ON MISCELLANEOUS ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES [ PAGE 1]

ON THE PURPOSE OF THE MUSH

ON THE ROLE OF A TINYPLOT COORDINATOR

PAGE 2

ON THE USE OF RETCON

ON GROUP ACTIVITIES

ON MANDATORY DEAD TIME

PAGE 3

ON MANDATORY E-MAIL REGISTRATION

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ON THE PURPOSE OF THE MUSH

Now, there are certainly some mushes which are set up for unusual reasons not particularly related with roleplaying in an imaginary world. The best example I can think of is the Godlike Edge, which is meant as a forum for open discussion of any matters of interest to Wizards and Admins of M**. The phrase "In Character" has no particular meaning there; in fact, it's only a few rooms, one of which (Mount Olympus) is where virtually all discussion occurs.

However, while I freely concede that even a "typical" mush can have interesting things occur which are not uniformly of an IC nature, I feel that my critic failed to recognize that even if RP is not the ONLY reason for the mush, it is supposedly the PRINCIPAL reason, and people who complain about a lack of RP opportunities on such a mush should be heeded.

There are at least three basic motivations that a person could hope to satisfy in affiliating himself with a mush.

1) He wants to interact with other people ICly.

2) He wants to interact with other people OOCly.

3) He wants to do interesting things all by himself - i.e., he just LOVES coding new functions, or building and descing lots of rooms based on a particular theme, or writing extensive newsfiles, or something along those lines.

I should note that these motives need not be mutually exclusive.

On the one hand, I have encountered people on various mushes who only seemed to be interested in just one of these three items. There are those who love RP, work hard to get lots and lots of it, and almost always have the public Channels turned off so the spam won't distract them; those who frankly admit that they created a character strictly for OOC discussions with people with similar interests whom they hoped to meet on a mush with a certain theme; and those who dedicate themselves to coding and building and so forth and show no - or very little - interest in RP at all, near as I can tell (though they might have alts for that sort of thing).

On the other hand, I have met people who are interested in all three of these things on a regular basis - creating interesting TinyPlots and roleplaying them, AND carrying on spirited discussions of thematic matters and so forth on channels, AND who enjoy coding and/or building in their spare time.

And on the third hand (now where did THAT come from?), there are those who are only interested in two out of three, such as myself. For a long time I had no interest in coding at all beyond the bare necessities such as learning how to create objects as props and put descriptions on them, but I enjoyed IC and OOC interaction when given the chance. I eventually broadened my horizons somewhat in coding and building both, but I've never claimed to be a Grand Master of either activity.

Now, let's examine what your attitude towards each of these motives may be.

Taking it backwards, if people log on whose principal interest proves to be Motive Three (working behind the scenes on the technical end), and if they actually seem to be talented at doing some of this necessary labor, you can probably find useful things for them to do and be grateful to have them. But people who ONLY want to satisfy Motive Three are going to be pretty rare, so your general policy has to go beyond that.

Motive Two : OOC interaction. With rare exceptions which are trying to fill a very specialized niche (such as the Godlike Edge, mentioned above), this is not considered to be the whole point of building a mush. Nevertheless, some of it is inevitably going to happen. There are things that people want to say to each other that CAN'T be done IC ("What was your favorite episode of the original Star Trek?") and sometimes these things NEED to be said to arrange IC activities ("Juliet, is it all right if I appear below your balcony tonight and make passionate speeches? Will you even be there?") and in any case you can't possibly keep it from happening.

Some Mushes have Wizards who look upon the existence of OOC Rooms and OOC discussions in general as a necessary evil, to be permitted within limits but certainly not to be encouraged. Such mushes are likely to have guidelines posted warning people not to spend much time chatting in the OOC Area, and may even threaten to @nuke characters who seem only to exist as OOC mouthpieces for OOC chatter and never RP at all.

Other Wizards are more mellow about it, and may even participate in lengthy OOC discussions (not necessarily of matters relating directly to the mush) themselves. They will generally insist, however, that when several characters are gathered together in an IC Room and there is far more OOC discussion than IC dialogue going on (and the OOC discussion isn't just a discussion of what IC Actions should occur next), that something is wrong with the whole picture.

Still and all, in any mush that's supposed to contain Roleplay at all, OOC matters are supposed to remain secondary to the IC interaction, instead of threatening to replace it entirely in the hearts and minds of the Players.

