staffers to make sure that players can get together when the need arises, is what threatens a game's existence more than how many rooms are keeping people apart at any given time. Lots of small planet grids with things to do - trade, crafting, exploration - are a better solution than one big localized grid.

We're on the verge of an exciting time. I'm glad you're all here to be part of it and I'm looking forward to what happens next.

Lessons I've Learned No. 2: Give the Hard Case a Rest

2009-10-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

For more than a decade, I've struggled with finding a balance for dealing with players, their complaints, and their overall attitudes.

Before the advent of MMORPGs, it was rather easy for me to take on the attitude that the MUSH was the online equivalent of a house party, and it was my house, and if you didn't like it, you could get the hell out. Plus, it was undeniably amusing in a Roman bread-and-circuses sort of way to deal with the trolls and twinks and asshats in brutal public fashion.

Now? Well, putting it bluntly: I've got to be happy when even the asshats stop by and give the games a try. Every visitor is a little miracle, and that miracle could blossom into a great experience if they're given the time and opportunity to make a go of it.

I can't afford to treat the game like my private house party. Now, more than ever, a MUSH is a creature that exists only as long as it's got an audience that supports it. If I'm being overly harsh on channels, I need to throttle it back. If someone posts a critical commentary and my knee-jerk response *wants* to be a concise two-word blast, then I need to sleep on it and respond in the morning when I can provide a calmer, more rational answer.

Some of the new achievements that I've established - particularly the roleplaying belts - were instituted specifically so that I would be forced to interact with players more regularly on a one-to-one basis, give positive feedback, and provide a sense of achievement - ESPECIALLY to players who might otherwise think I'm critical of them, don't like them, don't trust them, etc. I don't want to be a demon. I'm not out to ruin everybody's fun. I want OtherSpace and Necromundus to thrive. That means every player should be allowed to thrive. We don't have to get along like gangbusters behind the scenes all the time, but you've all got value. You're the best advertising we've got and there's no evolving story without you.

Will I sometimes get frustrated? Undoubtedly. Will I occasionally snipe because of this? Yeah, probably. I'm human. Not a robot. But it won't be for sport. It won't be for the amusement of myself or others.

Lessons I've Learned No. 1: Stop Kicking the Anthill

2009-10-11T10:17:00.001-04:00

It's no secret that I've drawn a lot of inspiration from series television, especially the space opera epic of Babylon 5. That show got particularly good the moment John Sheridan stated that the station was declaring independence and standing against the government he no longer believed in.

I loved watching those walls fall down.

So, when I started OtherSpace, it was with the intent for the game to grow and evolve with similar dramatic peaks. That's why we saw events like the near-collapse of the Stellar Consortium and the civil war in the Parallax. It's why we ended up putting the entire playerbase aboard Sanctuary and shifted the game off to Hiverspace for six months, only to come back and fit it was now the 31st Century in normalspace.

I liked kicking the anthill. But I can't keep kicking the anthill.

This lesson I've learned: Soap operas and series television, with their slate-changing dramatic moments, are fun to watch. They are NOT so fun to live and breathe.

A fundamental truth that I've come to accept is that although we make a very clear divide between the player and the character from a storytelling perspective, there's no denying an emotional connection between the two. When a player creates a character on OtherSpace, it's with a sense that the character will change and grow based on events and interactions with other characters - not necessarily that the character and the player must constantly adapt to the dramatic whims of the game's lead storytellers.

The best moments on OtherSpace aren't when I kick the anthill. They're when I break out a magnifying glass and hold the lens over the hill's inhabitants.

So, that's why Event Cards came to be. That's why Roleplaying Belts now provide encouragement for players to become referees and event managers. And that's why the more intensive activities on the MUSH these days are focused on the player level.

Grander changes are still afoot in the universe at large, so don't get me wrong. But I'm trying to develop those events through news articles and localized activities. Players deserve a chance to shine a lot more than I deserve to blow up another planet or raze a spacefleet with another mighty alien armada.

We've got lots of stories to tell. We don't have to keep blowing up the world to mine for new material.

Short Attention Span Review: "Stargate Universe" 10/9

2009-10-10T16:24:00.003-04:00

All right, I think a quick and merciful death is in order for this show. This episode MADE NO EFFING SENSE.

You're running out of air aboard the ancient ship. The ship takes you to a planet with a breathable atmosphere. And you only send a *handful* of people off ship to hunt for limestone to go into the filtration system? You leave behind everybody else so they can look miserable and jeopardized, rather than allowing everyone to get a breath of fresh air? Maybe have extra legs and eyes and arms to hunt for what you're after? Because, seriously, two of the people you sent were pudgy and out of shape to begin with - and you didn't even include a real doctor on the walkabout?

All of it was just a really lame excuse to give us Scott's Hoth-esque exposition moments as he staggered around following a dust devil.

And color me totally confused and grumpy about the communication modules. Those scenes would have made much more sense to me if the "puppet" people had done the talking. However, I understand that Lou Diamond Phillips - who should have been one of the puppets - isn't as available as they'd hoped. Anyway, it just seemed pointless and awkward and hard to follow.

Bad start, folks.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 10/8

2009-10-10T16:11:00.003-04:00

In this episode, we find out that the Parallelinators have mercury in their blood. And we get an extended conversation with William Bell in the Alt World Trade Center after Agent Dunham downs a protein shake made from tapeworms.

Much better than the Monster of the Week episode of last time. Enjoyed Theresa Russell as Walter's loopy sees-parallel-people girlfriend. Nice little reminder with Peter's "halo" at the end.

And I guess that's it for Charlie?

Anyway, good episode this time around. Much happier.

MUDdy Hobo Trackside Interview: Staff@Multiverse Crisis MUSH

2009-10-10T15:33:00.004-04:00

The MUDdy Hobo recently had a chance to ask questions of the staff at Multiverse Crisis MUSH. They answered! And here's what they had to say:

MH: How did you get started in MUDing?

Reliant: I got started in MUDing when somebody back in my old chatroom RPs went on an elitist tangent about how much better MU*ing was than chatroom and forum RP. Truthfully they were right for the most part, but it was an impolite way to put it to somebody who had never even heard of a MUSH before.

Asagi: I migrated into MUDing from AIM RP in early 2005 (January of '05 to be precise). I was recruited onto the MUSHing scene by a long time online friend of mine who thought that since I had a knack for short stories, I would be good in back and forth RP, since we always played around on AIM.

Hugh Bliss: A now ex-boy friend of mine introduced me to it actually. He showed me to that Shadowrun-esque mu* Cybersphere and then I started looking into mu* data bases and learning about other games that I wanted to try out. I didn't really take mu*ing seriously untill late 2002-early 2003 when I found TMNT mush, however.

The Wonder Twins: I found logs of RP from Transformers 2k5 MUSH well over 10 years ago, and read them religiously. I had some experience with chat room RP, so I thought I'd try to immerse myself in the awesomeness that was Transformers in this new way. Despite sucking badly, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have been RPing ever since.

The Guy: Oh boy! How did I get into MUDing? Well... Our story begins a long long time ago, in a borough far far away. The Bronx. I was staying at my aunt's house and had just discovered the wonders of the internet, as she gave me my very own America Online Kid's account. I was a wee lad at the tender age of 12 at the time, and wanted to check out the games available to me. The first one I found was called Cosrin. A text based, web-based PvE MUD. And boy was it steep, at a price of 2.99 to play per hour. But I was hooked! I played it for all of a year, before putting it down. Years pass. I turn into a lad of 16 and get bored with playstation. So I join my first MUSH. Which eventually led to creating a character on a second MUSH. And then, by he age of 19 I applied for my first character at Multiverse crisis MUSH and I've been here ever since.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): I was never into MUDing itself - only MUSHing and its brethren. I started out as a teenager on Transformers 2K5 MUSH, after hearing about these 'MUD' things in an article in - of all things - the Wall Street Journal, and deciding to take a look. Transformers seemed appealing, as I was still quite fond of the theme despite having "outgrown" them only a few years before. I made quite an idiot of myself that first year, but I learned a lot. I became admin for the first time on my second MUSH, Transformers : Genesis, not long before it fell apart (for reasons that had nothing to do with me, thankfully). I've been admin on several different MU*'s since then, and have had characters on MUSHes, MUCKs, and MUXen, and perhaps a character or two on a MOO once or twice.

Charon: I got my start back in highschool in 1992, with Tsunami MUD via my school’s interent connection. I didn’t really get into the interactive storytelling portion until 1995 or so with a place called MegaHeros. After that I bounced around a bit, playing on a variety of places until I ended up at Mega Man MUSH. That’s where I had my first staff position, and really formed my core set of principles. Around that same time I was also playing on Otherspace for a while. After leaving Mega Man MUSH I took a break until I joined Multiverse Crisis MUSH. I wouldn’t become admin until a year or so later.

Firefox: I was just cruising around the internet one afternoon looking at Transformers websites because I'm a big TF fan, and came across the sites for 2k5 and the long since defunct TF2. A saw a chance for a more 'grown up' (hahaha oi I was such an idiot back then) version of playing with a theme I loved and apped at both. Things snowballed from there as I made friends and they pulled me to other places, and the rest is history.

Antiquity: I got started at the TMNT MUSH run by Jill (the headwiz's handle) and loved it. Creative people, a focus on playing and character interaction and a really great application system along with friendly and helpful staff. I try to be as good as them at the Multiverse, since this is a MUSH that I've been at for a good number of wonderful years with my fellow Administrators.

MH: What's the origin story behind Multiverse Crisis? How did the core concept form and how did it evolve prior to opening?

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): That's an interesting question, as there are actually a lot of bizarre rumors as to why and how the place was started.

Although I had a few home MU*'s, I spent a lot time before MCM ever started wandering from MU* to MU* in search of one that would accept some of my characters - I tend to change canon themes around a lot, and while many people who would listen seemed to like the changes I made, the venues for actually applying them were few. During this time I came up with many ideas that would eventually be incorporated into MCM, things that I wanted to see. Some were pretty radical for the time, i.e. the ability to make modifications to canon (the term we typically use for source material as it is published in the media - many MU*s want you to unerringly comply with this) if you were able to do a good job, the ability for characters to interact in combat with comparable abilities no matter what theme they were with (so that Dragon Ball Z, for instance, would not make Super Mario Bros. essentially worthless), and factions that put characters together to encourage RP (as many MU*s I previously played at often caused groups of characters from the same canon - called 'casts' - to hole up in their own little world, and slowly dwindle to near-inactivity for lack of things to do). A particular influence on me was Videoland, a video game-centric MUSH that had a number of ideas I particularly liked. Eventually I started a MUSH of my own; however, after a year, for several reasons, it failed. I managed to get some MU* space from a friend and decided to put it up and see if it stuck, figuring it would last maybe 3-4 weeks.

We're now likely around week 200 or so.

MH: How much has the game flourished with the relative openness of theme? Have their been any significant drawbacks to being so broad thematically?

Reliant: I would say that it has. The biggest drawback with being so broad thematically is having to fit all of this STUFF together. This can be as much a problem with the players trying to overplay their stuff as the content of a character itself being a problem, but things have to be at least a little watered down or else you get some themes dominating others in really hideous ways. The best example we've had with this is super robot themes, which have been occasionally been insistent on trying to violate our destruction limitations - which were mostly put into place to prevent cities from being wiped off the map on a daily basis because two guys decided to have at it.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): I would say that the MUSH has flourished. In many ways you can find just about anything you'd want here. Many themes that could not sustain a MUSH on their own are here, including some themes that are particularly prone to very short MU* lives, as well as helping to adapt themes that would make poor MU*'s (often because of having FCs that are too special and too powerful, which would often concentrate most 'interesting' things to a small circle). There are a lot of things you can do here that just wouldn't be possible elsewhere - most places insist on being canon, often to a painful extent, whereas we encourage you to break it if you can come up with a good way to do it. Of course, canon interpretations are also encouraged, and we allow concurrent versions of themes to help people be able to do it "both ways" - having canon and non-canon versions of themes existing side by side. A side benefit of this is that it is very rare that any character is completely 100% out of a player's grasp by being "taken" - you can often come up with an alternate version that will work as well.

Unfortunately, just as there are many benefits, there are at least a few drawbacks. One has to be ready to deal with a LOT of powers that would not otherwise be encountered in various themes, and how to get them to work together. For instance, if someone picks up a theme with an instant death power (i.e. Death Note), we're not going to let them run hog wild outside of their theme (or in their own theme, for that matter) - often the powers will have to be reduced somehow (i.e. the Death Note can usually kill 'useless' NPCs or cannon fodder, but PCs are much more difficult to kill). We also have to try to keep ourselves aware of as many themes as possible. If someone picks up something particularly esoteric stuff may get past us - though if it's blatantly and seriously in violation of the letter or spirit of our rules, action will be taken to correct it. Particularly esoteric themes can also cause staff to have a hard time in terms of judging applications. Staff tends to try to be lenient in those cases, but when someone uses that leniency for ill, action is usually taken.

Charon: The game has actually flourished a great deal. I don’t think our founder actually expected us to grow quite as much as we have, and a lot of it is due to the expansive nature of the theme. It’s very easy for a newer player to think of a favorite book, anime, movie or game and pick a character from it to play. Because they’re usually drawing from an established source, there’s a firm basis for personality and what they can do. It lowers the barrier for a new player in figuring out how their character fits.

From my perspective the main difficulty in having such a broad theme is trying to compose storylines that are unique to the theme itself. We’ve got plenty of ongoing storylines within the game, drawn principally out of a single sub-theme or cast and then drawing in the rest of the game. But writing a storyline for the core theme itself can be difficult.

MH: Has MCM suffered significant loss of players due to the rise of graphical MMORPGs? If so, how have you tried to deal with this? If not, what's your secret?

Reliant: Not really. MMOs and MUSHes provide a significantly different experience, so as far as I've ever been able to tell we haven't lost players to MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or EverQuest. It'll be a long while before they can provide a roleplaying experience rich enough to make MUSHes obsolete, and given the limitations of simple /emotes I'm not even sure we'll see MMOs with truly viable roleplaying environments anytime soon.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): We're in an odd situation - we formed AFTER the rise of the MMORPG. However, I do believe that the MMORPG has caused significant problems in MU*ing, so I'll address that for a moment.

I think that, really, the future of MU*ing is going to be on the web in one way or another. Ultimately Telnet is a protocol older than most of our players, and the thought of downloading an odd-looking client probably turns off a lot of players. There will always be a place for high-speed interactive role play that MMORPGs just can't offer - IRC still has plenty of it - but it needs to be more accessible than it's current form.

Charon: Not significantly. Multiverse Crisis MUSH opened after the release of the World of Warcraft. We do have a significant number of players who do play graphical MMO games, ranging from Maple Story to EVE. So our player levels have never really been significantly impacted by the release of these games. I think the players we have are looking for a story they can more directly be a part of, even on a small scale. Without a huge and massive investment of time and effort that the same story altering level of power requires in the graphical games – if it’s even possible.

MH: What are the most popular types of characters that are apped for on Multiverse Crisis MUSH?

Hugh Bliss: I'd say main character heroic types. Minor character's aren't apped as often, even if they're good. Villains are heavily outnumbered by at least 3 to 1 without exaggeration. Unaffiliates are hard to keep to their place and seem a little on the rarer side as well. I'd also say that the most popular characters seem to be between their mid teens and early twenties, but that's a trend I've noticed all over.

MH: What types of characters are most needed currently?

Reliant: Villains, most definitely. This is actually a problem with multitheme MUSHes in general - everyone wants to be the hero, and the villains are often downtrodden by comparison. This is partially our fault, truth be told - some of our early villain player(s) were not very good sports with their heroic counterparts and essentially wanted to eat worlds without retribution. While this isn't true of ALL villains, the backlash on what villains were allowed to get away with was pretty nasty, and it's something we're currently trying to fix by assigning a staffer to be an active OOC arbitrator between the faction(s).

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): Bad guys. Bad guys are ALWAYS in short supply. Specifically we're trying to shore up the Confederacy and provide it a solid shot in the arm. We've been pushing a few initiatives to try to encourage apping in the Confederates - for instance, no "cool down" time between apping another character and a Confederate, like we usually do to keep the app load sane for the character staff

We're also interested in magical or mystical characters. It's important to note that magic is NOT more powerful than technology here, and there are limits (i.e. don't expect your Curse Of Apocalypse to kill half the enemy faction because you say so), but still, magic is an area where we don't have much representation, and we'd like to see some more characters for it, so well thought out concepts both from original and existing themes are quite welcome.

MH: Explain the two factions, Union and Confederate, and what they should mean to new players.

Reliant: In essence, the Union and Confederacy are sort of super nations that formed relatively recently in the history of the Multiverse, made up of an enormous conglomeration of worlds. To put it into simplified terms, the Union makes up our 'good guy' faction, and the Confederacy is our 'bad guy' faction, both of which formed around a conflict over the most effective method of travel in the Multiverse known as "warp gates". (Things like FTL drives and the like are still functional, but not everybody has those.)

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): Simply put, the Union are the good guys, and the Confederates are the bad guys.

However, the reality is more complicated than that. The Union is not an extensively overly good faction - we tried to stay AWAY from that. We try to be balanced in terms of the characters that are more reluctant to use violence (such as themes for younger children) versus themes that encourage more violence (i.e. video games). This has been rather difficult. That said, the typical member of the Union, grudging though they may be, WILL take a kill shot, and many of them have at least a few NPC deaths. Some surprising ones actually have a lot, usually in preventing some atrocity or another.

The Confederates, on the other hand, are an interesting dynamic, and in a lot of ways their identity is more fluid - which is what you might expect from a faction of backstabbers and villains. There is often a struggle between the "lawful good" and the "chaotic good" - it's difficult to put out good PR when you've got members of your main forces eating babies, after all! It has evolved over time, and continues to evolve, which is actually something the admin, as of late, have been trying to put a bead on.

The background story is overall, over the years, the Union came together by the more 'just' nations, i.e. the United Federation of Planets from Star Trek, various iterations of the United States, and so forth - to oppose more villainous entities, so they could have a united front. These villainous factions found themselves hard pressed to work independently so they formed a grudging alliance, hence the two super nations. They have both evolved over time to form their current entities - their precursors are 200-300 years old in Multiverse time, and became mainly cohesive in wars over the so-called warp gates. The Union's precursors have been relatively stable, but those of the Confederates have formed and reformed repeatedly, and it is highly likely that should the war ever be won in favor of the Confederates the supernation would quickly splinter if not outright crumble in fighting among themselves - after all, most villains don't like sharing their world domination with other bad guys. Our player characters focus on the militaries and the allies of these militaries (often the types of heroes or villains that one wouldn't think would join a military, giving them a place in the factional structure as well), but they do not entirely exclude the civilians, and we've had a few in the past.

