MUSHy Musings

In games with feature characters (possibly even only feature characters) like MUSHes based on comic books, the question of how to handle villains comes up. There are a few possible answers to this:

1. Players cannot play villains.
2. Players can play heroes and villains alike.
3. Players can play villains only if they show a knack for generating RP with their characters; villains are “major PCs”, in effect, and sort of like mini-staff.
4. ... and a host of thousands.

I'm going to touch on each of the first three and explain both the virtues and the flaws of each before proposing a system which might fix up the problems.

No player villains

This is a solution I've seen in several games and it has some virtues, to wit:

• All villains are open to staff and player plots.
• It avoids a lot of the OOC drama that tends to surround player vs. player gaming, especially when you have heroes who refuse to lose to villains in a scene or villains who do likewise. (This is discussed at length in a previous blog entry.)

Of course these virtues come paired with some problems:

• What's a 'villain'? Is the Punisher a villain? Emma Frost? Eric Killmonger? From various perspectives literally every character in comics can be taken as a villain. This is a difficult concept to define in a way that doesn't come across as arbitrary and whimsical: “Yes, we'll allow Emma Frost, but not Satana.” I've seen battles erupt over this.
• It's hard to tell coherent stories when you run a plot for ten sessions that has Dr. Doom on the moon building a secret base to control the world MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! and in the middle of it someone has a teenaged runaway punk him and one-hit knock him out in the middle of another plan to control the world MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (That mysteriously only lasts for one scene.)

The solution isn't a bad one, but it comes with some flaws that players and/or staff may consider to be showstoppers.

Anything goes

This is also a solution I've seen in several games and, as before, it has virtues and flaws:

• First, playing villains can be great fun for everybody, villain and hero alike, (if you do it right).
• It spreads RP around the player base since villains' players need to be involved when plots involving them come up. This permits for outside input in plots and stories that can lead to richer outcomes.

But, as always, there are some flaws to consider:

• Not everybody plays villains correctly. And a badly-played villain is no joy at all.
• A villain that is a PC is a villain that can't be used in scenes run by other players. The more villain PCs you have, the fewer options people have to run plots of their own with NPCed villains.
• Player vs. player hostility is almost guaranteed to erupt in games that have villains and heroes, especially when you have heroes who don't know that their job is to initially lose to villains, or villains who don't know their job of losing in the end.
• In consent-based games in particular, problems erupt. Like if a team of good guys is building up (hasn't even been made yet!) and a villain is already wanting to join the team incognito to mess with it from within: where's the consent boundary here? Around the team's leader(s)? Around all the members? How do you handle a situation where some team players would like to get some time to develop a team dynamic before villains fuck with them? It can get very messy.

As with the first solution, this solution isn't a bad one. It's just one that requires staff to be aware in advance of these problems and be ready to deal with them. There is, however, one more problem with it.

Villain:Hero Ratio

It is typical in comics for major villains to be few and far between. (There are minor villains aplenty, naturally: just look at Gotham! But major villains are sparse and spartan.) The problem is that when villain PCs are allowed, people tend to reach for, say, Loki instead of Condiment King. And this leads to ridiculous situations like having a 1:3 ratio of villains to heroes, and almost all the villains are top-tier with almost none at the Condiment King level.

Think about this. Really think about this. A villain like Loki is a threat to all of Asgard in Marvel. He's powerful enough that he's a concern to Odin, Thor, Sif, Brunnhilde, Heimdal, The Warriors Three, Frejya, ... you get the drift. Yet in most games that have free-for-all villainry, you've got a Loki, and an Amora, and a Hela, and the various big-name dark elves and giants and .... often outnumbering the people playing heroic Asgardians by a wide margin!

It takes careful management and monitoring of villain PCs in such games to make them not absolutely, 100% dominant in play, but such monitoring is rarely done.

Again it's all manageable, but you have to realize this problem before the problem destroys your game.

Semi-staffed villains

I've seen this at only one game. In it, there were a few rules:

1. You had to have a proven track record of being an active player before you could app a villain.
2. Villain PCs were monitored fairly closely by staff in how they behaved both OOC and IC.
3. Villain PCs were treated like “junior staff” in that they were to work together with hero PCs (especially “Major PCs”) to come up with plots for other players.

And it goes without saying that failing to abide by these rules had you lose the villain character in no time flat.

This has a few very impressive virtues:

• It reduced the number of villain PCs so that villains could still be emitted in player plots without worry.
• It ensured villains were active in the game and spreading RP around.
• It ensured villains were played according to the community standards of the game (not necessarily of each player, but of the staff in gestalt at least).
• It made clear to the villain players that they were there in service to the enjoyment of their fellow players, not their egos.

It also has a few flaws:

• The strong requirements to field a villain PC can turn away good players of villains.
• The villain PCs who do exist can slow down plots because of scheduling conflicts with people who want to have them in their stories.
• Perceptions (and let's be honest: realities) of favouritism erupt in any MUSH when special classes of character (“Major PCs, Villain PCs, etc.”) show up with exclusive qualities.

Further, while it gives good, on the whole, PC villains, NPC villains are still a wild west of inconsistent (and oft-incoherent) characterizations and locations and actions. (Which, in a comic book game, at the very least, is entirely on-point so not necessarily a problem!)

A modest proposal

So here's my proposed system. Set up a “villain registry” of sorts. Any time a player doing any kind of public scene (especially plot- or event-related) wishes to use a villain, the villain registry is consulted. This can lead to three cases:

1. The villain is not in the registry.
2. The villain is in the registry but flagged as “available”.
3. The villain is in the registry but flagged as “in use”.

In the first and second case, the villain is placed in the registry if needed and flagged as “in use” with a date. That villain is now unavailable for others' uses while that reservation is in place. If necessary that villain could even have a character sheet built for it and be logged in as an ersatz-PC for the plot's runner (or trusted associate) over that period of reservation. When, finally, the villain's role is completed, the villain is flagged as “available”.

Which leads to the third case. If a villain is “in use”, nobody else can use said villain in any public scene. (What people do in private scenes that don't get shared as game canon is irrelevant.) If someone wants to reserve a villain that's “in use”, they can put a hold on it. When that villain is made available, anybody with outstanding holds gets next crack in a first-come-first-serve basis.

The villain registry, especially if paired with actual generated character bits, allows for organized access to villains without the issues of dealing with villain PCs and the inevitable blocking off of stories that happens when you have them. Some scenes and stories might get delayed but it's better than eliminating them entirely.

But ...

There's a distinct flaw with such a system that impacts the game's outliers in a big way: it favours people who are active at the game's most active periods. If, for example, the X-Men players latch onto Magneto for a plot that runs for six months, that means Magneto can't be used in any plot anywhere else, like let's say some off-hours New Mutants types. The Magneto character is effectively a villain PC for the X-Men. This implies that said reservations must be time-limited. And that time can't be very long. Two weeks, say. If you can't, because of scheduling problems or whatever, finish with your Magneto-driven plot in two weeks ... well, tough. Yes, it's no fun that it got suspended or even cancelled, but, bluntly, your problems scheduling and running a plot doesn't mean everybody else has to do without. Suspend your plot and put a hold on the villain when it's time to continue it. Let others have a crack.