Motive Three : IC Interaction. Ignoring iconoclastic exceptions such as the Godlike Edge, this is generally considered to be THE reason for creating a mush. If your mush isn't really meant to have lots of RP occurring in it, this whole document isn't going to be of much use to you. So if you're reading this page at all, I'm assuming that you WANT RP to occur and plenty of it, you WANT people to enjoy themselves ICly and come back again and again for more RP (possibly even dragging along a few friends to bolster your ranks), and you WANT all the other stuff (building lovely rooms, coding nifty functions, spirited OOC chatter, etc.) to merely add a bit of flavor in support of the RP, and if anything comes up that is actually damaging to the RP prospects, that something should be identified as a problem and attacked forthwith (a badly coded command, or an almost incomprehensible rule, or an OOC debate that turns into a flamewar on the BB with players spending more time accusing each other of being stupid than they spend roleplaying). But maintaining - and improving - the quantity AND the quality of the Roleplay is THE strategic concern, and everything else is just a means to an end.

And you can't have happy roleplay unless you have happy players.

Never lose sight of this basic fact.

It's been said that every mush is a dictatorship, and that the Players have no inherent Rights, but only enjoy such Privileges as the Dictator (and his chosen servants and advisors) see fit to grant them.

I would say that this is true in theory but in practice we should often act as though it weren't. A very "benevolent dictatorship" should apply, one where important policies are clearly and consistently proclaimed, but Players are not frequently given arbitrary (i.e., having nothing to do with the published rules and policies) and flatly discourteous orders such as, "I forbid you to roleplay a romance with that particular other PC, even though there was nothing in the rules to make you think I would do this" or "I forbid you to leave this IC Area for another, even though nobody else is ever in it when you log on," or things along those lines. NOTE: Those are not hypothetical instances. The second example happened to me once, and the first has happened to people who were playing Features whom the local Wizards had very strong ideas about.

If a Player "feels" like a valued citizen of a nation with an enlightened government, he's not likely to spend a lot of time worrying about philosophical questions such as, "If the Wizards wanted to nuke me without warning, could they get away with it?" But if you start stepping on his toes in an overt way, he's liable to rebel.

An excellent discussion of the various ways a dictatorial wizard COULD use his power without mercy and without warning is found at Pip's Lectures on Wizard Ethics. Please note that Wizards who did all these things would probably note the daily attendance figures dropping like a rock as word got around. They might finally end up as the Absolute Monarchs of Ghost Town Mush, with no peasants to lord it over.

Remember, unlike such RL dictatorships as Cuba, Zaire, and Vietnam, being a part of your realm's population is a strictly voluntary matter and any citizen can "defect" at any time, without the slightest warning. Accordingly, it behooves you to do your level best to make sure they don't really WANT to.

The sad truth is, on every mush I have studied where they have an "open enrollment" policy, meaning virtually anybody can create a character and start roleplaying in short order as long as he doesn't insist upon having lots of spiffy powers, the great majority of the PCs who have been created tend to take this "defection" option fairly quickly - within the first month after the creation date, let's say. Databases are stuffed with files on PCs who were created, looked around a bit . . . and haven't connected in weeks, or even months (depending on how often you clean out your db to remove the trash).

Why does this occur?

There are many possible reasons that any particular Player could have lost interest, and some of them involve factors you can't possibly do anything about (such as lack of time for online recreation, became more interested in some other activity such as multi-player shootouts on Doom, felt swamped by all the commands and rules they had to learn to function well, wanted to get a famous Feature Character or else they wouldn't RP at all, etc).

But several of the possibilities involve things that you ought to have a deep and abiding interest in improving. Hence I am still working on this document, ON THE PROPER CARE AND FEEDING OF MUSHES, in an attempt to help Wizards see a comprehensive listing of some of the areas where Players frequently are disappointed, rightly or wrongly, in what they find.

Some general statements to set the mood :

1) Nearly every chapter of this Web Document was inspired by a memory of one or more unpleasant situations actually encountered by me, or reported to me by friends whom I consider honest and intelligent observers, on a mush. It is my hope that if you read each chapter and have a coherent policy on the relevant points clearly formulated for the benefit of any player who asks about it, you'll be able to forestall some of the frustrations that normally arise.

2) I don't recall EVER seeing a dedicated roleplayer suddenly quit a mush where he had previously been a fixture on the grounds that its "technical" side was inferior, though everything else was fine. I never heard one proclaim, "Well, I would love to stay and roleplay with all you friendly people, and those nice Wizards who are always so polite about answering my questions, except there just aren't enough rooms on this mush to make me happy, and we need more special commands coded in, and the webpage is nonexistent, and therefore I'm quitting for aesthetic reasons!" It may have happened once or twice somewhere but it sure isn't a trend.

3) What is much, MUCH more commonly the problem is the purely "human" or "emotional" side. Simple loneliness has probably "killed" more Player Characters than we will ever know. Brand new mushes are especially likely to have the problem of loneliness drive away many potential recruits who log on, create a character, and find very little to do - nobody else is online, or a couple of people are but they are busy and don't want to be interrupted - and so he quits and goes looking for somewhere friendlier. But even on the old, established mushes it can be a strong factor.