MH: How much of a struggle is it to balance, say, a character from HBO's Deadwood against a superhero from the Justice League of America?

The Wonder Twins: In one sense, it's pretty easy. In another sense, it's quite difficult. Simply saying that people from two wildly different scaled themes, like DBZ and Metal Gear, are equal seems to be relatively straight forward. With Aura and a real, IC cosmic effect called Balancing, justification for people being on the same level is pretty easy. It's when it comes down to assigning specific power levels that things get very tricky. So saying that two people from different themes are in the same ballpark is a snap. Saying which one is a PL 34 and which one is a PL 36 is much harder, and is inherently subjective, and impossible to fully standardize.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): It can be tough. However, the players typically end up doing pretty well. For instance, superhuman strength may be relative. A punch from Superman may very well not do nearly as much as he'd think. However, typically the environment suffers a lot more - when one weak but smart individual fights an incredibly super-powered individual, chances are the ground is going to have a lot more craters in it than when they started. However, the question invariably comes up, what if someone starts flinging around nuclear weapons? Well, we have things that are rules of thumb - for instance, in general no single, regular combat strike should detonate more than a city block - but something more fundamental to the universe is necessary for it to really be believable that Little Johnny survives exposure to a nuclear blast.

We use a concept called 'Aura' to achieve this. The term is derived from Main Character Aura, which is the nickname a lot of people use for the fact that main characters tend to survive ridiculous situations and come out on top despite all logic to the contrary. We, however, have made it more or less literal. Aura is basically the realities of two universes pressing against each other, struggling for dominance, and manifesting in terms of total effect. Player characters are characters with EXTREMELY high levels of Aura (think 99.9999th percentile, and that's probably literally a bit generous for population proportions). A fight is not a simple contest of Aura, but it does have significant implications as to the outright effects. Superman, for instance, could toss Solid Snake through a few buildings. If this were more 'realistic' Solid Snake would likely be dead or close to it, but because of Aura, he can get up and keep fighting. As another example, human opponents (at least, player characters) could well take on the main guns of a Transformer, live, and even strike back. Even things like super speed can be countered with sufficient skill and intelligence - be smart enough to not be where your opponent's fist is going to be, for instance, or predict their move such that ... Unfortunately this does have some trade-offs - some might, for instance, say that this implies that 'weakling' Aurics such as main characters of more regular series have to be inherently much smarter than 'strong' Aurics such as main characters of comic book series - but the other trade-offs, such as ignoring it entirely (thus making the MUSH a lot less friendly to play) or disallowing characters from themes over or under a certain power level, would be much more painful.

I would say by FAR our greatest concern in terms of balancing is in terms of size. A 500 foot mecha is going to have a difficult time being brought down by a humanoid opponent. That said - it HAS been done! Typically the players have to play an active role in it. For instance, shoot your opponents in the knees - there are sensitive gear shafts and such in even military mechanoids, and considering the PCs are supposed to be the best of the best, they ought to be able to at least attempt that impossible shot to actually hit something important there. We try to use themes that use scale in different ways as guidelines, i.e. Chrono Trigger and other RPGs that have apparently insane-scale fights, at least to illustrate to characters. Ultimately it's easier to envision an apparently random human surviving (and continuing to fight despite) being engulfed in fire, than it is if that same apparently random human is stomped on a few times by a mile tall military robot.

A related problem is people using "ultimate" attacks and whatnot. For instance, Lina Inverse's Giga Slave, or the Matrix of Leadership in Transformers. These are often sealed somehow for a variety of reasons, using something more stringent than having it be deterred by, for instance, some code of honor or even the potential death of the user. Reasons for this are things such as the fact that a character's mind could very well change if something near and dear or ridiculously huge in scale is in the balance (what hero wouldn't risk their lives in saving an entire planet, for instance?), and since it can be quite condescending to be from a theme where there are no superduperdramaticultrapowers and yet you've got someone in whatever group you're in who can toss them off without a thought, even if they are for some reason filled with angst and terrible consequences.

There are other problems, i.e. ranged attacks versus hand-to-hand, but we could go on all day about this sort of thing. Unfortunately it's one of those things that is just inherent to the genre, and we do the best we can to keep things balanced for everyone and enforce consent-based RP without making people use it as a cop-out a lot.

MH: How do most new players learn about MCM? Are you doing much with social networking sites?

Reliant: Honestly, I have no idea. Our only external forum that I'm personally aware of is on our wiki, and we don't have a Facebook/MySpace/Livejournal, and so forth. Maybe we should get one, but it isn't something that has ever seemed especially necessary. If I really had to guess I'd say most of our prospective players are people who got pulled over by word-of-mouth, but we don't usually ask about it.

MH: How relevant do you feel sites like Top MUD Sites and MUD Connector remain in this day and age? Do you get a lot of traffic from them? Does your staff spend much time on those sites?

Reliant: Personally, I think MUD Connector is an important part of keeping MU*'s "on radar", but these days it seems to me like Mudtape and the like are a bit more relevant. I'm not sure how much traffic we actually get from these sites, though, so I could be completely wrong. Either way, I think they're still relevant - especially to veteran MU*ers who are looking for something new.

I don't know about the rest of the staff, but I do check MUD Connector occasionally, and we should still have an entry there.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): The appeal of MUD Connector and Top MUD Sites is probably not very high for our particular genre. This is not surprising - they cater to different audiences. They typically focus more on more traditional, hack-and-slash MUDs; most role-play based MUSHes, on the other hand, are focused more on storytelling, although they do have common ancestry in terms of both the communities surrounding them as well as the code and designs used in their basic construction. That said, they still do provide valuable resources. While we don't see as many as we used to, we have found a good number of players referred from the MUD Connector in particular. To our knowledge, none of the staff frequent them insofar as being actual "members of the community" there, though - as stated, the sites are in many ways focused differently from what we are doing.

MH: Explain the application process for MCM. How long does it usually take to get a response? What are some tips and tricks and common pitfalls?

The Guy: The application process for MCM is rather simple and gentle really. Our character applications have been upgraded several times, but the basic premise is the same. We request some simple OOC information of the apper, name, age, e-mail to respond to them. New applicants must use the 'long' application form, which includes a question on what their definition of consent based roleplay is, coupled with a few extra questions in regards to how well they know the personality of the character they are applying for. People who have already apped at MCM in the past, or who are applying for an alternate character, simply need fill out the 'short' application form, which contains the same basic questions as the long app, with a few specific exceptions removed for ease.

The application process itself is broken down into several sections that need to be filled out. The +finger information, which consists of the character's name, the series they hail from, their 'function' (Describing them in a single line), a quote, and a paragraph to use for the profile, a blurb about the character.

Following filling out the character's +finger, the next section are +powers and +flaws! +Powers describe exactly what the character can do, and +flaws is a new feature we recently incorporated, and used to show that these characters are not almighty and all powerful. Everyone has flaws and weaknesses, and this is where the apper describes them. Flaws, after all, help in making a character more three-dimensional.

Following filling out +powers and +flaws, the next two sections of the application are history and personality. These parts are just as important as anything else, as the history details what the character's life was like up until the point that they appear in the Multiverse, or even if they've been around in the background and no one noticed. Personality is just as big. It's where we, as staffers, find out what makes a character tick. How they live, think, breathe, their aspirations, dreams and doubts.

And finally, there's the power justification. All characters on Multiverse Crisis MUSH have a power level ranging from 5, which is the lowest allowed, to 36, the utmost highest any character can have. This section of the application is devoted for the apper to explain what power level they feel their character should have! Below a 30 needs no justification, but anything above requires at least a few notes on why they feel the character is deserving. But Staff is usually pretty generous, and may even award a higher level for a good quality app.

A common pitfall though is 'just how much is enough?'. Many new applicants are sometimes unaware of just how much information to put into any given field, while some returning applicants have been known to put too much! As a general rule of thumb, staff tries to work with what we're given, but we're detail oriented and that is exactly what we like to see! Detail! Not to the level of needless fluff, but 'what you think is right' works most of the time.

That said, staff tries to be as fast as we can with responses, we have a hard working and dedicated charstaff corps, who do their best to get back to players within a few days at best. Though we do get swamped from time to time!

Addendum by Reliant: Owing to our size, application processing can slow down pretty heavily based on current workload and staffer burnout. We try to get applications back by a week at latest, but the wide range of alts that we allow coupled with any number of other variables can really slow things down.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): We publicly post the general application process. Essentially you fill out the app and it goes to the box. A character staffer who feels they are qualified picks it up (we have many themes that only one - or even NONE - of staff are familiar with). It's then processed by the character staffer's judgment, with their knowledge of the theme (when possible), the player, and of course the application itself. The character staffer then has the option of rejecting and sending it back for revisions - or for passing it. Or if it's beyond a certain power level, putting it up for votes, whereupon 2 out of 3 is passing. In some particularly odd cases, such as a highly inappropriate character, we may put up a character for concept rejection, which means that the character cannot be apped as-is by the player without major revisions. Often these characters will only be given to trusted, long-time players, and perhaps not at all, due to being overwhelmingly powerful or otherwise disruptive, even with the checks and balances we have in place for powers.

Reliant wrote an addendum about the slowdown. I think I should also note that apps from new players are generally prioritized. Further, the more powerful or stranger the concept, the longer the wait - it is not organized in a queue, contrary to popular belief. Finally, usually once an application is in the revision stage (if it gets there - many are passed on the first try, and often the revisions requested are minor) things usually go a lot faster.

MH: How is combat handled in the world of MCM?

Onyxia: Combat is mostly a matter of typed role-playing; we do have a coded combat system, but it's deliberately kept very vague for the most part. The characters who are fighting (usually) pair off, posing their attacks and their reactions to the attacks being sent at them, and use the coded command to determine hits, misses, and damage. (There are also commands for healing, buffing/reinforcing and debuffing/weakening other characters.) Characters who are reduced to 0 HP are determined to have been knocked out; player characters rarely die in combat due to condeath (consensual death), although there ARE rare cases where a character loses condeath.

MH: Is anything off limits, concept-wise, for new players? The theme seems pretty sandboxy, but are lines drawn somewhere?

Onyxia: New players on MCM are extremely unlikely to get characters with high authority/rank in either faction. We usually advise new players to start out in one of the factions, but if someone really wants to start out unaffiliated, we don't block them. Outside of that, I don't think we bar new players from anything that isn't banned for the rest of the MUSH, and most of that list is for either legal reasons (Disney, Pern, etc.) or matters of content (pornographic themes).

Addendum by Reliant: While new players are generally not barred from anything *explicitly*, there are some concepts and abilities that we will generally not give to new players. Most of the time TP Powers (powers that are incredibly powerful and cannot be used outside of TP Circumstances) will not be handed out to anyone we're not reasonably familiar with - in no small part because we've been bitten for giving someone the benefit of the doubt*. Other things that new players may have a hard time getting are character(s) with heavily consent-regulated power(s) such as mind-control, or characters that are essentially quadruple agents and do a lot of defection/politicking conceptually.

* The person in question who "bit us" was a new applicant who played a goddess-type character from an old Sega Saturn RPG. She put up a nice and helpful front-face, but twinked out a lot and ultimately got smacked pretty hard for it. This kind of this is in large part why we're much more reluctant to hand out iffy powers and stuff to new players these days.

Addendum by Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader: She was grossly abusing the ability that we grant characters to change their stats based on their total 'power level'. She had it set up in such a way that she could - and would - repeatedly and rapidly swap between high defensive/healing and high-attack modes, which is very uncool on all counts, and often attempted to justify things she did by saying, "I'm a goddess ;)", ignoring the fact that the reason that she was even allowed to app was that her divinity would not put her above other players. Once it became obvious she knew what she was doing was wrong and had no plans on changing, we let GripeStaff take care of it. She didn't last long after..

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): In theory, you can app just about anything you want. In practice, that's a different story.

Unfortunately there is no way to precisely define just what is and isn't allowable, especially for new players. There are, however, some powers that are absolutely prohibited. For instance, time travel simply doesn't work on a MUSH of any real size out of a controlled TP, for unsurprising reasons. Mind control that there is no cure for - that's also disallowed, and in general mind control gets a lot of scrutiny since it can be a great way to damage or destroy characters in terms of playability, along with other issues with it. Further, in general, most things that would cause serious, long-term problems for a character, especially anything without consent, are disallowed both for new and old players. We're not talking about, say, just if you were to stab someone and their wounds, we're talking about things that usually have little to no outcome but such extreme ill effects, i.e. a death curse, although in some cases very special situations can be allowed, particularly if the players in question are willing to explain why they're getting around the normal restrictions.

We also have a policy of certain powers, usually those that are excessively powerful, as being 'TP Powers.' These are unlockable ONLY on admin permission, usually by part of a planned TP. There are a number of reasons for this - for instance, if you carry a weapon from your canonical source material that can basically end the war, you will be expected to use it as often as possible, and there's little justification for NOT doing that. We do not allow players to have extremely powerful powers that are entirely in their control, even if they have a 'code of honor' - rather, it has to have some external influence. Or the power could be so unstable it just fails most of the time.

In general new players are going to have difficulty getting some of these, because the outlandish stuff really CAN cause problems, and it's no fun for anyone if the admin have to come in and clean it up. Typically after the first character or two we get more relaxed, though we still try to exercise judgment and common sense when allowing or disallowing powers. That said, if you knock our socks off with the app you may get everything you want in a high-powered character on your very first try - it's not too common, but it does happen.

MH: By nature, your theme invites use of some major intellectual properties. Has this been an issue for MCM? How do you deal with such concerns?

Reliant: So far, this hasn't actually been an issue. We try to make a point of simply not allowing themes that are guarded by paranoid lawyers and authors, such as Pern (?), Disney, and so forth. On at least one occasion, though, we were forced to make our +gripe and +feedback system record the identities of the person doing the +griping or +feedbacking because somebody decided it was just a brilliant idea to threaten to "report us to Disney", or something to that effect. Since this was too big a liability, we had to remove anonymity of those systems - that said, it's pretty hard to get into them to check names.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): IP laws have not bothered us so far. I believe that an executive for Star Trek, once told of fanfic and the legal ramifications, basically denied it's existence outright - basically to the point where he deliberately pretended, for official purposes, that it did not exist. In general, most companies don't care so long as you aren't causing a large-scale, active problem, or outright redistributing their media or wares otherwise. However, there are some that are known to have this problem. I personally believe that they are shooting themselves in the foot - the entire concept of MUSHing as collaborative storytelling feeds into the general storytelling concept, which has been fluid for eons longer than the idea of intellectual property - but we simply disallow apping from these themes, encouraging players to instead app from original themes that carry many of the elements that they like from the would-be source theme. However, to avoid tromping on the toes of the 'big boys', we do not allow posting of any information on how to acquire pirated material on the MUSH, and if there is a theme that is solely MMORPG-centric, chances are we'll disallow it outright. Themes that have elements of both MMORPGs and other forms of expression (i.e. Warcraft, which has single player games, novels and many other outlets) we will typically allow those elements that have been expressed in forms that are NOT in the MMORPG, so, for instance, if General Grogg is only featured in the MMORPG, you can't app for him, but we'll probably let you app for him if he's in Warcraft 7.

MH: Beyond the attraction of a big playground using familiar existing themes, MCM encourages players to create their own themes too. How popular has this proven to be?

Asagi: Some of MCM's most notable and memorable characters are actually PCs that come from original stories, universes and player-created canons. Among a slew of examples, one of the most notable stands as Captain Storm, who was second in command of the entire Confederate military, and was from a player-created theme. This is just one of a number of famous and notable characters across MCM that weren't from an established theme, and were instead made from back stories and canons created by their players.

Addendum by Onyxia: It's reasonably popular. Some of our new themes are made up from whole cloth; others are based loosely on existing series. I'm not sure what the proportion is.

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): Not as popular as some would hope, but it has had some that are devoted to it. Original themes are basically worlds that joined with the Multiverse, but are not directly based on anything other than the player's imagination - for instance, if someone always wanted to write a story about a particular kingdom, they could do that here. Although we don't recommend that for aspiring writers (since some publishers might count verbatim copying into a MUSH as a form of pre-publication and make their potential publication worth less on the market), the idea is the same. Typically one gets an original theme in hopes of encouraging others to apply for characters from that world. Although we've had some themes come and go, a few have stayed around for a long while. In particular, one that was developed to help people who liked some particularly unique themes that were otherwise difficult to apply from due to the aforementioned intellectual property issues, that has been, relatively speaking, very popular. Of course, the best advertisement of an original theme is the RP of the one(s) who founded it, so if you think you'd like to give it a shot, we'd encourage you to.

MH: What's been the greatest moment for MCM thus far?

The Guy: There are too many to count. The MUSH has had so many large plots that ran in the past, to pick one great moment in RP would be impossible. Off the top of my head I can easily think of the time Solid Snake brought the killing blow down on the incarnation of an evil alternate universe. With a combat knife. Or Dr. Doom acquiring Power Multiversal and challenging the Union, after taking over Paradise Island. Or when Nanoha Takamachi ascended to Field Marshal of the Union and brought an epic clash to the gates of New Pyongyang against the new Confederate Field Marshal, Alice Maestra. These examples don't even scratch the surface of the iceberg of great moments.

MH: What's been the darkest moment?

Mr. Rogers/Fearless Leader (Owner): Probably early on. Some bad calls were made because the place grew so fast. This is a trend that I've noticed in many MU*'s that succeed - they suddenly acquire and sustain a massive playerbase. However, often the admin are not ready for such a massive influx. Some of those 'bad calls' turned out to be blessings in disguise, but nevertheless, it was not necessarily a happy-fun-time, especially since RL was affecting a lot of staffers (including myself) quite negatively at the time.

MH: Share a Twitterblurb-length summation of what you want people to think of when they're considering MCM (140 characters or less!)

Asagi: Goku and Superman fighting Doctor Doom on an exploding planet while Picard evacuates civilians. This is the best way to envision what MCM stands for in under 140 characters.

MH: What hobbies do you have outside of MUSH development?

Reliant: I'm into tabletop gaming (Exalted is a favorite of mine), anime/manga (although less so now than I was about five years back), comic books (just started reading Fables), and video games. I'm kind of picky (okay, not really), but I also like to read novels of a fairly wide variety. I'm fond of most anything by Neil Gaiman (particularly his short stories, and The Graveyard Book), and just got started on "A Game of Thrones" in the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series by George R. R. Martin.

Firefox: I'm still an avid video gamer and collector. Kids would have a hayday walking into my living room and seeing all the Transformers, Zoids, LEGOs and other assorted action figure stuff decorating my shelves. Still read a fair bit of sci-fi and mystery too, but I can't stand the wangst and whiny overdramatized or almost lewd 'romance' that gets thrown into a lot of newer writer, bleh. I play some roleplay stuff like Dungeons & Dragons, but even that is done mostly online these days.