(Perhaps, too, that two-week time limit will actually motivate people to move scenes along instead of pausing them endlessly after two poses.)

This system can be mixed with allowing villain PCs, but I would think it interacts very poorly with free-for-all villain PCs. (It might work OK with the more controlled villain PC option.) In the end, however, I think it might just be best to leave villains as a lending library: checked out for limited periods, but must be returned for the use of others with a hard deadline.

In very broad terms there are two kinds of player characters on MUSHes. The lines between them are very blurry. There are some characters who skirt that line, or hop back and forth between them, but most people will acknowledge that there are two poles on the mass of possible characters: Heroes and Villains.

Now this being said, there are some things which need to be clarified, it seems, because lots of hero players have no idea what that means, and lots of villain players seem to miss the entire point of the villain role. So let's get some rules across for role-playing heroes and villains in ways that make for enjoyable and memorable play.

Both

Play to create memorable scenes and stories, not to 'win'. If you're concerned with 'winning' perhaps you should look into wargaming as a hobby, not a form of cooperative story-telling. Your focus in a MUSH's RP is to generate fun for everyone (yourself included).

To avoid bad blood, keep your OOC communications clear and friendly. You can joke around in-voice, sure. But make sure that people understand that it's badinage, not your serious viewpoint. Tone, in particular, is very easy to misinterpret in written communication.

Play characters who are either sufficiently flexible to be able to go in a variety of scenes, or, especially in the case of villains, characters who can bring clouds of mooks and flunkies into the scene while standing at the back, rubbing their hands like Mr. Burns.

Loners make for interesting written stories. They suck in collaborative ventures. Make your characters have a reason to be around other characters. Or, alternatively, learn to write fiction and get published. There's money in it that way. (Not a lot of money, true, but still...)

Heroes

You will not always win the day. Not every scene will have you leaving it ahead of the game. Indeed, you shouldn't always win! Most memorable stories of heroes have the hero face a danger, get trounced by said danger (thus giving the hero stakes in the fight and also illustrating the extent of said danger!), and then finally come out victorious in the end. In the classic “three-act structure” that informs so much of popular media, you'll note that the hero is on their back foot for most of the story. To tell a good story as a hero you need to lose more than you win! It's just that the final victory is yours.

Sometimes you will have to team up with perceived (or actual) villains. This is a trope as old as time: enemies that band together, ceasing hostilities, to face a greater mutual threat. You can't do that if you burn all bridges with your villains. (Or if you kill them.)

In long-running stories (like comic books or novel series) it's traditional for villains to get away in the end, set back in their dastardly plans, but still out there to cause trouble. Ride with it. It means you'll have more fun in the future.

Villains

You exist to lose, most times. Look again at the three-act structure referenced in the Heroes section. Yes, for most of the structure, the protagonists are at a disadvantage, on their back feet, and getting trounced by antagonist forces. But in the third act, when the climax arrives, the heroes win, not the villain most times. So what's the point of playing if you're always going to lose? Well, first, you're not going to lose always. You're going to win more times than you lose, in fact. You'll just wind up thwarted in the end. Which is what your role is in most stories: the overwhelming power who gets thwarted in the end. To play a villain properly you have to relax and learn to appreciate the ride, despite knowing the destination in advance.

One-note villains are boring. Complex villains with understandable motivations, even if the outcomes are reprehensible, are interesting. Villains, however, who are right from heroes' standpoints but must still be resisted are the ones that stay alive in memory. Don't play your villains one-note. Good villains are people and have all the foibles and complexity of real people.

The elephant in the room

Whether you're playing a hero or a villain, it is absolutely important to remember that the person on the other end of the screen from you is just that: a person. And even more importantly, it is important to remember that said person is not the same as the character they play. If the villain does something bad, that doesn't make the player of that villain bad. If the hero thwarts your villainous plan, that doesn't mean the player of the hero is trying to ruin your fun.

This is why OOC communication is so important. It's easy to become attached to characters; OOC communication can bring with it that perspective change you need to distance yourself from real-world anger at in-game actions. It's easy to misconstrue the actions of your counterparts (hero and villain both) as deliberate attempts to ruin your fun; nine times out of ten this is not the case, and OOC communication again can help you figure this out.

Remember that in a MUSH players work together to tell a fun story, even if the characters are in conflict.

And another MUSH behind me. This one was an intriguing case in that the main interacting staffer was all behind everything I've blogged about here ... and yet was so clueless that he broke almost every rule I've put here, while claiming to uphold them. From my Ten Commandments for MUSH Staff alone he broke I, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII very openly and probably also broke II, III, and X.

But hey, one out of ten done right? That's well ahead of the curve for MUSH staff, truth be told!

The root sin behind all the rest of the broken commandments at this particular MUSH was IV. Thou Shalt Not Permit Cliques. What is so intriguing is that the staffer in question professed to hate cliques and to have set up the game so there were none.

And yet not only was there a clique, it was a clique formed around the three main staffers and a few hangers-on, and it was a clique that was so in your face that someone who spent longer than a few seconds perusing just the list of scenes on the game could spot it without effort.

So what went on?

How not to clique

As I discussed in Clique-Busters, there are two types of clique. One is incidental in its formation and one is deliberate. Of course this nomenclature of “innocent” vs. “malevolent” cliques is a bit simplified and there is actually a spectrum between each end (like, for instance, how this game's main clique is mostly-innocent with ever-increasing malevolent traits), but the core takeaway here is that it is possible to be a clique without even realizing it. So here's a toolbox to help you answer the question “am I in a clique?”

Definitions

Before we can introduce the toolbox, we need to define a term. In an online RPG like a MUSH, the unit of “currency” (for want of a better term) is the scene. But what is a scene? There's quite a few definitions which could apply, but for this article the following will have to suffice:

A scene is a period of time, with a clear beginning and a clear end, in which two or more characters interact to further a narrative of some form.

This is pretty broad so some examples will help. These are scenes:

• A group of two or more players' characters clears out a hive of bee people.
• A pair of players' characters talk about old times in a bar to help work through some relational difficulties.
• A group of two or more players' characters have detailed graphical sexual congress.
• A group of two or more players' characters attend a ball to halt an assassination.
• A group of two or more players' characters explore an empty tomb.

These are not scenes:

• A group of two or more characters wander in the woods, fending off wandering monsters.
• A pair of characters talk in a bar about nothing material.
• A group of two or more characters attend a party and do nothing material.
• A single character writes a “day in the life of” story solo.

What distinguishes a scene, in this definition, from a non-scene is that there is both more than one player, and a purpose. It may not be a good purpose. (The resulting scene may not be a good scene!) But each of the “scene” examples has both multiple players and a purpose. The same cannot be said for the bottom four.

