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

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

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

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

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.

OtherSpace: Staff Meeting Summary - 9/30/2009

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.