MH: What do you want players to take away from their experiences on MCM?

Asagi: MCM is a great way to hone your writing talent, truth be told. The players are, for the most part, friendly and courteous on an OOC level and many are more than willing to help out. If there's one quality I'd want players who leave MCM to take on to other MUSHes and even other endeavors at real life, it's that they remember when they were a new player, remember that people helped them learn the ropes, get familiar, and learn their way, and that they use that remembrance to help other people that are just starting out, in any area. Whether it be teaching a new MUSHer how to RP, or helping an old lady that just moved in to town find a store she's looking for. No one likes to feel like the odd man out, and MCM's playerbase tries its hardest to welcome all newcomers.

Addendum by Onyxia: Most of all, I want players on MCM to have a good time and want to come back and play more - different scenes, different series, different characters. Secondarily, if somebody plays in a scene on MCM and comes away wanting to read/watch the published material for a theme - a novel, a comic book, a movie, a TV show - then I see that as a bonus too ... partly because I'm a fan of some very obscure series.

MH: How do you expect MCM to evolve over the next five years?

Asagi: I expect a great deal of change from MCM in the next five years, both on an IC and OOC level. One of the things I always prided MCM in having is a great strive to improve itself. The factions are always trying new setups and scene ideas, and the admin are always working to refine everything from news files to the combat code itself. MCM is a MUSH that is constantly striving to be as perfect as it can be. So, in five years, I expect it to be substantially different than it is today, while also keeping the core aspects that made it such a great MUSH from the very beginning.

***

Thanks to the crew from Multiverse Crisis MUSH for taking the time to respond to these questions!

MUDdy Hobo Trackside Interview: Matt Adcock@MUDGamers.com

2009-10-10T15:32:00.001-04:00

The MUDdy Hobo recently had a chance to ask a bunch of questions of Matt Adcock, whose official site can be found at bc-dev.net. We appreciate him taking the time to answer!

MH: How did you first discover MUDs?

Matt Adcock: I guess I was a relative latecomer to MUDs. I first discovered them around 1998/9 while at university. I don’t remember exactly how I started, possibly through TMC I think. I tried a few games that I don’t really remember much about, but the first MUD I played for any length of time was called Avalon.

MH: You indicated on your website that FMud, your Flash-based MUD client, came about because you weren't happy with existing web-based clients. How popular has FMud become since it became available? What are you happy with? What still needs work?

Matt Adcock: There are several MUDs out there using it and I think it is definitely a good alternative to something like the JTA telnet client. The biggest barrier to entry is the requirement to serve a policy file and that’s what I get the most support queries about. Unfortunately, this is required by the Flash player and the only real workaround is to use a proxy, which is what I did with MudGamers.

I think the client definitely looks nicer than some of the Java ones out there, and the scripting capabilities are pretty advanced for an embedded client. You can also save logs in plain text or HTML and load/save script settings locally which is nice.

The main problems with the client are the telnet and terminal support which are rather limited. It works well enough for the majority of MUDs out there, but ideally I’d like it to be more compliant. Background colours are probably the most glaring omission right now.

MH: How did your RPG project, Maiden Desmodus, come about?

Matt Adcock: About a year ago, I was looking to get involved in a MUD project and responded to an ad on TMC from Wade Gustafson who was looking for a partner to work with on a new project. Wade is an excellent writer and a very creative guy and he had several game themes that he’d fleshed out and between us we settled on Maiden Desmodus.

Wade does all the writing and the overall world theme and story, while I do the programming and design the game systems and mechanics. There is some crossover of course and we frequently bounce ideas off each other, but generally we work really well together within our own areas.

MH: What's the current status of Maiden Desmodus?

Matt Adcock: The original plan was to open Q1 of 2009 but as is often the way that has slipped a bit, but we hope to open soon. Certainly it’ll be a matter of weeks rather than months.

We began last summer and while it doesn’t feel like nearly a year I’m pleased with how much we have done in that time. As of today we have 1069 rooms, 373 objects, 171 mobiles and 297 scripts – all unique prototypes. We also have around 20,000 more lines of code than when we started.

I made the decision right away to use Nakedmud as a base to build on and I think it definitely gave us a head start compared to coding from scratch. It was a bit of a risk as at the time there were no operational MUDs using the codebase, but I liked the design and it was actively maintained which is a huge benefit.

MH: How are you approaching theme development on Maiden Desmodus? Are you providing a detailed history for players to build from or do you focus more on broader strokes while players fill in more of the details as time goes by?

Matt Adcock: There is definitely a distinct theme and world history to Maiden Desmodus. This is based around a faction conflict between two warring Kingdoms, as well as the mysterious figure of the Maiden Desmodus herself. I guess the setting would best be described as medieval low magic fantasy with a dark horror feel. It’s pretty gritty and brutal and I think it’s a nice change of pace from the more common gothic type of horror you often see in MUDs.

What we’re working on right now is putting in a long quest line which will introduce new players to the game world, history and the ongoing faction conflict. Each faction has a line of 20 quests each so hopefully these will really help to engage players with the setting.

Wade wrote a full-length novel based around another game theme he developed, so he is pretty detail-oriented and it’s fair to say he knows the setting of Maiden Desmodus inside and out. Unfortunately I spend too much time in the code and can’t even find my way around the world half the time, which is a little embarrassing I suppose. Although having designed the combat system I can PK him really easily :)

MH: How did the MUDGamers site come about?

Matt Adcock: It was something of a Sunday afternoon thing that I did after being frustrated trying to navigate TMC. I thought it would be so much cooler if MUD portal sites were more like modern web game sites such as Kongregate. Presenting games clearly and providing players with plenty of tools to sort and find games they are interested in playing, combined with a ‘click to play’ interface just seemed like a really good idea. This is even more important when you are trying to attract new players from outside the established MUD community.

I never really intended MudGamers to seriously compete with the likes of TMC and TMS, it was more of a ‘call to action’ for those sites to show them that MUDs can be presented in a more modern, appealing and accessible way. That said however, traffic is increasing and we just hit 75 games listed on the site so I am really pleased with how it’s working out.

MH: On your site, you state that you're working on a client for Iron Realms Entertainment. What's the status of that project? How did it come about?

Matt Adcock: The project is mostly complete now and the client has been used by IRE on several Flash gaming sites as well as on their main portal site. Back when I was first developing FMud I had heard that IRE were looking at doing a Flash based client so I got in touch and we went from there. Jeremy at IRE has been great to work with and it was a lot of fun working with him and their design guy to knock the client into shape. It was also a good learning opportunity for me as FMud was actually my first project using Adobe Flex.

MH: How optimistic are you about the future of text-based games? Why?

Matt Adcock: I am definitely optimistic and believe that MUDs have the potential to grow. Text games will always have a niche appeal, but with more and more people getting into online games there has to be a new audience out there for MUDs. Even my mother in law enjoys playing web games in her spare time.

Taking IRE as an example, if you look at the comments on their Kongregate entry there are plenty of “wtf text suxors” comments, but equally there are quite a few from players who’d never played a text game before and really enjoyed it. We need to find better ways of reaching these gamers.

Again this goes back to the reasoning behind MudGamers, I imagined someone coming from a MMORPG or web gaming background landing on TMC and just not knowing where to start. We need to say really clearly to people “these are the games, click here to play them”.

MH: What's the most important lesson MUD developers can learn from graphical MMORPGs?

Matt Adcock: The single biggest lesson is accessibility, no doubt about it. By this I mean ease with which a new player can get into your game. If you look at modern MMORPGs like WoW, WAR, AoC etc, character creation is simple, there are no separate tutorials to complete, no manuals to read, and new players are directed where to go and what to do as soon as they enter the game world.

Too often in MUDs I see a detailed character creation process where the player is forced to make character choices without knowing the consequences of those choices. This is often followed by some kind of “MUD school” that is completely removed from the rest of the game, often accompanied by lists of help files to read and remember. Couple this with some pretty arcane syntax and many games can be quite intimidating to players unfamiliar with MUDs.

Whatever the focus of your game, whether it is hack and slash, PvP, role-playing or whatever, the key is to get new players involved in that right from the start. You need to draw them in from the moment they log in, not tell them to go spend an hour reading help files or wandering around a phoney MUD school.

MH: How valuable are social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook for MUDs? Why?

Matt Adcock: Social networking is a great way to reach people who may share a common interest with you, so in that sense sites like Facebook could be used by MUDs as a marketing tool. I know FMud can be embedded on Facebook, MySpace or as a Google widget for example.

I think there are one or two MUDs that use Twitter for broadcasting game information and events in real time, and certainly if more people talk about MUDs whether on regular blogs or on services like Twitter it can only help MUDs as a whole. I personally use both Facebook and Twitter (@bcdev), although not specifically to publicise my MUD projects.

MH: Have you built a career around your projects or are they something you do in spare time? What do you do for a living?

Matt Adcock: I do have some commercial MUD projects, but I think it’d be something of a stretch to say I make a living from them! I have a wonderful day job taking care of my daughter and also work freelance as a web developer.

MH: What MUD-focused sites do you follow? Why?

Matt Adcock: I follow TMC, TMS and Mudbytes, although I am not a very frequent contributor to any of them. I also read quite a few blogs and other gaming sites such as Massively and Gamasutra. I do enjoy keeping up with what’s going on in the MUD and wider MMORPG community, although the signal to noise ratio can be pretty low a lot of the time.

MH: Are current MUD-focused sites missing something? What can they do to make themselves more relevant and viable?

Matt Adcock: As I’ve said before, I’d love to see a MUD community portal site that looked and functioned a lot more like a site such as Kongregate. A modern look with simplified navigation is important to attract and retain new visitors, and a way to play the listed games without having to download a dedicated client is really essential.

It’s not just about cosmetic changes however. I also think there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking by those of us who run MUDs. Traditionally there has been a lot of competition for players between MUDs but I believe this only harms the community in the long run. We all have our favourite few MUDs, but these often change over time as we discover new games or revisit old ones. I’d like to see portal sites that bring MUDs and their individual player bases together, where I can try out a variety of MUDs and hopefully find several that I can enjoy playing. Once you add in cross game features like chat and rankings you can really start to build a sense of community between games, rather than the site simply being a place to list in order to attract players to your own game.

MUDs are definitely a niche market, yet they can offer players a wide range of unique gameplay experiences. It’s vital that we, as MUDs, present what we’re about in the best possible way. I have the greatest respect for the existing MUD community sites and I think they do a great job, however I believe there are better ways to present MUDs, particularly to those who may never have played one before.

MH: One opportunity presented by MUDGamers.com is the sense of multiple projects available at a click through a single platform. Where do you see that going in the coming years?

Matt Adcock: Personally I’d love to take the MudGamers concept of “click to play” and apply it to a smaller selection of high quality games with cross game features like chat, achievement ladders and badges, all combined with a common account and micro transaction system. Something similar to what Skotos do I guess, but with a free to play model and more cross game features. This way you can build a community around a collection of games with the goal of sharing players rather than competing for them. You could also add in some simple Flash games that complement the MUDs, such as MUD themed mini games or even link them to the MUDs directly. One of the ideas I’ve got for Maiden Desmodus is to take the mass warfare system I’m working on out of the MUD completely and into a simple graphical strategy game on the website where the outcome of battles would be reflected in the MUD.

MH: What books are you reading these days? Got any movies, music, and games to recommend?

Matt Adcock: It’s terrible but I haven’t read a novel in ages. I’m reading Ted Castranova’s Synthetic Worlds right now which already feels a little dated but is a fascinating read none the less. I’m a big Steven Erikson fan and I think he has a new one out this Summer, but it’s frustrating waiting for the next novel as you invariably forget half of what’s happened before. I’ve also been following George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire but I’ve no idea when his next one is out, he seems to have been writing it for years now. My wife loved the new Star Trek but I fell asleep before the end so not sure I can really recommend it!

As far as gaming goes I don’t have as much time as I’d like and haven’t had the Xbox on for a couple weeks now. I tried Age of Conan recently but couldn’t really get into it so I am getting my MMORPG fix from Warhammer these days. It’s frustrating as I want to really like it, but it always somehow disappoints. It’s wonderfully accessible and I love how you can jump into PvP through scenarios or realm conflict almost immediately. The way the realm conflict is scaled in particular is great design but in practice there’s something missing. I almost wonder if it’s just too easy; you can jump in and out of PvP as you like, there’s no death penalty and with the open party system no need to find a group. It’s almost like there are no incentives not to suck, and with a game that forces team play to such a degree, being surrounded by mediocre players is no fun at all. If things get much worse I may have to turn to Darkfall. But I digress. I don’t really play any MUDs at the moment as I am too focused on Maiden Desmodus.

MH: Are you most passionate about the programming elements or the creative facets of your projects? More about nuts and bolts than the shiny? Why?

Matt Adcock: I like to think that programming is creative, at least it is the way I do it! I guess you’d say I love the nuts and bolts, the mechanics and the systems behind the design. The “how and the why” of games has always appealed to me, even as a player.

MH: Are text-based games that don't offer some form of web-based interface effectively doomed to perpetually tiny playerbases? How can they reach beyond the niche audience otherwise?

Matt Adcock: I don’t know about doomed, but they are certainly limiting their appeal if they don’t offer a web interface. There are plenty of options around in either Flash or Java, and I’ve even seen a few HTML implementations, so it should be relatively simple for any game to setup. They could even list on MudGamers and redirect from their own website direct to the client page if they wanted.

MH: You've blogged about the need for more commercialized MUDs. Has there been any blowback from this from people who condemn the monetization of text-based games? Why is it important to see more commercialized games?

Matt Adcock: I haven’t had any negative feedback on that actually, although there are definitely a few people in the MUD community who think commercial games are taboo. I don’t think it’s a particularly credible position given that MUDs have been commercial for at least as long as they’ve been free, and certainly before free codebases like DIKU and LP.

The main reason I’d like to see more commercial projects is I believe that this would raise the general profile of text games and help to attract more players to all MUDs. More revenue for MUDs means they can spend more on advertising, particularly outside the established MUD community. Developing new portal and community sites with the kinds of features I’ve mentioned would also cost money.

MH: What's the most important thing a MUD developer needs to consider before embarking on their own project?

Matt Adcock: I think you really need to be clear what your motivations are and what you hope to achieve. If you just want to learn programming that’s great, but if you want to produce a game try not to get too bogged down in the technical details. I suppose at this point I should make the customary appeal for people to join an existing project rather than start their own, but nobody who wants to run their own MUD wants to hear that :)

The single most important thing is to make sure you finish what you start.

MH: Where do you see MUDs going as a medium in the next few years? Five? Ten? Are they still around? What niche are they filling?

Matt Adcock: I’d like to see MUD portal sites incorporating some of the features I’ve advocated, and I definitely think we’ll see more web based clients in the future, particularly with custom features like maps, stat bars etc. I also think we’ll see more games merging, at least in terms of marketing, so rather than all trying to attract players to their own websites they can come under one site with a common interface.

While lacking the shinies of big graphical MMORPGs, MUDs can still fill an important niche for several years yet. Given that they are so much cheaper to develop and operate MUDs are able to cater to minority gaming interests in ways that graphical MMORPGs simply cannot. Features such as enforced role-play or permadeath, obscure historical settings and frequent administration run events just aren’t commercially viable for many graphical MMORPGs.

Graphical games will eventually catch up and we’re already seeing this for example with the Hero Engine which uses similar content creation tools to those that MUDs have had for years (not surprising given that it’s from Simutronics). I’m sure these types of tools will find their way to the masses one day, and then we’ll be inundated with hobbyist graphical MMORPGs, DIKU style. Art is still a huge barrier but maybe in the future procedural generation will become more viable and creating content for a graphical game will be on a par with that for a text game.

There will always be some players who just prefer text over graphics of course, but once graphical games are as cheap and easy to produce then we may well see the end of MUDs. I think that day is still a long way off though.

MUDdy Hobo Trackside Interview: Aristotle@Threshold

2009-10-10T15:30:00.000-04:00

We recently had the opportunity to ask a bunch of questions of Aristotle, lead developer over at Threshold, about his text-based online roleplaying game.

MH: How did you get involved in MUDs?

Aristotle: I played MUD-like BBS games in college, and a friend on my favorite BBS said to me one day "hey, you should try these games on the internet called MUDs." I took him up on the offer, and my life was irrevocably altered (for the better!).

MH: What's the origin story behind Threshold? What led to it opening in 1996?

Aristotle: The OOC origin story? Well, I had given up on MUDs due to having a bunch of my code stolen a few years earlier. But one summer I was clerking for a law firm, not really liking it, and needed something "fun" to do. So I decided I'd take another crack at making a MUD, but this time I would do it solo so my code couldn't be stolen. That was how Threshold came to be.

The IC origin story is something you need to play Threshold to discover.

MH: How has the playerbase changed since the advent of graphical MMORPGs?

Aristotle: I think Threshold's playerbase has become a little older and more mature since the advent of graphical MMORPGs. While we definitely suffered an overall usage hit for a few years, the long term net effect has been very positive on our community. We lose a lot of the "l2play n00b" types to the graphical MMOs, and frankly they can keep them.

MH: Have you added features to Threshold that were meant to directly compete with MMORPGs?

Aristotle: Not really, no. We get a lot of good ideas from playing graphical MMOs, but I do not think we have ever added a feature specifically to compete with MMORPGs. The closest thing to that would be the simple fact that we always try to be mindful of the accessibility factor that MUDs have going for them. The main reason we do not have a custom client that we REQUIRE is because we want to keep Threshold (and MUDs in general) as widely accessible as possible.

MH: What makes Threshold stand out from the many other MUDs available for people to play?

Aristotle: There are three main things that make Threshold standout: 1) Is is the only RP required (and enforced) commercial game on the internet. 2) It has an absolutely wonderful community. I think the fact that our playerbase is about 50% female is a huge factor there. It helps our community stay balanced and diverse. 3) A fanatical devotion to quality. We could churn out content a lot faster if we really wanted to, but we want everything we add to the game to be top notch in quality. A corollary to this is the fact that we care very deeply about our players. We talk to them on an almost daily basis and are always open to player feedback.

MH: How do you classify Threshold: Hobbyist or commercial? Is it what you do for a living?

Aristotle: Threshold is definitely a commercial game. It is part of our company, Frogdice, and it is my full time job (as well as my wife's full time job).

MH: What do players get in exchange for making real money contributions to Threshold?

Aristotle: I should mention first that almost everything you can receive with real money can also be obtained through regular gameplay. With that said, the main things players receive are convenience options (like quick transport back to their house), in game coin, extra gear storage, and a wide variety of customization options (for their character, their house, etc.).