As a further element of this definition, in cases of games based on scene recording systems like Ares or Volund's Code, a scene is also specifically defined as something which, upon completion, the players would share, barring rules against certain kinds of scenes being shared. (Games without those will have to use other ways of judging if a scene has been actually completed.)

That defined, we can now look at some ways of testing if you're in a clique or not.

The numbers game

Go to your saved scenes or your logs. Count your scenes for the previous week. Then make a list of all the players (not characters) in your MUSH. Go over each scene and add a tick mark each time a particular player was in your scene. Count up the tick marks and put that number next to each player. Don't start making excuses at this point! Just count.

You might get something like this:

Andy: 17, Betty: 0, Charlie: 12, Dawn: 15, Ernest: 14, Faye: 0, George: 13, Horace: 0, Janet: 1, Karen: 2, Larry: 0, Michael: 0, . . ., Zedekiah: 0

Congratulations! You've already answered, if you got a result like this, your question. You are, indeed, in a clique. Your clique consists of you, Andy, Charlie, Dawn, Ernest, and George. It's pretty clear that you six play almost exclusively with each other and that you shun almost the entire player base, tossing out occasional one-offs here and there, but rarely follow up on those.

Note: Yes, there are valid reasons for such numbers to happen. But not as often as people like to claim. I don't have the time, space, nor inclination to go into the statistics of this all just to please a bunch of statistics nerds. No matter what statistical cheap tricks you pull, getting results like the above means you need to take a serious look at your behaviour as a MUSHing citizen.

What do I do with these numbers?

If you're regular players, you decide if you feel any obligation whatsoever to the player base. If you feel you do, you use this information you've found out about yourself and you go out and seek others to play with. Spread the RP around to the other players and, most importantly, follow up on it.

Don't just scatter a handful of one-offs (like poor Janet and Karen got!) and then think you're done. That will make things worse, not better. Integrate other players into your RP. (Within reason. Nobody's asking you to play with people whose RP or RL makes your teeth hurt from the grinding.)

If you don't feel you have any obligation (which is a perfectly valid conclusion to take; nobody can tell you what to do with your free time!), keep doing what you're doing. Just be aware that you're a) a problem from the game's perspective and b) likely not to be liked very much by the people you're shunning.

What about if I'm staff?

You should be ashamed of yourself. Get out there and start interacting with players not in your clique RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Or just be honest with yourself, admit to yourself that the game is a sandbox game, and close it to all but your invited friends. Then the issue goes away.

The player game

As a staffer, there's another way to find out if, specifically, your staff is perceived as a clique: ask the players. But here's the key: don't ask the players who are performing aural sex (sic) on you, giving you what you want to hear. Pay attention to VI. Thou Shalt Not Shun The Disaffected from the Ten Commandments for MUSH Staffing to get an honest view from someone who's already got a foot out the door and who thus perceives there to be nothing to lose.

And then get ready for brutality. Because the malcontent is, well, a malcontent. They're unhappy. And they may not be able to clearly and succinctly state why they are. And they may have reached the point of not giving a shit, and thus say some things to you your ego desperately doesn't want to hear.

Tough it out.

Even if, in the end, you disagree with the malcontent in question, sticking it through and listening will at the very least give you some insight into perception of how you're running the game (since games die by perceptions of malfeasance as often as they die from actual malfeasance).

And if you have several malcontents with the same perception, you'd better fact-check yourself to ensure that it is only perception...

Here's a list of commandments for MUSH staff. Unlike the source material the format was stolen from, I'll be adding brief rationales and explanations under each one, and even propose some solutions here and there.

I. The Player Is Why Your MUSH Exists

Players are the point of your MUSH. Without players, your MUSH is just a piece of software that does nothing. This must be kept in mind with everything else you do in your MUSH.

II. Thou Shalt Not Make a GOMO

A “GOMO” is terminology from Pern MUSHes where gold dragons were rare commodities and people upset at not getting a “gold” would quit in a huff and make a game where they could have a Gold Of My Own.

GOMOs, in the broader sense of people making games to get something they couldn't have in another game, have (justifiably!) a very bad reputation in MUSHing because the game is set up by the founders for the founders (and their friends) and to Hell with anybody else.

Solution i: Make the game for everyone. Derive enjoyment from other people's enjoyment of your work.

Solution ii: Be honest and make your game a sandbox game for just you and your friends. Don't inflict your GOMO on the public.

III. Thou Shalt Not Misrepresent Thy Game

Your players will find out the truth of it quickly enough, so why do you lie? If you're a superhero MUSH, for example, that permits so-called “OCs”, but OCs are treated badly by your player base, lying about this will not make your players happier. It will make them angry.

Solution i: Tell the truth so people don't get angered to the point of dropping your game's good parts because of the bad.

Solution ii: Don't allow the things that don't work in your game. Your game doesn't have to be for everyone. In the example given, if OCs are second class citizens of your game, just don't allow OCs in the first place.

Solution iii: Fix the player culture that makes the facet you're misrepresenting a misrepresentation. (How? That's an article for the future.)

IV. Thou Shalt Not Permit Cliques

Cliques kill your MUSH by driving off players who get tired of being treated as annoyances or passive audiences. Soon all you'll have on your game is the clique.

This one is doubly bad if your staff is the clique (something that GOMOs are notorious for!).

Solution: Already written about in detail.

V. Seek Thee Out The Unengaged

Not everybody is a brash, bold, self-starter. Not everybody can socialize easily with random people. Sometimes people need to be pulled in to RP for any number of reasons, including being gunshy after a bad experience at another game.

So, as a staffer, especially if you have a system showing scenes, like Ares or Volund's code base, look for people who aren't showing up and just invite them. You might get a great new player out of it who's happy that someone just noticed them.

VI. Thou Shalt Not Shun The Disaffected

It's easy to write off someone who's upset at your game as a “crank” or a “whiner” or some other such pejorative. And yes, indeed, sometimes this is true. I'll even grant the possibility that this is the truth most of the time.

But here's the thing.

Your players know better than you what's happening OOC on the grid. And even the whiners often have valuable information. Take a page from customer service and talk to them. And while you do, swallow your pride and your distaste for the “whiner” in question. Don't fall into confirmation bias.

Solution: Keep your fingers on the pulse of the game by talking to its malcontents.

VII. Thou Shalt Not Script Thy Plots

Scripted plots (or “plots on rails” as it is sometimes termed) are anathema to role-playing of any kind. If you want to write a story, do so. Write a story. Get it out of your system. Then run your game.

Solution: Use tools like The Spark Method or Plotfield Diagrams. Learn to be flexible in placing your set pieces.

VIII. Support Thy Player's Plots

In an ideal world players will write their own stories. This can only happen, though, if staff makes running plots easy. This means keeping the barriers to running plots low, dealing with what few barriers there are left of necessity with alacrity, and providing assistance (in the form of NPCs, say, or organizational skills) to players attempting to run a plot.

IX. Thou Shalt Not Rely On Rules Alone

Even legal systems don't work solely by the letter of the law. That's why there's judges: to interpret the letter for the complexities and nuances of reality.