In short, the proper care and feeding of mushes is primarily the proper care and feeding of mushers. In my experience, mushers tend to be happier when they feel that they know what you expect of them and feel that you are coherent and self-consistent in your policy statements. This requires (to my way of thinking) that you formulate your house rules on all sorts of things BEFORE you open for roleplay, so that you aren't constantly being caught off guard by such problems as:

1) A couple of roleplayers do something IC which you consider grossly unthematic - except it turns out that you never actually posted any rules specifically forbidding it.

2) A roleplayer comes to you with a question about the local policy on some issue, such as the requirements for an IC divorce, and you realize you have no idea and put him on hold for a few days while you think it over.

3) A roleplayer uses up a fair chunk of your database coding all sorts of nifty rooms with lengthy descriptions, since you never got around to assigning Building Quotas, and then you find yourself getting strapped for memory in the DB and have to tell him to erase at least 2/3 of what he's already done.

These are just examples, but they illustrate the point: your moral ground is much firmer if you detail your expectations in all sorts of things in ADVANCE so that the Roleplayers won't constantly be complaining (with truth on their side) "Why are you criticizing me for breaking a rule that you only invented two minutes ago?"

Accordingly, a great deal of this document has been directly inspired by cases where the Wizards of one mush or another were caught flatfooted by a problem that might have been anticipated - but wasn't - and had to hastily make some brand new policies, which people then spat upon, saying, "If you cared about that, why didn't you warn me BEFORE I did it?" Nobody else has ever put together a comprehensive listing of ALL policy issues to address in every aspect of building a new mush, to the best of my knowledge, but my own work is an attempt to fill that gap. If it helps you avoid falling into the same old pitfalls that have hindered many a promising mush in the past, I'll feel I've accomplished something worthwhile. So go on with your reading, and always remember the basic rule of responsible mush administration:

IF YOU DON'T WANT THE PLAYERS TO DO A CERTAIN THING, SAY SO IN YOUR ONLINE RULES IN PLAIN ENGLISH! IF YOU DON'T SAY SO, AND THEY DO IT, IT'S *YOUR* FAULT!

ON THE ROLE OF A TINYPLOT COORDINATOR

HOW TO WIN NEWBIES AND INFLUENCE RPERS

or

GET A TINYPLOT COORDINATOR TODAY!

Do newbies flock to your new mush because of the nifty theme and your clever advertising?

Do they all create characters, hang around the bars meeting each other, and generally rhapsodizing about how much fun they hope to have in this particular world?

Do they then drift away quietly, so that after a month or two you take inventory and realize 200 characters have been created and maybe 20 of them have been connected within the past week (and half of *those* barely dropped in to check their @mail and then left again) and your lovely mush is beginning to resemble a ghost town?

If so, perhaps you don't know how to make those newbies feel loved! Stay with me as I reminisce at length on my own days as a newbie, back in those ancient times that are only dimly remembered in song and story (fall of 1996), and draw upon my experiences for guidance in how to prevent the same old pitfalls from befalling many another aspiring RPer today.

I REMEMBER SITTING IN A BAR ALL DAY

Many's the time I have sat down in the local bar to see what happened. Barroom chatter sometimes began (unless I was all alone in there) and meandered, not being set to any prearranged purpose and thus usually not achieving anything either, beyond giving two characters a chance to "get to know each other" a little. One of the first mushes I ever frequented had something in the newsfiles specifically warning us against falling into this trap, urging us to choose interesting characters and get integrated into IC groups that already existed in one sphere of life or another. I made a sincere effort, creating a typical "warrior" character, newly arrived in town, and looking around for work. I found work that very day with a local bigshot who wanted me to infiltrate the local Castle by joining the Royal Guard while actually being a spy for him. This seemed reasonable . . . but I needed the permission of the Captain of the Guard himself (one of his flunkies could have signed me up, except for the double agent angle). I started @mailing him. A few weeks later no response had arrived (he didn't connect much). Meanwhile, my employer had dropped out from the mush, and a replacement player was frantically being sought. So there I was, stranded - one employer now "inactive" and my other potential employer steadfastly ignoring my mail.

What was I to do? Obviously, hang out at the bar and hope for the best.

WANTED: THE MYTHICAL TINYPLOT COORDINATOR

Remember, I was a total newbie, learning the commands as I went along, with no pre-established friends I could ask to integrate me into their activities. However, I am a quick study (and a fast reader) and while sitting in the bar or whatever I spent a lot of time wading through all the newsfiles I could find. One of them swore that newbies who were at loose ends and wanted help getting a little RP started should contact the TinyPlot Coordinator (TPC) and ask that worthy Admin to set up a small, simple TinyPlot to give the newbie a chance to get some RP going while he learned the ropes. Unfortunately (you see it coming, don't you?) the TPC had last logged on about 5 months previously, and wasn't expected to come back. I was still on the shy side and it took me about two months of hanging out in bars, and occasionally getting to participate in somebody else's ideas, before I decided I was probably as qualified as the next RPer to create my own TinyPlots and advertise for help in carrying them out (we're talking about something considerably more complicated than "I want to get drunk and flirt with somebody tonight" you understand - I had already grasped that much of "Tinyplotting Technique."