MH: The game is touted as the oldest RP-enforced MUDs around. How is RP enforced? Where can we check out logs of RP activities from Threshold?

Aristotle: RP is enforced largely by the community itself. New players are immediately offered help by in game advisors, and the RP requirement is made very clear. If players run afoul of it, other players try to take them aside and explain the RP requirement. If they continue to be a problem, they are reported to the admins who take over from there. It is extremely rare that admins have to get involved. It is even rarer that someone refuses to stay IC and roleplay. By making this rule very clear during creation we avoid problems before they start.

MH: What has been the brightest moment for you and your playerbase on Threshold?

Aristotle: This is an easy one. I met my wife through Threshold. For the playerbase, I think the brightest moment was when we switched to free to play. Doing that meant people never had to worry about losing a friend because they wanted to play less and could not justify a recurring fee.

MH: What has been the darkest moment for you and your playerbase?

Aristotle: I think the darkest moment for me was riding out the initial effects of the big graphical MMOs on the MUD genre. That was probably the darkest moment for our players as well. Fortunately, we played to our strengths and have been able to recover and grow quite nicely in the last 3-4 years.

MH: Threshold is an original theme, but are there any fantasy books that you'd recommend for familiarizing oneself with the tone of the game?

Aristotle: Dragonlance is an excellent series for experiencing a classic fantasy world. Threshold is a little more high fantasy than Dragonlance. David Eddings' various series would be good as well (for the traditional good vs. evil conflict), but again Threshold is more high-fantasy, high-magic.

MH: Where do most of Threshold's players hail from?

Aristotle: Threshold has players from over 50 countries. The USA, Canada, Britain, and Australia are certainly the most common due to the language issue. But it amazes me where some of our players come from. I find it particularly interesting that we have players from Israel and Iran, and have benefited from their perspective on our OOC game forums.

MH: What's the most beneficial advertising for Threshold? Paid ads or word-of-mouth?

Aristotle: Word of mouth is without a doubt the most beneficial and effective form of advertising for Threshold.

MH: What does the future hold for text-based online gaming? How will Threshold and other games like it continue to sustain themselves? Where are the new audiences to be found?

Aristotle: I hosted a roundtable discussion on this topic at the most recent IMGDC (Independent MMO Game Developers Conference). I think text games will continue to be viable and even grow as they provide a unique type of gameplay. Text games still do communication and interaction better than graphical games, largely because you are always at the chat interface. You do not have to click in a box and hit enter just to BEGIN speaking with people.

New audiences are to be found from graphical MMOs in my opinion. As graphical MMOs continue to deliver the same pure hack-n-slash gameplay, text games will be able to attract people to their deeper gameplay. Text games really should work together to get the word out on graphical MMO fan sites and forums.

MH: What are you reading lately? Favorite TV shows? Music? Movies? Computer games?

Aristotle: About half of what I read is sci-fi/fantasy, a quarter is non-fiction, and another quarter is modern thriller/drama/mystery type stuff. My absolute favorite TV show right now is Bones, but House is a close second. I rarely get to see movies (since we have two young kids), but I really want to see the new Star Trek movie, the Wolverine movie, the new Terminator movie, and Angels & Demons.

I play a lot of computer games, but right now I am pretty desperate for a good one. The last computer game I played that I really liked was The Witcher. I try to play just about every MMO out there for at least a month or two. I feel game developers really need to make an effort to play other games so they know what else is being done in the market.

MH: What can people expect from Threshold in the next year? Five years?

Aristotle: People can expect lots of interesting story and plot lines (as we continue to tell the story of Threshold's world, and let players shape it), new lands to explore, and some pretty advanced new systems that will add even more variety to Threshold's gameplay. We have a few systems currently in development that are things people have wanted for years. We added a new developer a little over a year ago and he has been a huge boon to Threshold. We have really hit our stride working together and it is paying awesome dividends for Threshold and its players.

MUDdy Hobo Trackside Interview: Revian@HSpace 5.0

2009-10-10T15:29:00.000-04:00

For those who remember the old-school MUSH space engine known as HSpace, which had its origins on Hemlock MUSH, there's good news: A new incarnation of the project is underway at hspace.org

Revian, one of the main developers working on HSpace 5.0, took some time to answer a few questions from the MUDdy Hobo:

MH: HSpace used to be THE top-of-the-line RP MUSH space engine - so what happened to it?

Revian: It went through the hands of several coders, initially HSpace 4 was done by Gepht. When he didn't have the time anymore I took it over and developed it into 4.2, from there it was developed on my several developers, most notably Mark Hassman, who, assisted by Gepht I believe, did some work on it. This lead to the 'trueline' branch, which eventually died off as the people working on it didn't have the time anymore to work on it.

MH: How did the new resurgence come about? What drove the revival to create HSpace 5.0?

Revian: Well, I was away from the community for a bit as I settled into my real life and didn't really have the time to work on anything. Now that my life calmed down a bit I felt I should have a look how HSpace was doing. When I discovered the state it was in I decided it was time to do something back for the community where I learned many of the skills I now use in my life on a day-to-day basis. And I decided I should contribute something back, developing a new, better version of HSpace seemed like the right thing to do. Since Mongo(Shawn Sagady) had been working on a revival attempt for HS 4, I decided to contact him, he immediately responded with great enthousiasm. Because of my greater programming experience I took the programming lead role, while Shawn does more of the design side, since that's where his skill vastly surpass my own.

MH: What do you consider to be the most promising features in the works for HSpace 5.0?

Revian: It's hard to say, but I'm very excited about the modular system design, which should allow players huge flexibility in configuring and tweaking their own ships. We also have the new pseudo-Newtonian physics system, which should allow a whole new level of ship control during ship to ship combat. Additionally I'm very glad with the somewhat integrated economy, which will allow cargo mass affecting ship maneuverability. And also harvesting of resources in space. Finally, I hope that the integrated autopilot will make the system much more easy to use and attractive to the community's none-code-heavy players.

MH: The old HSpace had some mods that allowed the engine to be used on games that weren't necessarily space-oriented but did have vehicles, such as aircraft, boats, and submarines. How much support will HSpace 5.0 have for that kind of functionality?

Revian: Initially we do not plan to support that, simply because it is not our main target. We will focus on supporting space very well, as I honestly believe it's better for us to do one thing well than a lot of things and features mediocre. As a development team we're always moving though and the future might very well offer such functionality.

MH: How are you approaching HSpace development to make it more RP-friendly?

Revian: Well, first of all we've already received a lot of great suggestions from the community. We will be integrating better automation systems meaning on regular patrols more time can be spent roleplaying, and less to monitor every single gauche on the vessel. Also we will allow for more types of ship to ship (and bridge to bridge) communication. Finally we'll try and make the messages aboard the ship give more 'feel' to the vessel, we are examining the possibilities of windows in ship rooms for example that offer players in those rooms a view of space. We are not sure how much of that we can get into the first release though.

MH: What's the biggest challenge facing HSpace 5.0?

Revian: Well, asides from the things that will be challenging and we have control over, which is making it a true contribution to existing MUSHes and there system. A challenge we have less influence over lies in bringing it to the people and getting it to be used (and improved through feedback, suggestions and patches!) by the community.

MH: When are you aiming to release HSpace 5.0 for public consumption?

Revian: Currently we believe summer 2009 is a feasible time to have a fully functional initial release. That does not mean that it will contain all features requested, since we will continue to improve and develop it past that point. But it will provide all functionality needed to run a solid roleplaying (or social) environment on.

MH: Can HSpace 5.0 be used for platforms beyond PennMUSH? If not, are there any plans to eventually try to create mods that work with other platforms?

Revian: We will not be providing that functionality from the current development team, however we did take great care to make sure integration on other platforms is as easy as possible. For those technical amongst us, there are two files to be implemented, all functions from HSIface.h need to be implemented in a CPP file, and all hooks in HSIfacePennHooks.cpp will have to be duplicated for that platform. Internally HSpace uses no code that depends on Penn.

MH: What's your background with HSpace? With other coding projects?

Revian: I am a long time roleplayer(although time has not permitted me to roleplay for quite a while), I have experienced HSpace on several MUSHes, and also tried to develop a couple MUSHes using it, but never quite succeeded. In my daily life I'm a Software Engineer for a internet media company and I have experience with many open source packages (for example Mozilla, VLC, Qt), and have contributed to some.

MH: What inspirations colored the development of HSpace 5.0? (In the past, we've talked about how physics in 5.0 will let you mimic the spin-around-under-velocity-and-shoot maneuver from Babylon 5, for example.)

Revian: Well, I've always loved Sci-Fi, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica will most definitely have colored the development. Of course Star Trek, even though we will not Trek-orient the space system, and related technobabble will most definitely have had an influence. Last the people working on it and playing with it have inspired us, Shawn has contributed some great ideas and beaten some stupid ones out of me.

MH: What's been the biggest headache in trying to get HSpace 5.0 off the ground?

Revian: Getting people to take it seriously, thanks for helping with that!

MH: Developing a space system for a niche MUD population - a niche within a niche within a niche - seems like it might be a real boulder-up-the-hill sort of task. Why do it? Do you worry that you're investing a lot of time and energy in a system that might not get many eyes on it?

Revian: My personal ambition is mainly to learn, both in coding and in human relations it is a great learning experience to work on such a project. Although my real life job provides me with plenty of experiences and completely different learning experiences, it is within a strict corporate environment. This project gives me a chance to educate myself outside of that environment in different directions.

MH: Are there other similar applications you'd like to see developed for MUSHes?

Revian: I can't think of anything at the moment to be honest. I would love to eventually develop graphical extensions which would maintain the richness of text-based roleplaying but truly augment to the experience of the users environment.

Thanks to Revian for taking the time! And, if you're of a mind to check out the new HSpace, be sure to visit their testbed MUSH at the following telnet address: mindgames-studio.com 4201.

MUDdy Hobo Trackside Interview: Lasher@Aardwolf

2009-10-10T15:28:00.001-04:00

The MUDdy Hobo got a chance to barrage Lasher@Aardwolf with a heaping list of questions. And, whaddya know: He came back with a feast of answers!

Enjoy!

***

MH: How did Aardwolf come about? Had you played other games before developing your own? What lessons did you learn and then apply to Aardwolf?

Lasher: I played my first LPMud in 1993, it was the original “Valhalla” MUD and I found it via a games link on “gopher.” Amazing how much the internet has changed since then.

Anyway, it was down for a month so I went checking out some other MUDs and found a small ROM mud called “Aardvark.” It was a completely different style and didn’t have the depth of Valhalla, but was fun in a different way. After playing that MUD for a while I talked to the owner of it about doing some coding for them, and became an admin.

I’d never actually planned to run a MUD. If I had sat down one day with a plan to start one and thought about what I wanted to do I’m sure it would have been quite different.

How Aardwolf came about is basically that “Aardvark” was hosted on a University site in the Netherlands and became very unstable. After about a month of constantly being up and down, I moved the mud off-site expecting it to go down one day and never come back up. That is exactly what happened a couple of weeks later so we decided to rename the MUD (leaving open the option for the original to come back up) which is how the name became “Aardwolf,” really just to having something similar to Aardvark. I’ve seen many comments over the years that “Aardwolf” was a play to be listed high in alphabetical lists, but really was never a consideration, although it might have been why the original Aardvark was named so.

So, many of the design decisions you go through when opening a MUD never happened on Aardwolf, we just took what was there and worked on improving it. In terms of lessons learned outside of the MUD world then applied to Aardwolf, really, none. I had about 10 years experience as a software developer, so was used to considering ideas, weighing priorities etc, but in terms of running an online community it was trial by fire. The basic premise was “create the game I’d want to play.”

MH: How many active player accounts are there? How many are online at your peak hours?

Lasher: Active I would define as “logged in in the last 30 days” and I honestly don’t know. There are just over 36,000 pfiles in the game right now, but all that means is they have logged in within the last couple of years.

Numbers peak at just over 400 in the week and get up to 450 on the weekends. Our busiest period was probably 2004-2005 where we’d average around 500 in the evenings.

You can actually see stats by the hour over the last 24 hours by typing ‘online’ in the game and see can average over the last year per day by typing ‘online 2’. You can also see who is online at any given time at http://www.aardwolf.com/aardweb/livewho.php

MH: What steps did you take to build awareness about Aardwolf in its earliest days?

Lasher: Really, none. We didn’t advertise anywhere. We had a listing on TMC and that was it. The best form of advertising for MUDs always has been word of mouth, and probably always will be. When the mud moved and become “Aardwolf” it averaged around 10-15 people online and just grew from there.

MH: How has your playerbase been affected, if at all, by the advent of popular MMORPGs?

Lasher: Definitely, I think most MUDs have. Our average is down around 100 over the past few years and mostly it is due to people leaving for games such as World of Warcraft. You also have the dynamics of a generally older player base leaving for a variety of reasons such as marriage, career, etc. This has always happened but you always had an influx of newer younger players to replace them – I think that’s where we all struggle now, getting younger potential players to give a text-based game a chance.

MH: Have you added features to Aardwolf specifically to compete with MMOs?

Lasher: We haven’t added features to specifically compete with MMOs, but we’ve learned from them and added some features to make the game more accessible.

For example, 10 years ago it was very rare for MUDs to publish maps other than world maps. The “average” MUD player was quite comfortable finding a client, finding scripts and plugins for it, customizing their scripts to meet their needs and tweaking it all to work just right. Most game players today don’t have patience for that, they are used to clients that are made specifically for the game they are playing and everything just works.

We have built some things into the game itself such as speedwalking to areas and “spellup” scripts. Having a built-in speedwalk command (you can “runto [area name]”) would have been unheard of 10 years ago, but we added it, the users love it, new players aren’t frustrated trying to find areas and we feel like we don’t lose much because there’s enough to explore and enough puzzles to solve within the areas without making finding them itself a challenge.

MH: What do you feel sets Aardwolf apart from hundreds of other text-based games?

Lasher: I wish I knew. Whenever you see a MUD post an ad there’s certain things you always see, almost to the point that they’re cliches. Such as “We listen to player ideas,” “We apply the rules fairly.” Obviously we strive to do the same. Any kind of admin abuse is absolutely not tolerated and I think over time, the players see that. Most of our best ideas came from players and our job is to integrate them in a way that is fun and adds something to the game. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always taken the basic premise of “create the game I’d want to play” and, over time, we seem to have attracted a good number of people who seem to have the same tastes.

Beyond that, I don’t know why Aardwolf grew so much. For a very long time it was just your average ROM mud. We weren’t featured highly in any voting charts and didn’t even list on TMS until 2003 when we were already close to our peak, so it wasn’t that either. Having a big enough player base to vote us up today definitely helps with exposure, but how and why we grew that player base in the first place is still a mystery to me.

MH: Aardwolf features familiar MUD aspects like hack-and-slash monster killing and quests. What gives Aardwolf depth? What makes players keep coming back?

Lasher: Aardwolf is definitely a hack and slash mud. It has very little roleplay (some clans do a very good job of roleplaying internally, but that’s it) and doesn’t even have a good overall plot / story.

I think if Aardwolf proves anything it is that hack and slash does not have to mean “lacks depth.” While the game is based on leveling there are many side games and things for people to do. The Lua scripting system has been excellent for us and since implementing that, it is probably the first time I have ever not regretted starting out with LP on day one.

Some of the quests (“goals”) in areas are extremely deep and affect how areas will interact with you for the rest of the life of your character (which, btw, is forever, we never have and never will pwipe). There’s also little touches most people will never even notice, but those that do notice enjoy them. For example, when you kill something, the description of the corpse is unique for pretty much every ability that can kill something. That “feature” itself isn’t particularly exciting, but there’s hundreds of little touches like that through the game.

MH: The Academy provides an automated comprehensive introduction to the game. How long has it existed? Does it take the place of seat-of-the-pants newbie helping? How has it been received, in general, by new players?

Lasher: The academy is getting close to a year old now – it was actually the original reason the goal system was written, to track progress through the academy. While working on that I started to think “we could really use this everywhere” so it became more of a generic questing system. The academy itself is almost 10,000 lines of Lua code.

In general it has been very well received, some people feel it may be too long (and it probably is), but there’s a lot to cover and people can leave/return at any time. They can also entirely skip lessons and just review the notes.

I think in a future version of the academy we’ll add more “actions” early on the academy to break it up further. It absolutely doesn’t replace the regular “newbie helping” and there is still a very active “helper” team available to help new players get familiar with Aardwolf. However, if someone asks a series of questions that are all answered in the academy they will be encouraged to go through it.

MH: What prompted the implementation of a "speedwalking" system?

Lasher: We touched on this a little earlier, but Aardwolf is now close to 40,000 rooms almost all unique. None of these are auto-generated. One of the things people enjoyed with the old ROM mud was familiarity – they knew where a good portion of the areas were immediately. So, this is one reason.

The main reason was that we’re re-organizing some of the world and every time we changed something people would be frustrated because the speedwalk scripts they had acquired from wherever stopped working. It basically came down to “If these speedwalk scripts are going to be available to everyone anyway, they might as well be accurate and up to date” so we built them into the game. The continents are 10,000 rooms in total and most areas are linked to the continents – making people search within that to find areas really isn’t a fun experience. Not all areas can be speedwalked to within the game – some of them are harder to find and they are excluded.

I think it turned out to be a good compromise overall. Some of the quests and player competitions involve getting to an area as quickly as possible, before others get there. The built-in speedwalks will get you there but if people take the time to build their own they will get there faster. The built-in speedwalks have to be “lowest common denominator” and can’t take shortcuts through clan portals, higher level areas, etc that players can build for themselves.

MH: What games besides Aardwolf have you been playing lately?

Lasher: I don’t get much time to play games lately, which is unfortunate. I haven’t played another MUD or MMO in years – what little free time I have I like to work on the MUD itself. I actually have Bioshock from Christmas two years ago,4 unopened. This Christmas I got Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 – maybe I’ll even play them one day. The only game I really play is Guitar Hero, because I can pick it up, play for a few minutes, and put it down. I fear if I start something like Fallout 3 I’ll disappear completely for 3 months.

MH: Got any favorite books? Movies? Television shows?

Lasher: Books, I usually read what you’d expect from a MUD player – Sci-fi/Fantasy and programming manuals. My favorite author is Orson Scott Card. I made a point of reading something out of style recently and read Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett, very interesting book set in Medieval times. Movies, hmm, I have a hard time watching any movie more than once – when I already know how they end it’s less interesting, so there’s really no movies I watch over and over. Some of my favorites from the last few years are Gladiator, Vanilla Sky, Dark Knight, Natural Born Killers, Black Hawk Down. The only TV shows I watch are Heroes and Lost. Our TV is rarely on other than the Nickelodeon stuff my daughter has on. The last series I watched before that was Jericho, which turned out very disappointing the way it was cut short and finished in a hurry.