When you have a threat that's existential to your game, like a burgeoning clique, or some other kind of toxic player, don't rely on foolish things like “three strikes” rules or such. Use your judgment and kill problems before they drive off your players.

Abusers are expert at procedural judo, even against staff.

This isn't to say you shouldn't have rules. It's to say that you should make a Rule 0.

Solution: Rule 0: The staff reserves the right to bypass the following procedures at their discretion in emergencies.

X. Thou Shalt Not Assume These Commandments Are Aimed At Thee

Nor should you assume they aren't aimed at you. These commandments are the result of decades of observation plus a good dose of opinion. If you see yourself in a commandment or three, well, I'm sorry. But this wasn't written about you, nor inspired as a response to you. If you feel attacked, read the rule. Read the rationale. Improve your game.

One of the most insidious curses of MUSHes is the clique. Cliques get established (innocently or malevolently both) and then begin to choke out a game until the game is essentially a private game for a core group of friends (that often lies to newcomers).

If a game wants to survive (or to at least live up to its inevitable press of being “newbie friendly”) cliques have to be busted up.

But how?

To answer this we have to understand why and how cliques form in the first place.

Why cliques form

Cliques form, broadly speaking, for two major reasons:

1. A bunch of friends who are used to each other's RP and whose tastes mesh just find themselves playing with each other more and more often.
2. A bunch of friends decide they want to be the centre of all MUSH attention and actively work toward that end.

The first of these is relatively innocent: the clique has formed organically, likely slowly, and isn't formed out of malice. The second is quite malevolent, however, and is made with specific intent to interfere (or eliminate) the enjoyment of other players.

Both, however, are cancerous to games and, if left untreated, can kill the host game, especially if any of the staff of the game start being part of the clique.

Innocent cliques

The formation of innocent cliques is just a byproduct of people tending to play with those they have a proven track record of being comfortable with. Nobody in an innocent clique intends to lock others out of RP. What happens instead is that a new player asks for RP, but the clique members have their RP dance cards filled with scenes they have already arranged with other clique members.

This leaves players who are not in cliques without viable sources of continuing RP. They might occasionally hook up with each other for a scene here or there, but this tends to not be satisfying because two players not really integrated into the game interacting doesn't lead to memorable, long-term RP.

Worse, when non-clique players do get RP from a clique member, the clique member will often give off vibes of doing it as a favour, not out of a genuine desire to integrate a fellow player into the game. This comes across as condescending and can actually make matters worse: new players get frustrated as they play in a scene they thought both parties enjoyed, but the clique member never follows-up with any more scenes.

Still, it's hard to point to anything specifically wrong with innocent cliques. There's several right things they're not doing, but nothing actively wrong.

Malevolent cliques

Which is where malevolent cliques come in. Malevolent cliques are groups of players who almost exclusively play with each other, just like innocent ones. What distinguishes them is that rather than being the source of benign neglect of other players, they actively seek to suppress the enjoyment of (perhaps even try to run off!) other players.

Malevolent cliques know what they're doing and tend to be very good at doing it. Their most alarming trait is how they tend to ingratiate themselves with staff, before starting, even, to infiltrate it. Once one or more of them is in staff, they ramp up their own in-game rewards (in the form of RP, plots, special events, special items, etc.) while suppressing all others.

In the terminal stages of such a clique's infestation you'll find situations like clique-staff running super-complicated, epic plots for their clique-player friends while, if forced at gunpoint, running the most mundane and pedestrian scenes for non-clique members.

For a concrete example of this, in a game I played in once, a game of political intrigue in an isolated castle, a clique had taken hold of almost all the staff positions. For their friends they ran long, convoluted story lines that just happened to have the members of the clique get honours and influence and rank. But when noise started coming from the mundane masses about how only they ever seemed to get anything, one of the staffers begrudgingly took out a staff-run NPC (the castle's chef) and ran a scene where ... ... a rat ran off with the chef's ladle. Where the 'reward' for the person finding the ladle and returning it was they'd get to eat a stew made by the chef. That was it. That was the plot that was supposed to satisfy the 'common' players while the clique's own plots were vast and sweeping dramas.

The toxicity of a malevolent clique's influence on a game cannot be overstated. Games have died from this. Games will continue to die from this. The aforementioned game in my example still has its web page up, but its forums connect to nothing, its events calendar is empty, and in trying to log in just now all the means of actually connecting to it are broken. A game you can't connect to is not a living game...

Dealing with cliques

Dealing with cliques presents several problems to staff.

1. Members of the cliques may be viewed as friends by staffers.
2. Innocent cliques aren't even doing anything explicitly wrong. They're just driving off new players by benign neglect.
3. It's often hard to believe that people would expend the kind of energy it takes to form and operate a malevolent clique; staff often can't (or won't) believe the evidence of their own eyes because the very notion is insane.

Yet cliques are very much a threat to games. They can choke off new games before they get a chance to grow and they can give an established game a poor reputation that leads to avoidance and inevitable decline. Cliques must very much be handled.

Innocent cliques

Handling an innocent clique comes in two flavours: staff handling and player handling. Each has its role in ensuring that cliques don't form or, once formed, break up.

Staff

There is a single, useful maxim in motivational psychology that can cover most of the situations staff have in getting desired behaviour from players:

You get the behaviour you reward.

Note the wording. It's not “you don't get the behaviour you punish” it's “you get the behaviour you reward”. And this can have subtle implications.

If you see a cluster of people RPing as staff and decide to reward that cluster by throwing plot their way, you're encouraging that cluster to come together again. And again. If you want to change that, change the reward. Instead throw plot at people visibly RPing with people outside of their usual circle.

It's easy enough to see who is habitually in their own little circle. You can probably automate this by checking who every hour and seeing which people are together in IC rooms across a week. You'll likely get a surprise. (Or maybe not if you've got the finger on the pulse of your players and have heard the chatter.)

Once you know the usual groupings, start looking for things that break these well-worn patterns and throw desirable things at those who do this. This is probably the single most effective thing staff can do.

Player

But the game isn't just staff and the solution to cliques shouldn't be only on staff shoulders. Players, too, bear some responsibility for mixing it up. The single best way players can break an innocent clique is to not be in one. But how do you know if you are in one?

You don't.

So actively avoid being in one. Get in the habit of finding new players and engaging them. Pick one day of the week where you will seek out someone you've never RPed with before and RP with them. One day out of seven isn't onerous, but if all players do this, there will be a huge surplus of open RP for new players in particular to fall into.

But doing this isn't enough. When you've done it, if the RP was to your satisfaction (nobody is asking you to play with people you don't enjoy!), follow up. Add this person to your list of people that you seek out the RP of. Invite them into plots. Have follow-up scenes based on your introductory one. In a word: INTEGRATE.

If even a handful of players starts doing this, the MUSH will come across as much friendlier, and if staff then also starts rewarding this, more players will do this and happier players will abound.

