MUCKrant

Mostly, these days, I find myself about in the same place on Furryfaire. Faced with the same circles of people and characters, I generally don't feel like there's anything new to do. My presence sits and stagnates. That's not something that gets any better with time, but rather the opposite. I don't blame others, though. It's at least as much my fault as anyone else's. Worse, when I'm actually made to feel something about the place, it's rarely positive...

Mind you, I was in sort of a poor mood last night, and it's lingered into this morning, so don't expect any sunshine in this post.


I have about two open avenues of RP there that still feel new. One is a character relationship that's on hold and involves a pair off the main grid, so with limited opportunities to actually do anything anyway. The other is a proposed trip to Rym that I almost don't seem to have the time for, but may be entertaining, at least. Basically everything else feels like "same people, same situations, different day." But that's just the general malaise.

I thought Nimby was sort of a neat idea to start with. I generally don't approve of giving true godly power to PCs, but this was supposed to do so in a contained environment. Then pretty much everything that seemed like a good idea to me about it was deviated from, and now we have a bunch of player-run foreign deities on the main grid. This also seems to violate the existing "rules" about time dilation, since time was being pushed faster on Nimby to follow development of the setting. Bleh.

There have long been points of the AUP that I tolerated, but didn't really agree with. And I log in this morning to read about an addition that any RP not specifically done on the MUCK is invalid and non-canon. I can only imagine the arguments that led to that, and it makes me somewhat glad to have logged off early last night. How do you even expect to enforce something like that? Log and review everything on the MUCK? And does this really happen so much that it would have been a big deal to someone to make a stink about? Really?
I've done some off-MUCK RP with some characters. I used Kyle in a cross-over campaign offline years ago. I've done a few scenes with people on other MUCKs due to downtime or to avoid interruptions. It's never been a big thing, or had huge influence that I recall. Ralyn picked up an NPC "companion," but that all could have happened just as easily on Faire. Kyle picked up a planeship, but he already had a magical portal that could do about the same thing and was fading into the realm of "background NPC" by that time.
So, I don't really care about the new rule itself.
What bugs the heck out of me is that a few hours of arguing between people who happen to be online can lead to mandatory policy changes. This doesn't seem like the first time, either.
I think there might be a pet peeve involved here. I despise snap judgements, and I'm not fond of lack of communication. MUCKs are generally not democracies, sure, but everytime I see a head wiz just do something that affects all the playerbase, or bans someone suddenly, or things like that - I cringe. It may not be a democracy, but it is a community...
Officially, my post is "Equipment Wizard" among the staff. But you know, I took that position primarily to lighten the load on friends serving on staff who were bombarded by frequent requests. Now, equipment requests are a lot rarer, and if that's really my only duty, it's not necessary. If my opinion (and that of others on the staff) aren't to be consulted for changes in policy, then we're not serving as any sort of advisory council either. So if I'm redundant, why bother?
My gut reaction is to resign the post. ... Then again, I hate snap decisions, don't I? I guess that leaves me in a position to consider whether I'm serving any useful purpose as a wiz...