You didn’t ask about music. My musical tastes are all over the place but with a strong lean towards alternative, maybe even “emo”. Long term some of my favorite groups are Pink Floyd (including the Roger Waters solo stuff), U2, Iron Maiden and Nirvana. Some of the more recent groups are Blue October, Ludo, Toxic Airborne Event, Avenged Sevenfold, Muse and System of a Down.

MH: How much of the creative work - room descriptions, monster emotes, tutorial text - is your doing? Do you have a large admin team helping you?

Lasher: Most of the tutorial text in the academy was written by me, but the descriptions were written by others. I can code all day long and write helpfiles/tutorials no problem, but when it comes to actually describing something I hit a wall. If I wrote descriptions they would all turn out like “This is a sword”, “There is a wall here”. Even when I’m reading books I skip that stuff – I just need to know there’s a church the main character is about to enter, I don’t need to read two pages on the architectural style of its roof.

MH: Which works better for you: Fishing blindly for staffers in tried-and-true MUD forums or recruiting from within the ranks of Aardwolf's playerbase?

Lasher: Absolutely within the ranks of the playerbase. We’ve never recruited a staff member that wasn’t from the playerbase. In fact, at the time of writing we have only 10 active imms in total including myself and a handful of those are mostly just logging in to keep up with notes while they are busy with offline commitments. We’ve always operated this way and kept staff to a minimum by automating as much as we can. It’s worked out well for us, I find it much easier to keep a smaller team on the same page.

Keep in mind that builders are not considered “admins.” What makes a great quest coder and/or builder is not necessarily what makes a good person to deal with player questions and rule issues. All building takes place on another port. Many of the quests are player written – the Lua system is fairly easy to use and we have a handful of players who love to make new goals for others.

MH: What's the key, for you, in managing a staff on a text-based game, which is often volunteer-oriented and spread across the country, if not the globe?

Lasher: The key is finding the right people in the first place, making sure they know what is expected of them, then it just kind of runs. As they come from the player base and have usually been around a long time most of them already know how I feel about things and want the game to be run, and they’re motivated enough to have stepped up to imm in the first place. There’s no real “power” in being an imm on Aardwolf and no benefit to your player character, so people have to want to genuinely help improve the game and keep it running smoothly to take it on in the first place. We often joke that imms are monitored as much as players think the players are monitored.

MH: What's been the highest point for Aardwolf, in your mind? The game's greatest triumph?

Lasher: A player asked me this recently in an interview they did for an online broadcast and I really struggled to answer it. We’ve had our high and low points like every MUD but nothing jumps out as significantly above other events. One of the main ones would definitely have to be finally going live on a unique code base. We had so many false starts on that. It was rewritten in Java and about 80 percent done in 2000-2001 then the MUD grew to the point that Java simply wouldn’t support it (on the technology at the time) plus there were bugs in the Java implementation of Zlib at the time and MCCP is critical to us. It was started again in 2003 then put on hold when my daughter was born. Started again in 2005 then put on hold again later that year. In 2007 I was temporarily unemployed so took the opportunity to finally get it done – even then it took from August 2007 to March 2008 working in it pretty much full time and with dozens of players testing it to finally get it live. Nobody should ever underestimate the effort required to rewrite a MUD that is already running, it’s like rebuilding an airplane in mid air.

Perhaps the highest point of all that was when Hans Staerfeldt (one of the original authors of Diku) agreed to review our code when it was complete. Given the history of Aardwolf and challenges other MUDs have had with questions raised about whether or not their code is Diku, it was very nice to be able to do that. Receiving the email from Hans where he stated it was clearly not Diku and was also very complimentary on the code itself was the end of a chapter for Aardwolf that I’d have preferred never happened.

MH: What's been the lowest point? The game's biggest snafu, glitch or misstep?

Lasher: The lowest point, ironically, was during the development of the new codebase. One of the things I think people do enjoy about Aardwolf is the constant stream of changes and improvements, even after being online for so long. During that last 9 month period almost nothing got done so the game itself felt very stagnant to me. Players were also very concerned about the changes that were coming, we had to kill numerous “player wipe” rumors, etc.

The rewrite wasn’t just “convert exactly what we have today” but also incorporated a lot of changes. The look and feel was still the same by design but the game itself was quite different so naturally, when we actually went live some people didn’t like the new game as much and we took a hit to the playerbase.

Other than that, in 2004 we were down for just under 2 weeks when Hurricane Charley took out the power in Orlando. Two weeks after we came back up another hurricane took us out for six days. Two weeks after that, the third hurricane to hit Orlando that year took us down for another three days. The only comfort was that Florida Power were obviously learning on the job and getting faster at restoring power each time.

The server now, btw, is in a data center in Dallas (SoftLayer) and the building/test/backup server is in a data center in Wisconsin (LiquidWeb). The next hurricane to hit Orlando might take me offline, but not the MUD.

MH: What do you miss most about the smaller, more intimate playerbase of a fledgling game?

Lasher: Very little. I really enjoy that there is always something happening on Aardwolf, always a good group of people to talk to. The way the MUD runs there is the global population but when you break it down between clans and the “friend lists” everyone has (which includes a ‘friendtalk channel”) the MUD really doesn’t lose the intimacy because most people do most of their chatting on their friend list. It sounds like that could lead to “isolation” for some players, but it doesn’t, it works out quite well. The global channels are still active, but don’t have the insanity that you have with 400 players online and only global channels. The real concern there is for new players, obviously they haven’t met people and added them to friend lists yet, which is why we have a very active “helper” group and encouraging chatting / getting to know each other on the newbie channel.

If there’s a downside it is of course much more admin time and a lot more notes to read. I wouldn’t change it, but sometimes when you only have an hour or two to get something done then spend that time reading notes instead it would be nice to be smaller. I’d actually like to grow the MUD more (who wouldn’t, right?). A larger player base means you can add more games and global competitions that require player involvement and usually always have someone around to take part. It opens the window for new clans without diluting the existing ones, which always brings some new dynamics to the game as each clan has its own theme, skills, allies and styles of pk.

MH: What do you like most about a larger, broader playerbase now that Aardwolf has grown and prospered since 1996?

Lasher: Answered most of this in the question above – the fact that with so many people there is always something going on, the forums are active, it’s easy to get feedback (understatement), and lots of people interested and engaged in the game. I don’t know if “ego” is the right word, but there’s also a lot of personal satisfaction there too – to see so many people playing a game that you’ve had such a large part in creating. We’ve lost count of the number of offline marriages and children born to people who met in Aardwolf.

MH: When a new player experiences your game for the first time, what do you want them to feel? What do you expect them to take away from their introduction to Aardwolf?

Lasher: Most of this we already touched on, but the quick version would be that they leave feeling that while the game is “hack and slash” based there is enough depth and other things to do besides level that it is fun and doesn’t suffer from not having a more serious theme.

Even players that have been on the MUD for 10+ years will find things they didn’t know about – either side effects to their actions within areas themselves, or just commands they weren’t aware of. It’s always nice to see people comment “I had no idea that was there!” after being on the MUD for almost a decade.

We also have lots of hidden little “easter eggs” that are fun to find. Hint to Aardwolf players: some have never been found.

We do put a lot of work into making the community overall as friendly and helpful as possible, but we walk a fine line here because we try not to be over-bearing in the rules too and not everyone wants to be “friendly and helpful”. I think whether they like the game or not most people do leave with the impression that the game/community genuinely want to help new players get started and they’re welcome on Aardwolf. It is a place to hang out, chat with friends, join some games, level if they like, do quests and just take it easy. As with all online games, most people’s first experience really comes down to who is online at the time and whatever else is going on.

As a side note, this is where I struggle with MUD reviews in general – you can’t really review a MUD in depth unlesss you play it for weeks/months. Many MUDs have content and dynamics that you never even see until you’ve played them for a long time and Aardwolf is no different in that respect.

MH: You've got forums in-game, but not on the website. What motivated that choice?

Lasher: We’ve always had in-game forums so that is the “standard” for Aardwolf. I’ve never wanted to have split forums where some are on the web and some are in-game. What I’d really like to do is integrate the in-game forums with something like SMF so that posts on one automatically appear on the other.

We’ve actually taken some steps to work towards this recently – the behind the scenes structure of the boards in Aardwolf have changed to support threads and work in a way that lends itself better to integration with a webforum. The ‘who is online’ URL I mentioned briefly earlier was really just a test of the web interface in the MUD itself that will be necessary to support that.

So, this is more a matter of finding the time to do it properly rather than a policy decision to not have our forums on the web.

MH: What keeps you focused and in tune with Aardwolf? How do you renew your enthusiasm for a project that's into its second decade?

Lasher: I actually have the opposite problem – one of my biggest frustrations with Aardwolf is finding time to work on it more. After the three things I won’t give up (raising a young family, my career and working out/playing racquetball) there isn’t a whole lot left unfortunately. Every time we implement an idea, it spawns multiple new ideas and there is so much room for improvement / so many things we could do it’s frustrating not being able to get to it all. Development on Aardwolf is usually an hour or two here and there.

Occasionally, I’ll get a full day to work on it and those days are awesome. So, it’s not hard to maintain enthusiasm for it.

MH: Are text-based games doomed? Or, perhaps best to phrase it this way: How do you think text-based games can evolve and avoid extinction via natural selection?

Lasher: I wouldn’t say “doomed,” but I don’t think any of us can ignore trends over the last few years.

MMOs and the mass of other things to do on the web has definitely had an impact on text-based MUDs.

Even for those of us that have not seen their averages drop too much, you have to consider that as a “percentage of total internet users who play MUDS” or even the more specific “percentage of total internet users playing RPGs online who play MUDs.” If we plotted those on a graph rather than actual players online you’d see a much sadder looking picture.

I think this is partly because of the text interface itself and partly because some older MUDs tend to be stuck in a paradigm of “figure everything out for yourself”- MUDs need to make themselves more accessible.

There’s also the variety of these. If you can get an MMO player to try a MUD at all, they may only try one. If someone looking for immersive roleplaying stumbles across Aardwolf as their first MUD, or someone looking for hack and slash stumbles across an “RPI” MUD as their first MUD, they may never try another. It’s all so hit and miss.

We did some work with Nick Gammon (the author of MUSHclient) last year on making a custom version of MUSHclient for Aardwolf. There’s nothing custom in the MUSHclient code itself, btw, just a series of plugins. This came from me constantly seeing people new to MUDs struggle with configuring a client. Our reasoning was that if these scripts are all out there anyway we might as well accept that, standardize them and make them work. I emailed Nick to see if he was okay with me putting together a custom install of MUSHclient that included a bunch of scripts. We exchanged a few emails and he got interested in the project itself.

Overall, it was a great collaboration, many improvements were made both to MUSHclient itself (the miniwindows, hotspots, etc) and Aardwolf as a result of that work. Nick was awesome to work with, btw, highly recommend it if you ever have the opportunity.

Our experience since then has proved beyond a doubt there is definitely a demand for a game-specific client preconfigured where everything just works. MUSHclient is still a general client and still has that “tech” feel to it – as with any MUD client, you need to be somewhat comfortable technically to really get the most out of it. But even with what is there we’ve heard from many people who wouldn’t have played the MUD at all if not for the client.

We’ve seen a trend over the last few years where lots of MUDs have aded custom clients and after our experience with MUSHclient I’m starting to really understand the value of that.

MH: How do you think Aardwolf will change in the next five years? Ten?

Lasher: This one is hard to say. If you’d have asked me five years ago I wouldn’t have a good answer either. Short term, we have a project under way to built out 28 “subclasses” and add unique abilities to them. Most of these abilities are things that really change the balance or dynamics of the game so they take a long time to test and get just right, that is going to be out there for a while. I’d also like to have that forum integration completed eventually.

Thinking strategically/longer term, I do think we’ll end up with some kind of custom client. I’m torn between using Java or something else web-based and creating a more robust client that would more than likely require an install and have to run on Windows or a Windows emulator on other environments.

I do think we have to consider at least some kind of graphics at some point. Our map would lend itself very well to an overhead view and it would make the game so much more accessible. I’d never do that at the expense of being able to play the game via a traditional telnet based client, but it can both, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There’s varied opinions on this on MUD boards. One argument says that people who really care about graphical games are already playing graphical games and those that don’t care, well, just don’t care.

I think there’s a middle ground where a certain amount of graphics will be enough to make the game accessible to a group of new players. Not the group who buy a new Gforce Ultra-Mega-Turbo-18 card three times a year to get 2.3 more FPS out of Call of Duty, but they’re at the other extreme end of the scale. There’s a lot of room in the middle.

Beyond that, it will be just doing what we’ve always done – reading ideas, designing quests and listening. I have lists of ideas that could easily consume several years to complete and I could lay out what I think we’ll implement in 2009. If past years are anything to go by (and there’s no reason to think they’re not), at least 50 percent of the things that will get added to Aardwolf this year aren’t even ideas yet.

I’ve always felt that if we could make potential players really try the game for a few hours then enough of them would stick around that we could grow again. Most players now find us by word of mouth or from MUD sites (TMS and TMC). Other than by asking people to vote for us, we’ve never been big self promoters on other sites and probably need to fix that. People will often ask me “When are we going to advertise more?” and I usually respond with “We will only get one chance to get folks to stick around, we’re not ready yet.” But really I don’t think I’ll ever consider it “ready” so maybe it is just time...

***

Thanks to Lasher for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to visit Aardwolf when you get a chance!

Short Attention Span Review: "Glee" 10/7

2009-10-09T08:35:00.002-04:00

This show about awkward teenage performers already won me over with its off-kilter premise before I saw it. But now, every week, I watch it for pretty much one reason: Sue Sylvester. In this episode, she demonstrated why on every front she's my favorite character. She's clever, crafty, wicked, spiteful ... and, deep down, desperate to win the approval and admiration of, well, everybody. I mean, she even lies about her age TO HER DIARY! And she gets the best lines, delivered with absolute deadpan, about how she was born in the Panama Canal zone, never got a passport, but ran for office twice.

Her machinations during this episode made the weird love quadrangle between Will, Terri, Emma, and the coach much more interesting than it usually is. And now she's co-coordinator of Glee Club from now on? Hooked already, but really hooked now.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 10-5

2009-10-09T08:32:00.003-04:00

All right, so is Nathan REALLY dead this time? Is HE going to haunt Sylar now?

I'm just beyond having any interest in the old crop of Heroes characters. Seriously. Spending 20 minutes watching Hiro try to stop a guy from Xeroxing his ass? Mind-numbing and not fun. I want to know more about the carnies. I enjoyed watching Swoozie Kurtz avenge her daughter's death.

Amp it up, show!

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 10/5

2009-10-09T08:27:00.002-04:00

James Earl Jones is an excellent actor, but I honestly can't say I loved this episode. The effort to justify killing a tyrant with a pat answer like "the moderates are in control now" doesn't (in my mind) do this show any favors. What strikes me as more likely is that some other tyrant would likely take control, thus rendering pointless what amounts to a normally intelligent character committing a political assassination.

Sorry, show, but I think that might have been a shark moment for me.

Short Attention Span Review: "Zombieland"

2009-10-04T16:58:00.003-04:00

How to put this succinctly:

Tight, compact, clever, and fun. A horror movie with BRAIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNs!

Normally, I'm not a huge Woody Harrelson fan, but he's great in the role of the zombie apocalypse's answer to Han Solo. Jesse Eisenberg, on the other hand, needs to be careful not to get typecast into movies involving theme parks and the word "LAND" in the title. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are a promising couple of scoundrels on the make.

And what's not to like about a cameo from Bill Murray?

Short Attention Span Review: "Stargate Universe" Premiere - 10/2

2009-10-03T12:56:00.002-04:00

Here's a new show that wants to fill the big boots of not one but TWO major SyFy franchises: Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica.

Take a mix of military and civvy people, throw in a scientist with a shaky moral compass who could be a hero or a villain (depending upon his mood at the time), and dump them all on a starship a bazillion light years from home.

Hi, welcome to SGU!

I didn't hate it. Maybe I gave it more of a chance because the "us" character is a pudgy gamer geek who solves a puzzle on an MMORPG and wins a ticket to the Stargate program. But the characters - particularly Nash, played by Robert Carlyle - are interesting enough to keep me watching for a little while.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 10/1

2009-10-03T12:46:00.004-04:00

So here's the premise of this week's episode:

A crazy U.S. military commander turns former soldiers into human bombs to blow up in train stations, apparently as a means of thwarting the weird bald guy who likes to over-pepper his food.

First wha-?! moment: Astrid pulls up an FBI file on an unusual bombing in a Philadelphia train station that just happened. REALLY? It wasn't on CNN? Or Fox News? It's not HUUUUUGE news when a U.S. transportation center gets bombed? REALLY?!

Second wha-?! moment: The FBI Interwebz file says "No signs of explosive residue." The highly trained crime scene techs fail to notice the bits and pieces of organic shrapnel sticking out of everybody in the place, but Crazy Doc and Pacey? They're on the case!

Third wha-?! moment: The FBI can track a soldier to her *cab* while she's traveling under an alias, but the mysterious colonel can't be found unless they somehow triangulate his signal. And yet, with only seconds to spare after the triangulator is jammed, Pacey is able to pick him out through a potted fern.

Jesus H. Bojiggedy Boogers Christ, show. I want to love you. Stop the stupid.

OtherSpace: Staff Meeting Summary - 9/30/2009

2009-10-01T06:36:00.003-04:00

Here's a brief summary of what we discussed during the staff meeting on Wednesday night:

* Colchek is rolling with an event card activity requested by one of our players. He's also getting ready to tweak +calendar to it works with SQL rather than an in-MUSH object.
* Wik is continuing work on implementing HSpace 5.0, including docking hatches, nebulae effects, and trade. He's also developing rewards for newbie helpers.
* I'm getting the artifact tournament in motion this weekend and it should run until November. I've also begun a revamp of the OtherVerse Wiki (finally), brought back Colin Neidermeyer as a recurring character, and started posting in my personal blog again.

We talked about some other things too:

* Canonical planets - B'hira, Hekayt, etc. - will be made available to players who have a Crimson Belt and 10 alt vouchers. Control of these planets will be limited to one per player. We're working on ideas for Action Cards/Event Cards just for planets, which can be purchased with RPP, combined and redeemed for resources that can, in turn, be sold to players.
* I need to resume work on the OtherSpace online novel.
* I should proceed with redirecting the crafting system along the lines of basic/modified items rather than basic/improved/advanced.
* M*U*S*H is hosting Mudtoberfest in October. We haven't been involved in a few years. I think we should be.
* I've gotten my personal blog up and running again.