Malevolent cliques

Which brings us around to the topic of malevolent cliques. These are particularly hard to handle. Players can't handle them. Members know they're in it and don't want to stop: the clique is doing for them what they want. Other players are generally unable to do anything meaningful with them because the cliques are usually very experienced at dealing with dissent and at using procedural judo to throw people who oppose them off the game (doubly so if one or more of the clique members are staff).

This means staff needs to handle it.

Identification

The very first thing staff needs to do to handle the problem of a malevolent clique is to identify it. These kinds of cliques are good at sucking up to staff, good at ingratiating themselves to it, and indeed are good at infiltrating it. (The same procedural judo they use to get rid of dissenting players is often applied to hostile staff.)

So how do you identify it? This is where keeping your finger on the pulse of the MUSH is valuable. Talk to players, casually. If you have ombuds consult with them. Your players will know when there's a clique and when the clique is of the malevolent sort. After all the whole point of being a malevolent clique is to lord it over the “ordinary” players. If you keep your finger on the game's pulse, you'll know when a clique has formed/infiltrated.

Of course you also have to believe your players, which is hard to do. On the one hand you've got a coordinated clique of active players who are buttering you up. On the other you have a loosely-connected, disjoint set of players who are probably bitter, by now, at how they've been treated and come across as malcontents. It's very easy to let the former blow smoke up your arse and to ignore the latter.

A good rule of thumb is a rule of three: if only one player is complaining about a clique (or cliques), probably a malcontent. If two players are doing so, it may be worth paying a bit of attention. If three or more, however, are doing so, especially if they're not really visibly linked in any way, then you've likely got a clique and you need to deal with it.

Handling

But how do you deal with it?

The one thing you don't do is follow rigid procedures for mitigating player conflict or the like. Malevolent cliques are experts at such procedural solutions. They can use (and have used!) them to great effect in purging troublesome fellow players (and even staff) from games they try to take over. They will even use off-game resources to coordinate activities across the clique to that no single one of them ever falls afoul of the procedures while they continue to run rampant.

Neither can you rely on “you get the behaviour you reward” because they are already getting the reward they want: control over the game.

The only real solution for a clique like this is to excise it. Kick them off of the game and be ready for blow back from the players who don't recognize the problem and think you're just being authoritarian. Document everything you can get, and when banning the members, use that documentation to justify it, but be prepared for losing a few more players in the process.

Then build up the game anew, being more wary of cliques in the future.

MUSHing is an odd hobby. It's not quite playing a tabletop role-playing game, though it has many elements of this (especially if a game system is being used). It's not quite improvisational theatre, though it shares much of that DNA. It's closest to collaborative writing, but it has notable differences that can cause bad blood if you don't take them into account.

Here are some foundational guidelines for playing in MUSH scenes that can perhaps help navigate this little hobby:

1. Your character is not the protagonist;
2. Interaction is everything;
3. Read the room;
4. Avoid fundamental attribution error;
5. Be a co-driver!

There. You're ready to play MUSHes!

...

What's that? You say that's not enough verbiage? Very well, if you insist. Let me break each one down.

1. Your character is not the protagonist

MUSHing is a collaborative story-telling hobby. It's a mix of RPG, collaborative writing, and improvisational theatre. Each player has a character and that character is the protagonist of that player's story. So your character is not the protagonist; it is a protagonist.

2. Interaction is everything

Internal conflict can be dramatic – in works that you read. This is because when reading you're a single person interacting with a single person: the author. In a collaborative game of playing roles, it is interaction between characters that matters (and, more specifically, interaction between players).

Consider this sort of scene that has happened a million times on a thousand MUSHes:

Player A: Character A staggers into the coffee shop, clearly looking the worse for wear. She stumbles into a table, spilling the contents of an overpriced coffee concoction all over it in a brown tidal wave of hot liquid that flows over the edge. Player B: Character B looks up from the book that he's reading—Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu—and shakes his head at the stupid woman's dumping of coffee into the other customer's lap. He returns to reading, titillated by the passage concerning Mlle. Vinteuil's lesbian encounter.

This scene is dead. There's no interaction between the players because Player B has simply not given any hooks for continuing it.

“But my character wouldn't...” is the usual whine at about this point. STOP RIGHT THERE! YOU made your character. YOU control it! You're playing a game of imagination. USE THAT IMAGINATION TO COME UP WITH PLAUSIBLE GROUNDS FOR INTERACTION! (Or use that imagination to come up with a character that will interact.)

Now let's keep exactly the same characters and replay this scene with a Player B who doesn't suck at interaction, shall we?

Player A: Character A staggers into the coffee shop, clearly looking the worse for wear. She stumbles into a table, spilling the contents of an overpriced coffee concoction all over it in a brown tidal wave of hot liquid that flows over the edge. Player B: Character B is torn away from Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, having been so distracted by the titillating passage concerning Mlle. Vinteuil's lesbian encounter that he didn't see the disaster brewing until it was too late. “Hey, watch it you clumsy bitch!” he shouts in an ill-tempered display fuelled by the hot liquid now gracing his lap and the sight of the pages of his precious book now soaking up coffee like an ineffectual piece of paper towel.

See? Same situation and, more importantly, SAME CHARACTERS. Nothing has changed except that Player B has decided that interaction is the point of the game instead of something to be avoided. He's stayed true to the reality of his character (a bookworm wallflower) and still managed to get involved in the scene with actual interaction.

Wallflowers are scene-killers. Don't play a wallflower, or find some way to have your wallflower interact.

3. Read the room

Any good scene in a MUSH exists for a reason. That reason is expressed in, among other things, its tone.

Unfortunately a lot of players are either tone deaf or they've not bothered to check out the tone before posing. Here is an elided version of a scene that actually happened in a superhero MUSH:

Gang Leader: Evening ladies. Give us all your money and maybe we won't hurt you. Superbeing 1: “Guys, really, trust me, you're making a big mistake. Please, just turn around and walk away before something bad happens.” Gang: Laughs and starts to advance. Superbeing 2: Hulks out and rips one gang member limb from limb. Gang: Half stand wide-eyed in shock, unable to believe their eyes. The rest either run away screaming or fall to their knees begging for mercy. Superbeing 3: (newly added to scene). “HEY, YOU BAD GUYS! STOP MESSING WITH MY FRIENDS!” Runs around (a speedster type) and knocks out all the game members. “There. I got them for you. You should be more careful.”

This is an example of a player (Superbeing 3) who entered a scene late and didn't bother checking the tone of the scene, nor even pause long enough to notice that there was a blood-covered superbeing with human body parts strewn around her. The player entered and ended the scene in a single pose that did nothing to further the scene in any way while detracting from the mood, tone, and theme the scene runner was trying to set.

Make sure your poses match the tone of the scene you're in. If you've been in the scene pay attention to what has gone on around you and keep your poses in the same vein. If you've just joined a scene, ask for a summary, a replay of what's gone on before, or just wait a round of poses before entering with your own so you can keep the scene from turning into a farce.