About seven months after the old TPC had last connected, a new RPer got the job. I knew him fairly well; like me, he had been left a bit stranded when our mutual employer kind of faded into the sunset . . . unfortunately, by that time I was about ready to give up on the mush for a while, part of the reason being RL scheduling changes, but at least the problem had finally been fixed on paper.

What was wrong with this picture?

Quite a bit, obviously. It's not going to win people's trust and affection if the newsfiles say that if they feel lonely/bored/unsure of what to do, they should contact a non-existent person. Not if the newsfiles keep telling them that for seven months, at least.

A bit later I started hanging out in bars in a few new, underpopulated mushes that had caught my eye . . . but now I planned ahead, having ice-breaking routines, unusual conversational gambits, and even (gasp!) TinyPlots ready to pull out of my hat at a moment's notice in order to get a little meaningful RP started with the "newbies" (I now considered myself an old veteran) so they would feel like there was actually A) something interesting happening on this mush that B) could involve them. In other words (though I didn't think of it this way at the time) I was doing what that legendary beast, the TinyPlot Coordinator, should have been doing all along on the mush where I acquired much of my seasoning. I modestly believe that my personal policy of trying to welcome and interact with newbies had something to do with keeping various people active on those mushes after they had created their characters and started looking around for something to do.

HOW TO LOOK USER-FRIENDLY TO THE TYPICAL NEWBIE

So: do you have someone on your Staff who feels the desire and the obligation to try to get newbies into the swing of things, actually coming up with plot ideas for them, RPing with them when he can, expediting their adoptions into pre-existing Noble Houses and other Groups (if you have any), and doing all this EVERY DAY HE'S ONLINE AS HIS MAIN OCCUPATION, instead of occasionally RPing with one or two newbies a week IF he's finally caught up on the coding and building which are supposed to occupy the bulk of his online time?

What's that? Speak up. Did you say "No?"

That's what I thought you said. For shame! Let's get something straight. A mush will not prosper unless it has people RPing in it. Now, I have seen RPers forgive a lot for a theme they believed in. They have forgiven only having a small number of rooms fully described and available at the beginning, they have forgiven problems with the comsystem or the lack of a BB or a shortage of mush-specific online files, they have forgiven all sorts of coding delays and building delays as long as, at the core of things, they felt there was some decent RP happening and the potential for more.

Are we communicating here? Of course, a really satisfactory mush (like that masterpiece you're still trying to put the finishing touches on at this very moment) requires an awful lot of coding and building and file writing and so forth, but very few people become permanent residents on a mush just to admire the lush scenery, the lengthy rules, the user-friendly special commands, and so forth . . . if they're getting bored out of their skulls sitting in the bar all day waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of those other features in real RP.

So: pick out a TinyPlot Coordinator (TPC) and tell him to get cracking on welcoming newbies. Have him draw up a list of basic TinyPlot Seeds he can use to get some action started. Have him set fire to the bar occasionally and watch people RP the panic and hysteria and so forth.

He doesn't have to be a fully empowered Staff/Admin/Wizard/Whatchamacallit if you don't want to, he could just be a regularly active RPer (such as I once was) who is public-spirited, but it's important that you find a good one. Make sure he understands the theme (train him if necessary). Keep in touch with him so if he needs a weird secret passage built in a hurry and doesn't know how, you can delegate a Builder to rig one up, Crash Priority, so the newbies can have the fun of discovering and using it. Give him a title (such as TinyPlot Coordinator) and give him prominent billing in the newsfiles so newbies who log on when he's not around have a fighting chance of realizing that they're supposed to @mail him for help.

You won't regret it. When you have happy groups of RPers forming friendships and clogging the streets, doing all manner of interesting things because their TPC offered suggestions ("Time for a snowball fight, people! Meet in the park at 8 PM tomorrow!") while the wizards of other mushes are spending all their time coding and building, coding and building, or occasionally RPing with each other in the Feature Character roles they reserved for themselves while ignoring the peasants, and wondering why their nightly attendance is so low, you'll be glad you appointed somebody to take the newbies by the hand and help them feel that your mush was different from the countless competitors that take the "Sink or Swim" approach when someone shows up looking for action.

ADDENDUM : For my personal use, I once threw together a hasty list of what I called TinyPlot Seeds - simple situations only requiring two or three participants to get things rolling, which could develop into full-fledged TinyPlots if there was enough interest. The list is still online right HERE for emergencies.