Foundational Skills of MUSHing

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.