4. Avoid fundamental attribution error;

It is a peculiarity of human psychology (mitigated by culture, however) that causes a bizarre hypocritical split in our reasoning. It can be summarized from this pithy little exchange from Yes, Minister:

I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he's being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.

What fundamental attribution error boils down to is that we tend to judge our own actions by reasons associated with needs and circumstances, but the actions of others by moral criterion, with those more distant from us (socially speaking) being cut less slack than those closer to us.

But the truth is that most times people do “bad” things because they don't know it's “bad” or because they have reasons that “justify” it in their minds, not because they're “bad people”.

Fundamental attribution error is lethal to trust in MUSHes, however, so it's incumbent upon us to clarify situations instead of making assumptions about the other party. Yes there are bad faith actors out there, but treating everybody as one of them is not how you handle them. Start from a position of charity, not resentment, suspicion, and moralistic judgment.

5. Be a co-driver!

I've linked to the in-depth definitions that culminate in the co-driver. Be the latter. If everybody in the game is doing “yes, and” much of the time, the game is better for all.

As I've said in multiple articles on MUSHing, directly or inferred, running a scene or a plot in a MUSH is not the same as writing one in a story. You should not know the outcome of a scene or a plot on entry. The outcome should be a result of player decisions with perhaps a small amount of behind-the-scenes guidance to ensure that the central conflict is front and centre and gets resolved.

Set pieces

But this conflicts with a core piece of a good MUSH scene or plot: a set piece. A set piece is a major scene or plot element that gives the scene or plot something unique and memorable to differentiate it from what would otherwise be just another conflict. For example:

• Two people shooting each other: boring.
  
• Two people shooting each other from cars driving at full speed on a crowded highway: better.
• Two people shooting at each other from construction equipment that's driving over top of traffic on a crowded highway: BINGO!

All three of these are basically the same scene: gun play is being used to resolve a conflict. Where they differ is in the setting and circumstances in which the guns are resolving things.

That is the set piece.

So how do we do them when we can't force plots?

The problem with a set piece is that it requires preparation. And the problem with that is that it means you're forcing players down a certain path to reach your set piece.

Or ... are you?

OK, let's say that in a plot you have a picture in your head of characters getting involved in a gunfight in a toy store. You just like the pictures this puts into your head as bullets zip through stuffed animals, ejecting puffs of filling, or G.I. Joes getting blown to smithereens by small arms fire. It sounds like a fun time.

The bad way

A bad plot runner will lay down rails and force players into, say, this sequence:

1. New drug is found on the body of an overdose victim.
2. The drug is, oddly, concealed in a teddy bear.
3. Another body is found with the same place of concealment.
4. Questioning a dealer leads to a shocking discovery that children's toys are being used to smuggle drugs.
5. The player characters go to the toy shop where the shipment has been smuggled.
6. FIREFIGHT IN A TOY SHOP!

The good way

What's a better way to do this?

1. New drug is found concealed in a teddy bear.
2. Players do what players do best and derail the plot because they decided the real plot is helping Father O'Brien regain his lost faith.
3. GM grits their teeth together and goes along with that, expanding on the Hat (minor, throw-away NPC) that was Father O'Brien and turning him into a Face (recurring NPC) that drives a story of loss and recovery.
4. At some point, a street gang assaults the good Father who was out trying to save souls in their recruiting grounds.
5. The player characters chase the gang into a toy store.
6. FIREFIGHT IN A TOY SHOP!

Why the good way is good

You kept your set piece and had your fun, but you didn't make the players feel like they'd been forced into it. Playing your cards right they may not even figure out that you'd planned for that scene because you liked the idea so much.

In improv circles there are phrases like “yes, and” and “no, but” that are bandied about as jargon. In brief, the former accepts a proposed entry into an ongoing scene and builds on it, while the latter rejects the proposal and demands an alternative. There's an article here on how these two relate to MUSHing, but there's another way to look at this we can use: the lump, the passenger, the driver, and the co-driver.

The lump

The lump says “no” (not even “no, but” but a flat-out “no”) to everything. The lump kills RP by not wanting to do anything. The “no” can be explicit or it can be implicit as, say, the lump's character reads a book, only looking up as things happen only to look back down.

Lumps are frustrating to deal with and tend not to get invited back into scenes. Don't be a lump. Engage and acknowledge and build!

The passenger

The passenger is the one who says “yes, yes, yes, yes, yes”. Any proposition is accepted and played out. But the passenger is not one to add to a scene with propositions of their own. So while not a straight-up frustration like the lump, a passenger can be very draining on the people who are forced to do all the creativity.

It's OK to just ride sometimes, but please, do try to build up on what others propose, if only to take the creative load off and let others enjoy the act of being surprised.

The driver

The driver is the one who says “and, and, and, and, and”. A lot of popular scene runners are drivers, but there are issues with them, chief among them being that they don't want input to their stories. They want to write a story and have you just be there.

The driver is, in short, an author who is using people like they would use characters in stories. This can seem fun at first, but after a while it chafes as players start to notice that nothing they suggest is accepted (or often even noticed!). Further, drivers tend to burn out and often just drop things mid-stream leaving chaos in their wake as their vehicles crash and burn.

The co-driver

This is where ideally everybody playing wants to be: the one who says “yes” to affirm propositions made by other players, but who also append “and” to build up on and introduce new propositions.

By being a co-driver, we have the best of all worlds. People have the opportunity to create, but also share that burden evenly so nobody gets burned out. Sure sometimes someone might slip into a passenger role, while others someone might step up as a driver for a while, but in the end, over time, everybody is creating and everybody is acknowledging other people's creation.

Be a co-driver. Please!

While I have left MUSHing as a hobby, much of my thought over the past two years, as it relates to gaming, has been centred on MUSHes. They were my primary means of entertainment during the two-month+ Great Wuhan Lockdown of 2020-01-23 and they've been part of my life since about 1999.

And in that time I've made observations.

One of those observations (and the one that led to my final exit) is that they're incredibly toxic places. When not polluted by cliques, they're staffed by psychos or filled to the brim with them in the player base. In fact the reason I dropped the MUSHing is that the final place I played at, where I'd seen evidence of it not being this bad at the staff level, turned out to be that bad (though I hold the staff largely blameless; mostly just clueless).

There is, however, one pattern I've seen over and over and over again in MUSHes that triggers most subsequent problems, even when the staff is largely well-intentioned. It's the trust cycle: players don't trust staff to solve a problem, staff finds out about problem too late, staff's attempts to fix an out-of-control problem breeds more player mistrust. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So here's my solution

Ombuds

From Wikipedia:

An ombudsman, ombudsperson, ombud, ombuds, or public advocate is an official who is usually appointed by the government or by parliament but with a significant degree of independence. ... The typical duties of an ombudsman are to investigate complaints and attempt to resolve them, usually through recommendations (binding or not) or mediation. Ombudsmen sometimes also aim to identify systemic issues leading to poor service or breaches of people's rights.