Fallen Earth: End of the World and Beginning of New Career!

2009-09-30T14:17:00.002-04:00

About three and a half years ago, I joined the development team working on Fallen Earth. I'm pretty sure some people thought I was making it all up. I'm not sure what they thought I was doing instead. Panhandling for coins and WoW time cards at Maynard and Chapel Hill Road? Working nights for the CIA? Infiltrating the Keebler Elves cookie factory? WELL! Look at the picture! Proof positive that I have, in fact, not been making it up all this time.

The game is now a reality, complete with a box and everything.

Do you own your copy yet?

Learning to lead the dog

2009-09-29T18:49:00.003-04:00

Recently finished Cesar's Way, a book by Cesar Millan (of National Geographic's "The Dog Whisperer"). If you've got a dog with some tendencies toward misbehavior, I highly recommend it.

I'm already seeing great results of working with my Golden Pyrenees, Huckleberry, based on the advice contained in this book. Really, they're simple things that basically boil down to showing the dog who's boss without freaking out and making sure you don't mistake a dog for a human, with human psychology.

I've still got to work on my pack leader skills, but we're on the right track.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 9/28

2009-09-29T07:41:00.002-04:00

I think I'm just about done with this show.

The Parkman-Sylar craziness has gone beyond silly. I think we're supposed to be perversely drawn to the college ho-mance developing between Claire and alcopop heiress Madeline Zima, but I'm not. Peter's gullibility is second only to Parkman's. The show did too much telling and not enough *showing* - case in point: The mansion of the doomed! That was a missed opportunity.

I'm less intrigued by Samuel this week.

The one bright spot: Deaf girl who sees sounds as color. Life for her: One big game of Simon.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 9/28

2009-09-29T07:37:00.003-04:00

So, to make up for last week's premiere being pretty much all about Gregory House, we get an episode that's pretty much all about Foreman, Thirteen, and Taub while House plays Galloping Gourmet at Wilson's place.

The patient of the week: A video game designer who trolls the Internet for a diagnosis and uses reader polling to determine courses of treatment. So, of course, I thought that was rather cool.

Also cool: Andre Braugher seems poised to make regular appearances as House's shrink. Win!

Not so cool: I didn't really care about Foreman and his efforts to supplant House or wrestle with the conflict of interest issues of being his girlfriend's boss.

Short Attention Span Review: "Saturday Night Live" Season Premiere

2009-09-28T18:54:00.005-04:00

It's a good thing Megan Fox has looks going for her, because she's a pretty terrible actress and she simply cannot bring the funny. Of course, it probably doesn't help that the writers only seemed capable of giving her material that involved either 1) being a pinup girl or 2) being vapid.

Weekend Update? Not very funny. They're hamstringing the show by wasting their better material on the Thursday episodes.

The two performances by U2? Quite good.

And the f-bomb inadvertently uttered by the new cast member? Best moment of an otherwise meh night.

Short Attention Span Review: "Dollhouse" Season Premiere

2009-09-28T18:44:00.003-04:00

This show was up and down for me last season. It ended mostly on an up note, especially with the surprise renewal.

I DVRed the show Friday night. I started watching it on Sunday while taking a break from hunting for missions in World of Warcraft's Blade's Edge Mountains (where I was hoping to get my On the Blade's Edge achievement). I discovered that I didn't care at all about the plot involving Agent Helo, Echo, and Apollo Brit-Style, but I did enjoy the Topher/Amy Ackscar story. However, even THAT got old for me.

Eventually, I opted to go get drunk on WoW's Brewfest. Yes. I preferred to stare at a screen getting increasingly blurrier due to virtual alcohol. I'm fairly certain this means Dollhouse is doomed.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" Season Premiere/Second Episode

2009-09-28T18:27:00.003-04:00

I loved this show last season.

I greatly enjoyed the season premiere, with the Terminators who transform using iPod cords and the parallel universe wackiness.

That said: The only thing I really enjoyed about the second episode was the subtle reference to the fact that Professor Hobbit-Shouter stole Pacey from another dimension. The crazy monster-of-the-week? That plot was used on an old X-Files episode and it was done better back then.

Still watching, but growing weary of X-Files rehashes.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" Season Premiere

2009-09-28T18:19:00.002-04:00

Heroes is back. Do I actually care?

Well, only a little.

I'm very intrigued by the carnival storyline. Consider me mildly interested in the Nathan/Sylar drama. And I'm meh about Parkman, although I got a kick out of his MindSylar moments.

Can't muster up much love for the Tracy/HRG business, but did enjoy Ray Park and his two-bladed zoominess.

Worth watching for another week.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" Season Premiere

2009-09-28T17:47:00.003-04:00

House is back!

In the season premiere, he's in the loony bin. By the end, he's out of it - after playing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for a while, nearly getting a fellow patient killed, and having an affair with a married woman in the ward.

On one hand, I'm glad they're not spending much of the season following House's misadventures in the asylum. On the other, Andre Braugher is outstanding and I hope they bring him back for more wit-matching against House.

A fun, well-produced return of the show.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy...

2009-09-28T12:35:00.003-04:00

...is an overblown Bill Clinton contradiction in terms.

I'm a registered Democrat, I'm relatively liberal-minded, but I have never believed in the idea of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" as touted by the Clintons. Ever. Conspiracies are secretive by nature. No one ever made a secret out of working against the Clintons. Nor, despite his latest claims, has there been any subterfuge involved in the campaign against President Obama's health care plan.

Saying it's a "vast right-wing conspiracy" requires an underestimation of the Republican party's long-standing expertise at tearing down their opponents. It wasn't a "vast left-wing conspiracy" that got Barack Obama elected. It was an organized Democratic effort.

Give credit where it's due and don't resort to scare tactics. I didn't like it coming from Republicans. I don't like it coming from Democrats, either.

No Excuses...

2009-09-28T10:49:00.005-04:00

It's been nearly two months since I posted in this blog.

I blame Twitter and Facebook, ultimately. It's very easy for me to exhaust most of my random thoughts and musings via those outlets. I haven't bothered to expand on them here and I should.

So, my goal from now on: Use Twitter and Facebook like a scratch pad for ideas. Then take a bit of time to flesh out the premises here.

In other news: I've really been exceedingly busy working on Fallen Earth and the games at Jointhesaga.com this last couple of months.

Fallen Earth is available for digital download now. It should be on store shelves tomorrow.

OtherSpace and Necromundus are chugging along!

Short Attention Span Review: "Weeds"

2009-07-29T14:08:00.005-04:00

What the hell?

I ask that, during the last episode of the season, Nancy finds her once-dead husband coming out the shower - Bobby Ewing-style - so we can chalk this abortion of a season off to being a bad dream.

Short Attention Span Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-29T14:06:00.002-04:00

Visually impressive, but not my favorite of the bunch. They cut a lot of good stuff that I would have liked to have seen and put in some things I could have done without. Solid, sure, and mostly entertaining.

I particularly enjoyed Jim Broadbent's performance.

Oaks at Weston - the Epilogue

2009-07-29T14:03:00.002-04:00

So, in the end, the assholes at Bell Properties got that money out of us. Basically, it amounted to $600.

A good friend of ours was recently looking to move to a new apartment. I steered her well clear of the Oaks at Weston. Had matters ended on better terms, I might have encouraged otherwise. But, under the circumstances, she opted against moving to the Oaks. She might have paid them $750 a month or so to live there for a year or so.

And that's how the payback goes. I don't get my money back, but I keep them from getting thousands of dollars.

Yes, I feel kinda good about that.

Short Attention Span Review: "True Blood" 7/12

2009-07-12T23:07:00.003-04:00

Nothing but love for this episode.

Marianne's taken her freaky passion-tuning-fork act on the road! And it's a road trip for Sookie and Bill and Jessica to Texas, the land of big hats and big hair and, apparently, vampires with really bad attitudes. Meanwhile, Sam TRIES to take a road trip, but he gets all sidetracked by the cute waitress with the mysterious scars on her back.

And Lafayette. Dude. The post-Eric blood shenanigans were hilarious.

Speaking of Eric: Good to see him evolving into a regular character. He amuses me.

The wacko church plot is interesting, but oddly predictable thus far. May get better next week?

Weeds 7/6

2009-07-07T16:08:00.002-04:00

I'm sort of baffled by this episode, mostly because it didn't really make much logical sense. At all. Yes, it was funny but:

* I just can't buy Nancy's decision not just to move in with crazy Mexican murder-man, but also to take her SON, who she spent part of the episode trying to redeem from an impending life of gangster living.
* And I can't buy Nancy's willingness to let Celia walk away with a cell phone full of dead fridge guy shots. Seriously? That's just stupid.
* I had a knee-jerk peeve about the portrayal of the MMO gamer woman from the bank being a crazy virgin. Not all of us are virgins!

Sorry, show. Fewer plots this week, which was a plus. But...c'mon. Get better.

Fireworks Part 2 post-mortem

2009-07-05T21:50:00.001-04:00

As much fun as I had with Fireworks Part 1 (the Medlidikke attack and the arrival of the Phyrrians), I think it's safe to say I actually had a little more fun with Part 2, MUCH later on Saturday.

* First, a group of Phyrrians came over from their warships, babbled about the Overmind at Tamila, and then died.
* And then I got a page from Alastair Hall that his team had made it to the Gearclanger Hub and wanted to see what they could do to bring the systems back online.

Well. This had advanced faster than I expected. I didn't think anyone would bother trying to bring Comorro out of her coma until Sunday! Now I actually had to come up with the whole story of how the Medlidikke managed to put Comorro out of commission. I thought I'd at least get to sleep on it!

Oh, well.

Originally, I was going to go with some kind of EMP. Then I was just going to have a sedative cloud of some kind. Finally, I settled on something far ickier and possibly more fun: A giant tentacled energy parasite that had grown to fill most of the engineering chamber. Not just giant, of course. It also had to be slimy.

There were some amusing moments during this scene, particularly with Eylohta trying to stab the tentacles, Alexandra trying to dodge them while hanging onto the generator the beast wanted to grab, and then Reode got to fly in and snatch the generator back from the monster. Finally, with help from a Healing Hands action card, Alastair and Alexandra came up with a nasty pharmaceutical concoction that killed the critter.

The team got nice and slimed. Win for me! And they rescued Comorro. Win for them!

My only complaint was that during the final minutes, we had a player come wandering onto the scene from the docking hub "to be where other people were." First of all, that's a classic case of metagaming. VERY bad form. Second, even if it's true that the player had no other motive, the appearance is that they're trying to muscle in on the scene. How much fun is it to spend hours working toward a solution for a scene when someone else just pops in at the final moment to screw things up (or steal the limelight)?

Don't do that kind of stuff, folks.

Anyway, great job everyone. The first IC medals are being given out today and I hear some rumblings about vengeance and such. Always a good sign!

Fireworks post-mortem (with less mortem than usual?!)

2009-07-04T19:25:00.000-04:00

Today's Fireworks event was the first big-ticket holy-crap no-kidding Brody-tries-to-kill-everyone showcase since we made the transition to the new OtherSpace and implemented action cards.

A lot of people turned out to let me take a few shots at them. I appreciated the opportunity. I dropped 12 Medlidikke pirates into Comorro Station and rendered the sentient vessel unconscious so that she couldn't bring her own impressive array of weapons to bear on the bad guys.

To make reffing a bit cleaner, I rolled for all 12 pirates at the beginning to determine their various result levels. So, for the rest of the fight, there would be a consistent and unchanging outcome for the bad guys. The only variable would be how the good guys did and what cards they might need to employ to overcome the bad guys.

By the end of the fight, Varal, Thayndor Zahir, and Zabyra were badly injured. Seven pirates had been decapitated, disemboweled, plasma-vaped, or neck-shot. The five remaining Medlidikke grabbed Thayndor and teleported out with help from none other than Ancient Shog, everyone's favorite Thul.

First important note: No characters died! Zabyra and Thayndor came close, but Thayndor played his Tier 2 Whoa card and Sheppard came to Zabyra's rescue with a Tier 1 Lucky Break card.

I did not, as Markiel predicted, kill Markiel.

The event was a lot of fun for me. I enjoyed giving the players a challenge, but it wasn't anything they couldn't overcome, and the generosity of players like Sheppard toward Zabyra was really heartening. As it concluded, I'd managed to reintroduce one of the game's oldest villains (Shog!), introduced some new villains (the Medlidikke, up close and personal), and dropped a mysterious dozen Phyrrian warships on Comorro's doorstep.

What's up with that shit? You'll just have to wait and see.

Short Attention Span Review: "Weeds" 6/29

2009-06-30T17:52:00.002-04:00

I'm a fan of this show. Don't get me wrong.

That said: Too many plots going on at one time to cram into a 30-minute space. No fewer than five story threads, all of them done a disservice by the quantity. What happened to the cop? We're left to assume. How did the dirty cop working with Silas and Doug come back into the equation? I dunno, but the old woman's "asswhore" comment was classic. And then there's Andy off on a mission to steal Judah's money - and then he has to pretend to be Judah and have sex with the bank teller. And Shane getting duped by his pot-thieving teacher. And where's the disappearing Sucio? And there's Celia! All of this, crammed into 30 minutes. It's just too much.

Make the show longer.

Short Attention Span Review: "True Blood" 6/28

2009-06-29T00:22:00.002-04:00

Quite a bit going on in this episode!

I *almost* forgive the writers for making Sookie do such a stupid thing last week, as it resulted in a springboard for Jessica to find a new love interest, Lafayette to get the hell out of vampire prison, and Sookie and Bill to take their show on the road to Dallas.

Meanwhile, at Jesus camp, Jason's almost certain to end up in bed with Sara.

Over at Maryann's place, all lust is breaking loose.

And what the hell?! The new waitress likes to gore the competition?

Enjoying the twists and turns!

Short Attention Span Review: "Year One"

2009-06-26T23:35:00.002-04:00

Rather than joining the sheep getting their brain cells eradicated by Michael Bay's new giant robot movie, I gave Harold Ramis some money for "Year One." It's not a great movie. It's not a sweeping summer blockbuster. But it's fun and has some genuinely funny moments. I got a kick out of the slow-speed horse cart chase scene and the seemingly never-ending murder of Abel by Cain. And while Transformers had Megan Fox, Year One had three attractive women sharing the screen. Also: Oliver Platt vamped up and begging for Michael Cera to oil him up? That was pretty damned funny.

The Oaks at Weston: Thieves

2009-06-26T23:05:00.002-04:00

Some months back, late in 2008, I got a letter from the Oaks at Weston - my apartment at the time - which indicated that my current lease was up soon.

We didn't have any intention of renewing but, naturally, didn't want to close the door on the possibility if we didn't find somewhere new. We found somewhere new about a month before the lease expired. I figured it didn't make much difference one way or another, since our lease was running out, but I told the office folks that we'd be moving out.

And this is when they explained that we couldn't just let the lease run out. See, there was a clause in the fine print that indicated that, unless stated otherwise, the lease would renew upon expiration. It's the sort of logic that belonged in the George W. Bush years.

We moved to our new place, paid the Oaks for the time we lived in the apartment, and no more. Naturally, that didn't satisfy them. This week, two months after we've been out of the Oaks - and plenty of time for them to get new tenants in the old place - we got a letter from a collection agency demanding money. Then the agency called my cell phone and my office.

I spent a good 45 minutes on the phone with a hapless fellow who gave his name as Steve Sims, using a colorful selection of epithets and comparisons to extortionists and kneecapping thugs, which had the effect of making him act all butt-hurt and tell me that I "wasn't very pleasant."

Well, Steve, fuck you. It's not pleasant to have to deal with strong-arm tactics from the hired dog of a faceless corporation that's out to take money it hasn't earned from my limited resources. So, you'll just have to cope with the fact that someone you're trying to rape financially puts up a fight and makes you suffer a knock to the nuts in the process.

My tirade also yielded a better deal on the "settlement," which, if paid immediately, would prevent a hit to our credit rating and rental history. So, I'm glad about that much. And on the offchance we take legal action against the Oaks, it's better to pay and be done with it, then argue the ethics of it later.

As I close that chapter, let me share some of my thoughts about The Oaks at Weston, currently owned by the Steven D. Bell Corporation. I lived there for three years. Here are some key recollections:

* There's one dumpster for hundreds of residents. Every Sunday evening and Monday morning, the place looked like a Mumbai slum piled high with trash bags and tossed furniture.
* The smoke detectors are cheap pieces of shit with a tendency for beeping incessantly.
* Maintenance responsiveness was, with rare exceptions, atrocious.
* Parking? A fucking joke.
* Rent costs? Too high for what it got you.
* They dicked me over previously for the carpet in the first apartment, before we moved into the new place. They made me pony up cash to replace all the carpet, claiming Huck's fur had ruined it. Bullshit. A good cleaning would have done the trick. But we were already moving into the new place, so they had me over a barrel nice and neat. I should have known right then that they were lying thieves.
* They did a shitty job of keeping track of package deliveries. I had to ask on several occasions to get packages that had been dropped off weeks earlier. Some of those items had been perishable goods that Karen had ordered.
* They misrepresented or lied through omission about lease contracts, especially when they had the advantage.

Ultimately, it was an advantage that I gave them. My advice: Never sign a contract with an apartment complex unless you've had someone familiar with rental contract law look it over first. Make sure you have fair terms. Save yourself some money and heartache. Be smart.

Short Attention Span Review: "True Blood" 6/21

2009-06-22T12:32:00.002-04:00

I liked a lot about this episode:

* Lafayette's still alive and kicking, and seems to have talked his way into immortality as a vampire.
* Everything involving Eric and his pals.
* Maryann is just fricking ancient and scary. Loved what she did to the crowd at Merlotte's.
* Sooki and Tara connecting again.
* The leadership retreat where Jason went all PTSD onstage.
* Sam and Andy commiserating.
* Sooki and Jessica bonding.

Something I didn't like:

* Sooki's dumbass decision to take Jessica on a road trip to visit Mom and Dad. She's got to be smarter than this. It seemed like a bad decision made for the sake of plot contrivance - adding one more cliffhanger to an episode that already had a couple of good ones.

Short Attention Span Review: "The Proposal"

2009-06-21T00:37:00.003-04:00

Although this movie is amusing, its fundamentally flawed narrative premise and forced conclusion strip it of most redeemable features. At its core, The Proposal seems to preach that it's okay to give in to Stockholm Syndrome - to be extorted into a situation and then become enamored with your captor - rather than leaving yourself open to the possibility of making a fresh start with an old love or maybe finding a *real* love with that girl in the coffee shop back in New York City.

I liked about 75 percent of this movie a lot. But the ending killed it for me.

