'Long about two years ago I fell heavily into MUSHing. I started out on
Firan MUX (www.legendary.org/firan
). Firan's a non consent MUSH with no privacy in RP permissted - not even
in public rooms. As a newbie I found some of the things that happened to
me there to be very frightening, while some staff decisions seemed arbitrary
and unfair.
However, I did learn a lot there, and it helped shape my understanding of
RP. And there are some good things there too, some of their coded systems
are innovative and worth looking at, the problem I have with them is that
much of the time they replace rather than augment RP, and the whole is so
intimately tied up with non-consensual RP that it can't probably be separated.
For example, coded, predefined families and relationships are ideas with
some very positive RP advantages, but obviously the player consents to giving
up some freedom by accepting these relationships. Also, since the characters
are owned by the staff, they feel quite entitled to tell you if they think
you're RPing your character wrongly.
But whatever you say or think about Firan, you've got to admit they are
at least trying something different. That's got to be a good thing, don't
it?
~*~
I moved on from there to Tales of Ta'veran, a Wheel of Time based MUSH
which sadly is no more. I'd worked out that my characters and the RP I like
could fit into virtually any medieval setting, so I went and looked for
the most generic medieval mush I could find. Andor in Tales fit the bill
perfectly.
But, after about a year there the MUSH suffered a huge spontaneous wizzen
burnout and closed down. It was a real pity becasue as far as I could see
NONE of the issues that caused it were anything to do with the RP that me
and my Andoran friends were doing. It was all Tar Valon Aes Sedai stuff,
or so it seemed.
When Tales closed, Tales II started development. It's finally opened.(
tales.ta-veran.org
) Will it be as good as the original Tales? Only time will tell.
~*~
In the meantime I bounced around various mushes, from Shrouded Rites to
Pern MUSH, even back to Firan for a bit. Finally I decided to start my own
MUSH. It's called Hogwarts Express
. Currently I play on Tales II, and Hogwarts.