In my view of things, a game's ombuds (there should likely be more than one for reasons which q.v. below) should be explicitly NON-staff. They are player advocates, not staff. They would work on behalf of the players to resolve issues between players or between players and staff. They would deal with problems anonymously at need, openly with permission, and would generally strive to be as trustworthy as possible. Sometimes they would write up recommendations to staff which have no actual weight, ruling-wise, but which would be published publicly (ideally both on- and off-game) thus ensuring that staff will have to at least address the contents (even if addressing them is a “no”).

Who would be ombuds?

Picking ombuds is a tricky business. If they're selected by staff fiat (which is the traditional way government-wise) there will always be the perception that they're just the staff mouthpiece. If they're picked by players there's a risk that they'll be brigaded in by an in-game clique as a ringer. Overall I think the ombuds should be staff-selected, but after that the staff would need to be very hands-off if they wished to retain credibility.

Ombuds need to be active players, but not overactive. They need to be players so that they have a vested interest in improving the game, but overly active players tend to have vested interest in pieces of the game (cliques) and can thus be a source of corruption.

Whoever is selected needs to understand that their actions—all of them—go straight to their credibility in their role. If they're untrustworthy as players, their effectiveness as ombuds falls flat. This will require a degree of openness that includes a mandatory 100% exposure of any alts and group affiliations, among other things.

What would the ombuds do?

They would have several key tasks.

1. LISTEN. Find out about problems and start addressing them before they become all-encompassing. Listen, too, to individual players bringing up grievances and gripes related to staff or other players. Be open. Be ready to hear. Listen.
2. INVESTIGATE. Sometimes complaints are based on incorrect perceptions. Ombuds can help correct these perceptions by talking to both parties and gathering information from other sources.
3. MEDIATE. Having talked to both sides of an issue, the ombud can offer to act as a mediating influence in solving issues without them snowballing.
4. RECOMMEND. Problems are sometimes systemic. Such systemic problems can be discovered through the previous steps. If they are, solutions can be publicly recommended to staff.

LISTEN

Problems in games do not come out of nowhere. For example in the last MUSH I played before quitting there was a constant undercurrent among a large set of players that they couldn't find RP opportunities because of cliques who only ever RPed with each other, ignoring others who were even nominally part of the same team. It should never have been a surprise for staff to hear that people felt this way, yet it always seemed to come as a surprise when that brewed up. (It brewed up at least five times in the time I spent there.)

A good ombud would have heard about these issues (and indeed if trust had been established, would have likely been someone the players went to for dealing with it!) and either assisted the players having problems getting RP or made public recommendations to staff for changes before the problem brewed up into loud complaint and people quitting.

INVESTIGATE

Very rarely is there a single, clear “right” and “wrong” person or group in an altercation. Upon receiving a complaint (or getting wind of one) one of the jobs of an ombud is to talk to all involved parties to get to the truth of the matter.

Doing this right is where a good ombud shows her chops. Without consent there can be no exposing, for example, of the person complaining. Yet the situation needs to be explored. Perhaps the complaining party needs to be convinced to be named, or perhaps the situation needs to be addressed more broadly as a hypothetical question that has broader implications.

Whatever the situation, using tact, diplomacy, and a bit of stealth, the ombud has to get a fuller picture of what is going on before moving on to later stages. It is critical that the ombud try not to take sides and is never perceived as having done so.

MEDIATE

Players often don't want to directly address someone they're feuding with because they don't feel they'll be treated well. (The fact that they rarely are when conflicts arise adds fuel to that particular fire. An ombud can act as go-between (at least to start) to find out and share complaints and negotiate possible resolutions. Ideally they should be able to act as a moderator in a direct conversation between the aggrieved parties, keeping tempers cool and heads level. The best handling, after all, of player strife is for the players involved to end that strife mutually.

RECOMMEND

If player strife cannot be ended via mediation, or if there is something systemically wrong in the game that led to the issue, the final recourse of an ombud is to write a report outlining the issue and making a recommendation.

Interpersonal issues

In the case of interpersonal strife, the recommendation should be made privately to staff with all stakeholders involved receiving it. (In rare cases where interpersonal strife suggests a structural problem—like a problem player sowing strife across several groups—even this can be a public recommendation, for which q.v. below.) Staff can take this report and recommendation and use it as a jumping off point for their own investigation and/or mediation, or they can just implement the recommendation. All parties involved, however, shall be kept in the loop, including by this point the ombud.

Systemic issues

In the case of more systemic issues (or in the case of multiple interpersonal issues suggesting a destructive player) the report and recommendation of the ombud shall be made publicly both in the game and off the game for all players and staff to read. Making this public means that staff will have significant moral pressure to either implement the recommendation (if it's deemed possible and desirable) or to explain why they've chosen not to implement it (and perhaps the alternative they're going with instead).

The chief reason for this public handling is, again, to increase trust, both in the ombud (a public report lets all interested parties see that the ombud hasn't straw-manned one side or the other) and in the staff. Transparency is key to trust in an environment that has historically been untrusted.

There is a massive, over-arching plot running on a MUSH that I play on. It's shaping up to be a disaster on many axes, including:

1. Just taking waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long!
2. Staff is being wishy-washy on its impact on the setting. They're not committing to it being a major upset to the setting, but they're not not committing to it either, leaving things in kind of a weird state where some people are acknowledging the plot and others are not.
3. It's very clearly a “plot on rails”. (The person who made it and is running it denies this, but the person who made this has also scheduled scenes with evocative titles that imply events that have not yet happened as far forward as March and possibly beyond.)
4. The foundation of the plot is one archangel going berserk and wanting to end all reality—yet mysteriously every other group that should be very concerned about this whole thing (other pantheons, the Hells, the New Gods/Immortals, etc.) are “sitting this one out”.
5. It's a plot that “everybody can participate in” but there is, in reality, aside from the “sitting this one out” schtick, a blacklist that blocks specific players from participation..

Let's look at these by the numbers.

1. Excessive duration

This plot started in November, albeit in a low-key occult murder mystery style. At the end of December it kicked up into being a game-wide thing that has a massive impact on what and how people play (staff wishy-washiness aside, for which q.v. below) ... and it has its third act planned well into April. (Given how there will inevitably be things that interfere with the planned schedule, this means it's likely to actually be continuing into May and possibly June.)

This is an absurdly long time to let a single player dominate a game. This is, by the planned schedule, almost half a year where a single person gets to set the tone of the RP on the game, and the staff's attempt to mitigate this actually makes things worth.

Which leads us straight into...

2. Wishy-washy staffing

This MUSH prides itself on its coherent setting. One of the staffers involved is a genius at tying together seemingly-disparate concepts to unite what would otherwise be a very difficult thing to make consistent. The result is a MUSH encyclopedia wiki that is truly awesome in its depth and its scope. It is almost breathtaking.