Short Attention Span Review: "True Blood" 6/14

2009-06-16T17:55:00.003-04:00

The Deep South vampire series is back on HBO for the summer - and it's a welcome return, as far as I'm concerned.

I breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out the dead body in the back of Andy's police car wasn't Lafayette! But, poor Lafayette, I'm not sure that where he ended up is much better!

The bits introducing the the holy roller church folks that Jason is getting tangled up with got a little draggy, but I think it mostly felt that way because these are new characters.

Loved the bit of back story we got about Marianne. And I wonder how often Carl pisses her off like that? Not often, I guess. "NO ONE WANTED TOWELS!" *smack*!

One month after WoW...

2009-06-16T17:54:00.001-04:00

It’s been a month since I left behind the World of Warcraft completely. So, let’s review what’s been accomplished in the post-WoW era thus far:

* We’ve got the new Drupal-powered site at http://www.jointhesaga.com
* OtherSpace has a crafting system, with items that players can customize and rename
* OtherSpace has a roleplaying "belt" system, which provides recognition for our most accomplished roleplayers
* OtherSpace has an HSpace testbed
* We've been able to showcase some fantastic new art by Reode
* I’ve kicked off a Twitter MUSH-awareness campaign
* The who list is regularly in double columns
* We've started offering bits of the old OS grid to players as keepsakes
* We're offering personalized virtual bobblehead souvenirs
* We're offering jointhesaga.com email addresses again
* We've added new races that ought to appeal to anthropomorphic roleplaying fans
* Story-wise: The Koltkamir government on Aukam formed under Zar Hideg Fekretu, creating a new foe for the playerbase

Back in January, someone asked: If OtherSpace is still sluggish in six months, would I shut it down for once and for all? The good news: No need to answer that question, because it feels like the sluggishness is fading. From a State of the Game standpoint, I think we're in pretty good shape. We've got a solid core of veteran JTSers, a growing crop of newbies, and a fairly steady flow of visitors. We've even seen players who faded away in the past showing up again with renewed enthusiasm. We've seen an uptick in PayPal contributions, which are always welcome to help offset the expense and effort of running the site and marketing the game. We're not anywhere close to break-even, but we're paid up for the year and in no danger of being shut down. Our Google analytics show an upswing in new traffic, not from old reliable sources like Top MUD Sites and the MUD Connector, but from Twitter and Facebook.

No, OtherSpace won't be shutting down anytime soon if I can help it. It's only going to keep getting stronger. As crafting continues to expand, as we add Hekayt Prime and other worlds to the grid, as we introduce the space system, OtherSpace will continue to grow and thrive thanks to the combined energies of an enthusiastic playerbase and an involved lead designer - the way it worked best in the old days.

The news for Necromundus isn't quite as cheery, but it's not all that grim, either. We've let it slip under the radar during the past few months while the lead admins worked on adding subclasses and expanding the sandboxy feel of Necromundus. However, now that OS is starting to steam along nicely and the work Necro's admins have been doing behind the scenes is close to finished, I'll start dedicating some energy to that game. Besides a lot of marketing on TMS, TMC, Twitter, and Yahoogroups, it'll get a bunch of new badges, including the roleplaying belt system that started on OtherSpace. Both OtherSpace and Necromundus will get a new belt, the Steel Belt, which will be one step above the Golden Belt - awarded to a player who accomplishes the achievement of earning a Golden Belt on both games. Another bonus for Necromundus: Anubis and Loki took on a new minion, Inari, to help spark activity. So, it's safe to assume that Necromundus is about to enjoy a renaissance of its own in the coming months.

All in all, it seems like giving up WoW and throwing myself back into the mix, full-force, is having an overall positive effect. So, what could make me happier?

* Getting some Golden Belt players who can become mentors for new players
* Spending more time writing the online novel (it has taken a back seat to the work that needs to be done in-game)
* Developing Ribas Salek through RP on OtherSpace
* Evolving the Koltkamir storyline on OtherSpace
* Getting at least a year or two ahead on server/marketing costs
* Fleshing out the information about Necromundus on the Drupal-powered site
* Settling on a BY-GOD-FINAL design for the main website at www.jointhesaga.com

We've had a lot of changes within the past year. I want to thank everyone from OS:NJ, Millennium, and Chiaroscuro who weathered the storm of our transition to the new OtherSpace. It amazes me how well that hare-brained scheme of mixing the three playerbases worked out. Yes, we had some regrettable losses as some players didn't want to make the shift, but we've bounced back. We'll be here when they decide to give us another try.

Short Attention Span Review: "The Hangover"

2009-06-10T11:26:00.003-04:00

I laughed a lot during this movie.

Worth seeing on the big screen and with a large crowd around.

It's politically incorrect, perpetuates some bad stereotypes, and would get my money for a second viewing anyway.

Short Attention Span Review: "UP"

2009-05-31T16:41:00.002-04:00

Of all the Pixar movies thus far, UP has become, without reservation or qualification, my absolute favorite. And, as a heart-tugging narrative, it outclasses most live action movies out there.

This movie struck several chords with me. First, there's youthful longing for adventure that gets burdened down by the realities of adult life. Then there's the sorrow of loss of people you love - to divorce; to disease. And, finally, there's hope and renewal. All of this deep meaning, wrapped up in a shiny package of talking dogs, squawking roadrunners, and adventure fiction.

Just perfect.

Short Attention Span Review: "Angels & Demons"

2009-05-24T00:52:00.002-04:00

I found The Da Vinci Code dull and predictable and, at times, utterly ludicrous.

The sequel's still fairly predictable, but it's not dull. The dialogue seemed pretty easy to memorize most of the time: "ROBERT, HERE!" "ROBERT!" "HERE!" Occasional monologues provided exposition along the way.

Hanks does a good job with the material, which involves a mystery surrounding a Pope's death and the murder of a priest/scientist over a container of antimatter. The movie then turns into a sort of "24" meets "Foul Play." No Manilow tunes, however.

Ewan McGregor deserves special recognition for his portrayal of an earnest young priest with surprising ambitions.

On quitting WoW

2009-05-23T15:42:00.003-04:00

It's not like I hate World of Warcraft. I don't.

It's not that I got in some kind of personality clash with people there. I didn't.

The problem is a simple matter of mathematics: Once I add up all the major obligations I've got in my life, I just don't have time to make the most out of WoW the way I could in the past.

Too many other things need my attention right now:

* Karen and her son, Stefan, who lives with us half the time.
* My job working on Fallen Earth.
* My games at jointhesaga.com.
* And, when time allows, content for the MUDdy Hobo blog.

I've gotten to know some great people through WoW. I springboarded into MMORPG development as a career thanks to that game. Chances are, come the next expansion, I'll poke around to see what's new.

But, for now, I'm setting it aside.

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 5/18

2009-05-18T23:02:00.002-04:00

Does it make me a GOOD person that I didn't end up loathing Kim Bauer by the end of the 8th season finale?

She didn't turn into a total damsel in distress (although the flailing-with-burning-arm was funnier than it should have been) and, in the end, it looks she got to be more hero than hapless.

Meanwhile, First Daughter took the top prize for Utter Dumbassness. Way to go, President Mom, for sticking to your principles even when Colm Feore crinkles his brow accusingly at you.

And now I totally need to know what happened between Agent Freckles and Alan Wilson!

Guess I'll just have to wait for Season Nine.

Short Attention Span Review: "Slumdog Millionaire"

2009-05-15T12:28:00.003-04:00

I missed this Best Picture winner when it came out in theaters and now I really regret that - I wish I'd seen it on the big screen.

The storytelling style reminded me of The Usual Suspects, coupled with coming of age stories like Stand By Me, with a healthy dose of Scarface and the Godfather thrown in for good measure. It's all set against the backdrop of a country that I clearly don't know enough about thanks to the questions posed in their version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

The subtitles are fun to follow. The performances are nothing short of astounding, from the kids to the adults. And the story, in the end, is just a simple boy meets girl tale done remarkably well.

Plus, pretty cool dance number at the end. Worth watching!

Short Attention Span Review: "W"

2009-05-15T12:24:00.003-04:00

I didn't see Oliver Stone's "W" when it was in movie theaters. It seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would be just fine to watch on a TV screen. And it was.

It's not a bad movie. The performances are pretty good (although the standout poor performance, in my opinion, was Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice). I just didn't care and I didn't sympathize with ANYONE. Nor did I get much out of it, except regret that the pretzel failed its mission.

It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, it didn't change or validate any feelings I already had. It was the equivalent of a celluloid shrug.

Short Attention Span Review: "Lost" 5/13

2009-05-15T12:14:00.002-04:00

I've had a couple of days to process the finale of LOST. I think I've finally found a succinct way to encapsulate my feelings about it:

WTF?

I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It had some great moments punctuated by long periods of not much going on.

Most egregious issue, in my opinion: Jack and Sawyer taking five for some manly grappling and slapping in the woods while Sayid bleeds to death in the van.

Best moment: Sawyer's horrified anguish after Juliette plunged down into the pit.

Worst moment: First-scene revelation that this island is home to some ancient battle between a rogue from Deadwood and an asshat from Dexter.

Season Six really needs to wrap this up nicely. So far, I'm skeptical.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 5/12

2009-05-12T23:52:00.004-04:00

I didn't care for the fact that all the "OMG Leonard Nimoy!" fanboy hype was all for a few seconds of actual screen time with the guy.

However: I loved everything else in this episode and I thought it was a gutsy move for the show's creators to depict a parallel reality in which the World Trade Center still stands. Although, judging from that New York Post article, the White House had to be rebuilt.

Loved the little twist about Special Not-Agent Pacey. The Bishop family continues to be interesting.

Can't wait for next season.

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 5/11

2009-05-12T00:21:00.003-04:00

By the end of this episode, I realized my worst fears were coming true: The finale's going to be all about saving Kim at the airport.

Oh. For. Christ's. Sake.

Can't we bring Hodges back from the dead? Maybe find another teaspoon of the biological agent to terrorize a park with? ANYTHING? PLEASE?!

Back to the episode at hand: Nice job letting Jibraan be the hero. Awesome that Tony got a Jackdown. But I could have done with less snark-countersnark between the dueling techs back at base camp.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 5/11

2009-05-12T00:18:00.005-04:00

Holy crap. My wish came true!

If you've read this far, you're warned: SPOILERS!

The entire sequence with Cuddy helping House detox - and then depressurize with hanky-panky - was a hallucination. The poor cantankerous bastard deluded himself into thinking he'd beaten the pills and won the girl. The look on his face when he realized the truth, courtesy of Amber and Kuttner, was absolutely amazing. Give Hugh Laurie his Emmy now!

Can't wait for next season.

Snake to migraine?

2009-05-11T08:18:00.002-04:00

I had a relatively vivid dream early Sunday in which I was with a lot of people at a park for some kind of corporate picnic. It wasn't with my current employer: I didn't recognize any of my apparent co-workers. The park didn't have any picnic tables. We sat on pavement along a concrete curb that contained the grassy median-like area that formed the park. A low wood-rail fence formed a perimeter around the inside of the curb.

I was sitting cross-legged on the pavement, eating a sandwich, when I noticed a burrowed hole in the grass in front of me. I started knocking little dirt clods down the hole like I used to do when I was a kid. Then I noticed a coiled snake at the bottom of the hole. The snake was dark, but seemed skinny. It didn't register as a threat, just kind of creepy.

I told the girl next to me. She reached down that hole, plucked out the snake, and suddenly it was more akin to a python in size and appearance, with black and green scales. I didn't recognize the girl, but I remember telling her to give me the snake because it might hurt her. She handed the snake to me and, of course, it bit my hand - repeatedly.

On the third bite, I woke up from the dream with a spiking migraine headache. Yowch.

Short Attention Span Review: "Star Trek"

2009-05-07T22:37:00.003-04:00

I loved this movie. And my biggest fear, that Karl Urban wouldn't be up to the task of playing McCoy, proved totally unfounded.

The twists and turns applied to the existing mythos didn't bother me at all. The minds behind the revisualization of the Star Trek franchise did a terrific job. Nothing in this movie is a revelation or a deep social commentary, but it took a run-down jalopy and turned it into a hot-rodding machine.

Short Attention Span Review: "LOST" 5/6

2009-05-07T08:40:00.003-04:00

In this episode, it's all Richard Alpert, ALL THE TIMES! In 1977, he's tagging along with Jack on a Locke-esque field trip to find a hydrogen bomb and try to stop Oceanic Flight 815 from ever crashing. In 2007, he's grumpy to see the Real Locke return to lead the huddled Other masses on a crusade to kill the mysterious Jacob.

Meanwhile, Kate knows she'll just end up in prison if Jack succeeds with Operation Big Bam Boom, so she ditches him. But Sayid shows up to help, so the competence of that team just skyrocketed!

Sawyer and Juliette spend the episode tied up, while Stuart channels Jack Bauer A LOT. And then they're off on the sub in a really cheesy CGI shot, with Kate, so you know that trip back to Ann Arbor is going to be LOOOONNNNNGGGGG, except that you also know there's no way in hell that sub is really taking anyone to Ann Arbor.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 5/5

2009-05-07T08:35:00.002-04:00

I liked the surreal stuff going on with Olivia in this episode. I'll never complain about someone setting that jerk Harris on fire. And Walter, as usual, was genius. But I call shenanigans on the heat-rippled glass holding sound clear enough to Midomi a ringtone off it. Seriously, that was just silly.

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 5/4

2009-05-05T08:52:00.002-04:00

Heh, if anyone knows what it's like to have someone threaten your loved ones if you refuse to do something that's totally out of character, that'd be Jack Bauer. Jibran, a hapless Muslim who loves America and his little brother, finds himself in the same sort of situation Jack was in during Day One, way back in 2001.

Jack made nice with Special Agent Janeane. Chloe found out Jack was doomed. And Jack met an Arab he didn't try to shoot, behead, kneecap, or towel-throat. It was a very special episode of 24!

Meanwhile, back at the White House, I just don't give a damn about the First Daughter/Chief of Staff and her dumbass choice regarding a hit on Jonas Hodges. I mean, seriously, does she think she's the only one with an axe to grind against this guy? She KNOWS about the Greater Conspiracy, so in the 24-verse she should take it as a given that even if she didn't call in a hit, SOMEBODY ELSE WOULD - especially once that itinerary got leaked.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 5/4

2009-05-05T08:48:00.002-04:00

I can't say I loved this episode, although I continued to like House's struggle with his "inner Amber." Involving Wilson made it more interesting.

The last few moments with Cuddy made me hope that we're going to find out that House has been in a sanitarium for the last two seasons and he's going to wake up screaming in restraints, because getting those two together is shark-jumping material.

Plus: I don't want or need to know about Cameron's knack for collecting man-spunk. But, hey, looks like maybe Chase doesn't want to know either.

Short Attention Span Review: "Dollhouse" 5/1

2009-05-02T00:12:00.003-04:00

It may be the end of the road for this show soon, but if it is, it's going out with a pretty good bang.

Alan Tudyk finally made his big appearance as Alpha - after spending most of the episode playing a stoned-out environmental scientist. He's a fantastic actor and he really stole the show.

Interesting twist at the end!

Short Attention Span Review: "X-MEN Origins: Wolverine"

2009-05-01T23:01:00.002-04:00

I went into this movie expecting to groan and grumble my way through it, just like I did during X-MEN 3.

I didn't.

I really had a good time watching this movie. I was even cheering for the cheesy leap-through-the-air-to-impale-the-helicopter moment because of the bad stuff that preceded it.

It's a big comic book action movie. Great fights, cool explosions, and lots of Hugh Jackman doing the snarly, SNIKT-y thing. Plus Gambit and a game of spot-the-future-mutants!

Oh, and Liev Schreiber did a great job too.

The fight with Deadpool reminded me a lot of Phantom Menace's Jedi vs. Sith battle...if Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon wanted each other dead.

Short Attention Span Review: Fringe "4/28"

2009-04-30T18:57:00.002-04:00

Hey, Astrid got to figure out the key clue to the big mystery!

GO, ASTRID!

Meanwhile, the professor gets a fellow mad scientist to hang out with while Olivia and Pacey go hunting for Spine Muncher.

I thought it was a nice touch, mixing the agent's sister's personal drama (divorce in the making) with the X-Files antics.

Short Attention Span Review: "LOST" 4/29

2009-04-29T22:47:00.003-04:00

On one hand, this was a Daniel Faraday-focused episode with nice little fiddly-bits calling back to previous episodes, which was cool.

On the other hand, this was a Daniel Faraday-focused episode without a whole lot that was new except for The Gang hanging out in Sawyer's crib talking about what to do now that they've got Phil stuck in a closet. And, I have to admit - maybe I was just tired from a long work day - I fell asleep during most of those parts and the parts with Desmond and Penny in the hospital. Karen says I was snoring. I can't deny it.

I was awake for the last three minutes, though.

Damn. Faraday's Mom really is a cold-hearted wench.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 4/27

2009-04-29T18:22:00.002-04:00

I must admit that as much as I'm tired of the recent trend of TV characters seeing other characters that aren't there, I was okay with the return of Wilson's dead girlfriend as manifestation of House's evil side.

All in all, an okay episode, although I didn't care so much about the Patient of the Week. Mostly interested in the bachelor party, which took an interesting turn for Chase.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 4/27

2009-04-28T16:30:00.002-04:00

Well, this episode had a lot to like in it. Deftly, it wrapped up A LOT in one hour - and left us hanging with the promise of some fun in Season 4.

But...

...I don't know that I'll watch, for one simple reason. If you haven't seen the show yet and don't want to be spoiled, stop reading back at the But...

Okay? Ready? It's just the people who saw it or don't mind being spoiled now, right? Good!

Nathan's not-death. Just one too many not-deaths for me, especially since they were bringing back Ali Larter in the end too.

My mouth actually dropped open in surprise when Sylar slit Nathan's throat and left him for dead. Out loud, I told Karen: "He SHOULD have died in that explosion at the end of Season 1." When Angela found him and raged...that was a VERY powerful moment.

Now, I know having the Sylar-Nathan body/mind switch was a nifty trick so that Parkman had something epic to do in this episode. But the justification for it - that it would all be blamed on people with powers if they DIDN'T cover it up by turning Sylar into Nathan - was, frankly, horseshit. The new and improved Company could have blamed it on ANYTHING they wanted.

Bringing him back cheapened the effect of his death and Angela's reaction to it. Further, it couldn't have been MORE obvious that it was going to lead to some scary repercussions, like Nathan's sudden affinity for clocks.

Meh. Too much, too late.

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 4/27

2009-04-28T16:27:00.003-04:00

Tony continues to be a bad, bad man.

I enjoyed the shoutoff between Jack and Hodges. I thought the verbal beatdown of Analyst Janeane was just a little too anvilicious for its own good - what with her being an avatar of liberalism and Jack being, well, y'know, all about the ends justifying the means.

