Category: OtherSpace

Another benefit of play-by-post

January 21, 2014 Brody No Comments

As we get closer and closer to the conclusion of our War of the Weavers forum story arc experiment, it occurs to me that there’s another decent benefit of running major events like this in a format that’s unmoored from the rapid-fire nature of real-time RP. A complaint I’ve heard in the past, especially in…

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace

Getting out of our own way

January 8, 2014January 8, 2014 Brody 13 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, as 2013 wound down, a player dragged me out to the woodshed for a beating over everything I’ve done to screw up the MUSH in the past few years.

Crafting? Awful.

Space system? Why?

Game lore? So terribly convoluted!

Bringing my alts online to pad the who list? Horribly deceitful and pointless.

Running RP threads in the forums as an alternative to in-game RP? Not their cup of tea.

How do any of these measures – these apparently half-assed Band-Aids that I’ve been slapping on OtherSpace – do anything to foster RP?

I’ll address these issues one by one in a bit. And later I’ll cop to things I’ve done in recent years that actually were detrimental MUSH.

But first I’ll say this: None of the items griped about above are detrimental to RP in the game. Period.

Later, I’ll talk more about what is, in my opinion, hurting RP.

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace

Player builders retired

January 3, 2014January 3, 2014 Brody No Comments

With the advent of Operation Sandbox and the ability of all players to build on the MUSH, we no longer need the handful of special builder characters that were made available to a handful of players. As of today, those characters have been retired and their rooms and objects have been assigned to actual player…

Read More “Player builders retired” »

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace

The motto for 2014: “Tell a story”

December 24, 2013 Brody No Comments

It’s been a hectic, amazing year.

For me, on the personal front, I remarried in March and in May became father to an adopted infant boy.

At work, I went from education reporter to news editor in the spring and by the end of summer became a hybrid news editor/crime reporter.

On the OtherSpace front, I started a new “isolated” style of story arc with Colchek, taking a handful of players aboard Comorro Station to an alien universe where they could be caught in the crossfire of a war for freedom.

For a few months, though, that storyline faltered because of the intense increase in the demands on my time by both fatherhood and journalism. It’s just been impossible to find reliable blocks of three or four hours a pop to run events on a consistent basis.

I’m sorry about that.

Luckily, most (if not all) the players involved in the Comorro arc have multiple characters who can stay active back in the home universe. So, when things are in a lull aboard Comorro, there’s still someone to play with back in the Ancient Expanse.

But I want (need) the arc to plunge onward and, thanks to some encouragement from the players involved, we’re managing the adventure using posts in the game forums. It’s like an experiment we tried on a broader scale in the past, employing play-by-post techniques, but it may prove a better fit for us when it comes to small-group adventures.

I can make time – a few minutes here and there – between feedings and reporting on gang violence to post about what the True Children are doing to make life interesting for our heroes.

I miss the immediate gratification of real-time literary riffing in scenes, but the forum posts are a better alternative than inert silence.

And while we explore what’s next in the evolving narrative, we’re also thinking about what’s next with the game itself.

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace