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.
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Thanks to the crew from Multiverse Crisis MUSH for taking the time to respond to these questions!
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MOVING DAY
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Well, after dealing with Blogger's (extremely frustrating) shortcomings, as
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built ...
12 years ago