And then even the coldest heart has to twinge a little when Jack starts ranting about David Palmer recommissioning the CTU servers. He's losing it!

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 4/21

2009-04-22T23:21:00.003-04:00

I'm not entirely sure I know exactly what's going on in the wake of the latest episode of Fringe. All I can say with a certainty is: Damn, that was good television. I haven't seen The Happening. I've only heard horror stories about grass and trees turning evil and M. Night Shamalamadingdong. But this episode of Fringe felt to me like The Happening SHOULD have been.

The whole reverse empath thing was great. I thought for sure it would turn into some twisted rendition of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" video, with all the people following Michael Stipe to the top of a building and jumping off.

The dialogue and character development were great. I continue to think of Walter Bishop as one of the best-written (and portrayed) characters on TV these days.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 4/20

2009-04-21T19:54:00.002-04:00

Okay, this episode wasn't nearly as mind-numbing or pointless as last week's, so YAY!

Sylar really knows how to go Norman Bates, doesn't he?

And Nathan, I'm sorry, but you're obviously a lever short of a voting machine: Mr. I Have to Do This On My Own got ALMOST exactly what was coming to him. (I was actually rooting for him to get the Clint Howard head shave, but we don't always get what we want.)

The whole Superman/Batman thing with Ando and Hiro was amusing for the first couple of minutes. Then it got tired. And then they made Hiro spurt blood from his nose, which was great, because he's been getting on my nerves.

Let's see. What else? OH, the Parkmans are back together! Such a nice family. Who's stopping by with housewarming gifts? Maybe a new crib for Junior? It's the feds!

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 4/20

2009-04-20T23:01:00.002-04:00

There's a new Mandy in town and she's working with Evil Agent Tony!

Poor crazy old Hodges - he didn't even get a choice between red and blue pills.

And, once again, we see that no government perimeter can possibly hold, even with Jack Bauer twitching and frothing as he barks orders.

So, Kim's on her way "back to the airport" so she can "fly to L.A." Crap. With crazy extremists planning another big attack with that last canister, I WONDER WHAT THE TARGET MIGHT BE AND WHO MIGHT BE CAUGHT UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CRISIS?

Blurgh.

Short Attention Span Review: "State of Play"

2009-04-19T20:24:00.002-04:00

This movie, at its heart, comes across as a love letter to good old-fashioned newspaper journalism as it struggles to survive in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. The scandalous twists and turns are just window dressing for the rest of it.

Loved it. See it while you can. May be one of the last movies ever made that shows the process of making a print newspaper.

Officially out...

2009-04-18T12:30:00.004-04:00

After three years and a rocky ending, my relationship with The Oaks at Weston apartment complex in Morrisville, North Carolina is now over.

Last night, we finished cleaning out the apartment on Martin Tavern Road. Karen pretty much wrecked her back and leg working on the floors. I exhausted myself hauling stuff up and down stairs. Stefan dragged trash to the dumpster.

Personally, I didn't want to go to all the effort that we did. I feel like we were badly served by the management in the end. But, y'know, I would have felt slimy ditching them with too much of a mess. Just because THEY don't have any scruples and THEY don't have a conscience doesn't mean I should sink to their level.

They've got the keys now.

I just hope no one tries to sit on the guest toilet without looking first - we forgot the plunger.

Short Attention Span Review: "LOST" 4/15

2009-04-15T22:26:00.002-04:00

A Miles episode! WOO! An hour of snark within snark, with snarky flashbacks.

Just a little too much Kate and Jack, of course. Where they go, hijinks inevitably follow. WAY TO RUIN EVERYTHING, KATE. AS USUAL.

But enough about the delightful pair of Kack. Let's talk about what rocked:

* Miles has daddy issues, which isn't much of a surprise. But there IS a surprise: Dr. Tour Guide!
* Every scene with Miles and Hurley - again. Seriously, give these two their own show. I'd watch. Especially when Hurley starts going off on Star Wars.
* Seeing the moment the magic numbers got put on the hatch.
* Sawyer taking out the snitch. "Get some rope."
* Faraday!

Can't believe we've got to wait two weeks for the next episode. Pssh!

So, about that novel...

2009-04-14T19:00:00.003-04:00

It's online. It's free. And it's OtherSpace!

The goal was to write one chapter a week. In the past five days, I've written the first four chapters. It helps that I'm having fun. I've been playing a bit with the storytelling format, but mostly I just have a good time writing the character of Len Dixon.

I hope you'll keep track of his adventures! I'm storing them for broader consumption at http://stolenwarrior.blogspot.com

Tell your friends!

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 4/13

2009-04-14T16:54:00.002-04:00

I felt so much better about the President recalling those fighter jets when it was apparent in this episode that the writers were doing away with the deus ex machina in favor of letting Tony play hero.

Jonas got his comeuppance! But...Tony, what the hell?! SERIOUSLY? Apparently, seriously. Sorry, Larry. I grew to like you. You'll be missed.

Meanwhile, a brief interlude with Kim Bauer. It occurs to me that if she were my only hope for surviving exposure to a deadly toxin, I'd turn her down too. I'm certain even her stem cells are bleached beyond sensibility.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 4/13

2009-04-14T16:50:00.002-04:00

This week, everyone's reeling from the crap that happened in the episode I didn't see last week.

The key problem: House has lost his mojo!

Secondary problem: Cameron's pissing off Dr. Boyfriend by postponing vacation plans so that she doesn't have to deal with him trying to propose.

Oh, and then there's the Patient of the Week, an annoying environmentalist who looks and sounds a lot like a discount-priced Jason Lee (now 100% less Scientologeriffic)!

Liked the episode, even though I still haven't seen the one that preceded it. Wilson was great. Nice to see him pulling one over on House for a change.

But then, last scene, all I can think is: Crap. Didn't I see this once on Gray's Anatomy? And didn't I hate that?

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 4/13

2009-04-14T16:46:00.003-04:00

I sat through that just to find out why the hell Angela Petrelli goes on shoplifting sprees?

WHAT THE HELL?

Other than that, this was a whole lot of "meh" and throat clearing. I didn't even care much for the flashbacks with Angie and the Company Men. Deadly dull stuff. Even deadlier and duller: Any scene with Nathan and Peter angsting at each other. Only slightly better: Scenes with Nathan and HRG and Claire angsting near each other.

Also: Apparently there's awesome dental care in Coyote Sands. Alice lived there for 50 years and her teeth looked fantastic. Come to think of it, she was wearing lipstick too. Well, even crazy hermits like to feel pretty from time to time.

Short Attention Span Review: "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" 4/10

2009-04-11T00:30:00.003-04:00

That finale was a lot of cool happening.

Catapulting John into a future with SilverShirley where he's NOT the hero of the resistance and hooking him up with Derek and Kyle? Sheer awesomeness!

It'll be a shame if Fox cancels the show before we get to see where this all leads.

Short Attention Span Review: "Dollhouse" 4/10

2009-04-10T23:36:00.002-04:00

Well, plenty of self-snarking in this episode - including Echo calling Topher "dangerously incompetent." Why, if that's not the pot calling the cook ... er, no, that just doesn't work quite right.

Basically, this whole episode amounted to getting rid of Reed Diamond.

I'm okay with that.

Short Attention Span Review: "Fringe" 4/7

2009-04-10T11:19:00.002-04:00

Hey, I missed this show while it was gone - and now it's back!

This time, demolition workers find Baby Hellraiser in a sealed-off part of a building they're about to obliterate. Turns out, Baby Hellraiser can write names and addresses, but isn't able to communicate much else unless he's got a handy cluster of yellow M&Ms at the ready.

The episode sorta reminded me of ET, except the Man with the Keys is a serial killer and the Willow Lady is a heat-packing federal agent, and Drew Barrymore is a crazy old scientist.

Good times.

R.I.P. Dave Arneson

2009-04-09T17:57:00.003-04:00

Dave Arneson, one of the founding fathers of the tabletop RPG, has died at the age of 61.

If it wasn't for the work he did along with Gary Gygax in the 1970s, I probably wouldn't be doing what I do today.

Short Attention Span Review: "LOST" 4/8

2009-04-08T22:44:00.002-04:00

Well, Benjamin Linus episodes now rank up there with John Locke episodes.

Loved the island's "judgment" scene, complete with memory-tapping smoke monster! Enjoyed the flashbacks, although who knew they made crappy hairpieces in Camp Otherton? Where did they get Ben's? From a smoke badger? Or did they make it from Charles Widmore's sheared locks?

MORE QUESTIONS! DAMN YOU, LOST!

The Big Move

2009-04-07T21:02:00.002-04:00

As I write this, I'm sitting at my computer table in the office of our new house in Breckenridge. We're on the outskirts of Morrisville, within easy reach of I-540 and pretty much everything from Durham to Raleigh.

The last few days have amounted to one long slog of me and the Juicebox playing pack mule, but I have to say: It's been worth it.

Huck's not going crazy because someone in the next apartment over slammed their front door. We're not being awakened in the middle of the night, every night, by the same neighbor who can't seem to control their car alarm. I don't come home from work to play Parking Lot Lotto, wondering if I'll actually be in front of the apartment or walking from a block away.

Elsa and Sienna weren't too thrilled during Moving Day. They had to spend about 12 hours locked in the apartment bathroom while the Mayflower guys hauled our stuff from the Oaks to Breckenridge. Elsa's a champ, though. Once we got the cats over here, Elsa came right upstairs to say hello, while Sienna huddled down behind the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster I still need to hang. Sienna didn't get the gumption to wander much until this morning.

The kitchen is nice - it could use more counter space, but Karen seems to be making the room work the way she wants it. We need a few more lamps, but those will come soon enough.

She made her first meal there tonight - a delicious meat and pasta dish with salad on the side. Yum!

Good to be home.

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 4/6

2009-04-07T20:59:00.003-04:00

Well, I didn't have TV or Internet while I was in the midst of moving to the new digs on Monday, so I missed House. Episodes don't show until eight days later on Hulu.com and FOX.com.

Ultimately, though, I got wind of what happened in this episode. KUTTNER?! Really? He's the one who offs himself?

Apparently, this has caused some controversy among some fans of the show who decry it as lazy writing. Meh. I'll reserve judgment until I see it next week.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 4/6

2009-04-07T20:48:00.002-04:00

I totally knew that was Sylar pretending to be Sandra when she served HRG the divorce papers but, y'know what? I DIDN'T WANT IT TO BE FAKE. That's a speech the *real* Sandra should have given to Noah a long, long time ago.

I liked the cat and mouse game between HRG and Danko/Sylar. Not sure how many times they can pull those switcheroos on the show and keep it entertaining, though.

Great to see Matt and Mini-Matt together.

Ando! Make the face!

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 4/6

2009-04-07T18:47:00.002-04:00

Well, that was on serious case of blue-balling. A whole episode spent building up to a jet fighter strike on Starkwood and then YOINK! Never mind. Way to throw your life away for nothing, Knowles! Sorry you went to all that trouble, Tony!

Meanwhile, it seems like Kim Bauer will make an inevitable return. But will she be played by Elisha Cuthbert or could they bring in Sarah Chalke to be "Second Kim" too?

And how about the President's daughter, huh? Moxie! She's got moxie. And webcam know-how, with a future on the Interwebz.

Short Attention Span Review: "LOST" 4/1

2009-04-02T00:30:00.003-04:00

Wow, a Jack-and-Kate-ish episode that I didn't loathe.

Sure, Jack tossed his oath out the window, but at least the guy took a stand for something.

Does it make me MORE evil that I was GLAD little Aaron might have been kidnapped in the LOST-O-MART? Sorry, kid, you just can't act.

And I'd like to kick off a grassroots movement to support the creation of a Miles-and-Hurley-Talk-Time-Travel variety hour show.

Next week: All Ben, all the time, after he wakes up to find the guy he murdered being all smirky at him. It's going to be good fun. I hope the cable installers show up on time.

Short Attention Span Review: "Heroes" 3/30

2009-03-31T00:07:00.003-04:00

Ma Petrelli and Peter spent the whole episode inside a church, debating God and family, until the Horn-Rimmed Anvil Brigade arrived.

Danko went partying with Sylar. That serial-killing supervillain sure knows how to have a good time!

And Nathan took his underage ex-cheerleader daughter across the border to Mexico to booze it up and sleep in a flophouse. It was all kind of squicky. I mean, it was obviously even making the motel manager look a bit queasy and YOU KNOW he's seen some screwed up stuff in his day, often involving donkeys, blow, and handcuffs.

Am I the only one who thinks they set Sylar up with shapeshifting so he could get *stuck* in a different form in the event that Zachary Quinto hits the road after the release of Star Trek?

Short Attention Span Review: "24" 3/30

2009-03-31T00:04:00.002-04:00

Tony, Tony, Tony. How many times do I have to tell you? CHECK THE BODY FOR A PULSE BEFORE YOU ACCEPT THAT HE'S DEAD.

Do you think Jack Bauer would have made the same mistake? DO YOU? I DIDN'T THINK SO. Of course, now Jack needs to get fitted for a special drool bib and some Depends.

Yay for Aaron sticking around a bit longer!

Short Attention Span Review: "House" 3/30

2009-03-31T00:02:00.002-04:00

An episode almost entirely in Mos Def's brain! I have to say, it was kind of amusing to hear him snarking about the same things I snark about: Constantly shifting diagnoses, the unhealthy relationships between House and, well, everybody else...

And I love that it all came down to rat pee AND that the revelation didn't come to *House*. Nicely done.

ALAS, JUICEBOX - Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DMV

2009-03-29T00:28:00.003-04:00

It was getting on toward April and, as usual, I had procrastinated.

Last week, I took the signed title for the Scion xB that my stepfather gave me and proceeded to the DMV office in Southhills strip mall, off Buck Jones Road. The last time I made this trip was to make the old Honda Accord a legitimate North Carolina automobile. It had cost me about $90.

So, on the way to the DMV this time, I withdrew $100 in cash. They don't take debit cards at the DMV - just cash and checks. I didn't bring a checkbook. See, I was in the Cub Scouts, but only for about a week. Preparedness is for the weak!

In all fairness, Karen didn't think my logic was too sound when I told her that I'd only take $100 to the DMV. She thought the title transfer cost might be based on the value of the car. The Scion is much newer than the Honda and could actually yield a higher fee.

Did I listen? Well, I listened, sure! But did I do anything about the contingency?

Heck, no!

I arrived at the DMV at about 8:45, right after they opened. This would give me plenty of time to make it back to work for the scrum meeting at 9:30. The line? Non-existent! I walked right up to the counter, handed over the title, my driver's license, and proof of insurance.

Everything was going along just fine. The clerk had the new tag and registration, all ready to shove into my grubby hands. Then she told me it'd cost $280.

Well, that's the price of throwing caution to the wind, isn't it?

"I don't have that much on me," I confessed. "Is there an ATM nearby?"

She directed me to the kiosk in the corner of the room. Excellent! I walked over, slid my card in the slot, and asked for MORE DAMNED MONEY.

But the ATM cried out: "No hiding place!" Or something to that effect.

I ran the card through a couple more times. No luck.

"Is there ANOTHER machine?" I asked the clerk.

She directed me down the hall to the next ATM. I slid the card in the slot of that machine. But the ATM cried out: "CAN'T DO THIS NOW!" I repeated the effort again and again. Nothing.

Now I'm getting pissed.

Back to the DMV, where I tell the clerk I'll be right back. There's a Suntrust Bank in the outparcel of the strip mall. I jump in the Juicebox - the Scion - and scoot on over to the bank. It is now about 9 a.m. I run the debit card through the slot. But the ATM cried out: "CAN'T DO THIS NOW!" It could not do this now several more times.

Now I'm seething. But I know there's a Bank of America branch about two miles away. I get back in the Juicebox. A few minutes later, I'm standing at the BoA ATM at Walnut and Maynard. But the ATM cried out: "CAN'T DO THIS NOW!"

At this point, I'm theorizing that the banks are REALLY holding on tight to MY money, so I go into the bank office itself. I walk up to the teller and explain that I'd really like to take my money to the DMV so I can get my license plate out of hock.

The teller confirms that I've got the money available. She's certainly willing to hand over the cash. But FIRST she wants to tell me about some senseless new bank account initiatives that will somehow make the bank money in the long run. All I want to do is get back to the DMV so I can hopefully make it back to work in time for the sprint meeting.

As I'm driving back to the DMV, my iPhone rings. It's an automated recording from Bank of America whining about irregular activity from my debit card. The message, which I'm listening to without benefit of paper or pen, insists that I call back and enter a specific alphanumeric code to deal with this matter. If I don't deal with the problem by April 1, well, the recording indicates that a hold might be placed on my account.

Well, now I'm just plain furious.

I return to the DMV, hand over the cash, take my change and license plate, and then I head back to work. It's 9:40 by the time I arrive, so I've missed the sprint meeting.

I'm not sitting in my desk even 20 minutes before I get an email from Bank of America. Rather than waiting until April 1, they've decided to go ahead and place a hold on my debit card. It's for the good of us all, apparently. The email indicates I have to call a special number to confirm the strange activity came from me.

All full of hope that I'll get to call a real person and go blue in the face shrieking at them, my dreams are thwarted by another recording. Essentially, I'm just required to hit "1" over and over again as it runs down every single attempt I made to take money out of my account that morning.

Not much satisfaction there.

But the Juicebox is now really, seriously, no kidding officially mine now. Huzzah!

Short Attention Span Review: "Dollhouse" 3/27

2009-03-28T21:06:00.003-04:00

A disinhibiting drug is on the loose. Echo's nowhere nearby until she sees something on TV while doing strange and different things with her old buddy Max and then, of course, she has to go to the college to have flashbacks with the rest of the Actives.

The big plan gone wrong this week: Actives aren't affected by the drug, so they can pretend to be competent government agents and doctors. Except it turns out they CAN be affected by the drug.

Meanwhile, Paul makes eggs and gets chewed out for being too clingy.

And then, back at the Dollhouse, everyone's going all Amok Time - except geeky.

I dunno. Not feeling the love.

Short Attention Span Review: "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" 3/27

2009-03-28T21:01:00.003-04:00

John and Sarah take a road trip to visit dear old pal Charlie.

Everybody lives happily ever after. Except they don't.

Meanwhile, back at Crazy Red-Head Labs, John Henry gets back-doored by his "brother" in some kind of whacked-out computer incest episode that's bound to land him on Dr. Phil - especially because it leads to the Geek Squad running an intervention to cut off his Internet addiction.

Then Sarah makes a special guest appearance in a public service announcement about breast exams, except it's really about the dangers of self-defibrillation and men with handcarts.

I think John's gone fishing now. Charlie's chumming the water, though. Sad.