Which is why it's so weird that this plot is considered both officially-supported and yet something you can completely ignore if you so choose. There is massive upheaval in this plot. Manhattan has been invaded by angels—and the old-school Biblical style, not the hotties from Heven in Marvel's setting. The burrough has been evacuated and, indeed, NYC in general is being evacuated to the surrounding cities. This means literally millions of refugees flooding New Jersey, Boston, Metropolis, Gotham, etc.

Yet somehow, also, you can just have your Manhattan shopping trip scene if you like. People playing in Gotham can completely ignore the massive influx of desperate people fleeing conflict. (If you want a hint as to how unrealistic that is, look at what Syrians fleeing their war-torn homeland did to the countries around them that they fled into, then the countries around those, then all the way into the heart of Europe. To call it a disruption is to understate things dramatically!)

This sparks a bizarre schizophrenia in the setting now: a setting that had hitherto been amazingly consistent and coherent. I understand the staff is trying to accommodate both those who are interested in the plot and those who want nothing to do with it (which is an increasing number as some of the other flaws are becoming manifest), but I think making the setting inconsistent and incoherent is not the way to do it. Really the staff should have made a choice: either come down on side with the plot, making it canon, or ask the plot runner to scale it down so that it doesn't cause unwelcome mass disruption.

It's really not possible to have it both ways.

3. Plot-on-rails

I make no secret of my disdain for plots-on-rails in gaming. I think they are a symptom of a fundamental failure in comprehension: role-playing gaming is not writing. Even when MUSHing, a collaborative writing exercise, really, more than a role-playing game, it is different from authorial writing.

Role-playing games have some relationship to literature. MUSHing has an even closer relationship. But they are not the same thing, and the key difference is enshrined in the word “collaborative”.

When you author a story, you are the sole stakeholder. Even when you're co-authoring a story there is a small number of stakeholders compared to characters in the story. When you are in a role-playing game (or when MUSHing): you are just one stakeholder among many!

The reason “plots-on-rails” are so despised in the role-playing hobby is that they strip agency from all but one or a few stakeholders. The “plot” (a horrible word choice that likely leads to the very misunderstanding that turns into this profound error) is not your story. It is the story of all those present.

In short: if you want to write a story, write a story. Don't force other people to write your story your way for you.

Though the plot's author denies this, the plot in question is very clearly a plot on rails. Consider this scene description for a scene schedules on February 13th, almost a month in advance:

The Hosts of Heaven have a very special delivery for a very special foe.

There are five scenes scheduled under the name of that plot between now and that scene. There are also a few side scenes based on that plot scheduled. Yet somehow the plot runner knows, despite the five scenes in between, the first of which reads as this...

The contest for major neighborhoods in Manhattan continues. The angelic hosts do not seem to be relenting regardless of how the tide of battle is going. Can the forces of Mortal-kind beat back the flood of angelic warriors or will they be forced to retreat to safer havens?

...that the hosts of heaven will be making a delivery. Somehow I think the answer to the question posed in the earlier scene is already written down.

And remember that's just the scheduled scenes. The plot's plan has a third act that extends all the way to APRIL.

4. And let's not forget the other in-setting stakeholders

The conceit of this plot is that the archangel Michael is intent on destroying all of Creation to force God to start it all over again, this time with blackjack, hookers, and blow or something. (I'm being a bit flippant, but not as flippant as that should have been.) Yet somehow here are some major in-setting forces that are not weighing in to send Michael packing, leaving some measly mortals (albeit some of them superpowered) to do the heavy lifting for ALL OF CREATION ANYWHERE:

1. The Greek pantheon.
2. The Norse pantheon.
3. Kirby's New Gods/Eternals (most especially Darkseid).
4. The forces of various Hells.
5. Galactus.
6. The Beyonder.
7. A myriad of interstellar empires (Shi'ar, say, off the top of my head).
8. ...

WTAF!? Somehow the Greek gods don't have concerns about the dissolution of all reality!? Darkseid, a person who is a) absurdly powerful, and b) who has designed on controlling all of reality is sitting this one out? Somehow only the mortals in a small patch of land on a single small planet are willing to fight this literal threat to everything and massive star empires with huge militaries are ... also sitting this one out?

If the scheduling alone, complete with key events already planned a month in advance, wasn't enough to convince that this plot was purely authorial in nature, the utter illogic of all these listed forces and many more (I'm not going into the game's Wiki to find all of the stakeholders that are mysteriously sitting things out!) should be a good sign that the plot's runner has a very specific story in mind without any thought given to what others might dream up.

5. And then the “plot for anybody” turns out not to be for everybody...

Knowing that I was unlikely to be able to attend any of the actual major scenes of the plot in question, I thought I might be able to (despite the evidence of plot-on-rails above) have some kind of influence on a scene. As such I RPed with a major mover and shaker in the plot and had my character offer, through chicanery, a major military force (of someone else) to assist in the fight against the angels. (The fact that this would further my own character's goals while furthering the goal of, you know, reality continuing to exist was just icing.)

The other player in that scene thought it was a good plan and took it to the plot runner, both IC and OOC.

Then the day of the big battle comes. And my offered forces are nowhere to be seen in the scene logs. I found this curious and was actually at first miffed with the other player of that scene, thinking he'd decided not to proceed with it. Fortunately I took it up with him and he turns out to have been as surprised as I was. He took it up with the plot runner.

It turns out that the plot that's for everybody, that getting involved in is simply a matter of “just show up!” has a blacklist. And I'm on it.

I'm not allowed to participate in his plot. I'm not allowed to even have an indirect presence in it. So even if I didn't have massive misgivings based on #1-4 above, #5 seals it for me: I'm a second-class citizen in this MUSH now because a MUSH-wide plot that's unofficially-official (or officially-unofficial or whatever) is closed to my participation.

Period.

And that is the final disaster in a stream of disasters that is this plot. If you're going to run a plot, on rails or otherwise, that has such a major impact across the whole MUSH, you cannot have blacklists. Personally you don't have to scene with someone you don't like to. Consent rules the roost. But you cannot lock someone out of participating in any way whatsoever.

And it gets worse when the poltroon that ran the plot denied to my face knowing what I was talking about while telling other people that yeah, I was blacklisted.

And it gets even worse when the staff apparently tolerates this behaviour.

For when I requested that the scene that tried to get peripherally (!) involved in the MUSH-wide plot be deleted because I was blacklisted from it, the reaction of staff wasn't “WTF?! What blacklist!?” The reaction was a cheery “OK!” and that was the end of it. The staff either knew about (or, worse, didn't care about) the existence of a blacklist in a game-wide plot.

Conclusion ... of more than just this rant

And that marks the conclusion of things. This plot is a disaster from inception through execution. There is no way this is going to go well for any but a small number of players. It has already alienated several players, and now ...

This marks the conclusion of my relationship with this game. Allowing a plot this disruptive to exist? That's an error, but it's also a learning experience. I had enough faith in the staff before today to think they'd learn from the mistake they made in letting this monstrosity happen.

Then I found out that they not only tolerate, but seemingly cheerfully condone blacklists.

And that's the end of my faith in staff, the end of my time on this MUSH, and the end of my time on all MUSHes at all.