Furryfaire

It's not new, per se, but I recently had a discussion with a couple other players - definitely some "old school vs. new school" sentiments going on. I don't want to call the situation "hopeless," but I'm also not idealistic enough to think setting up a forum, encouraging people to use the board system, or updating the Wiki (all of which have been done at one time or another) will be a simple and solid fix. So much existing lore resides entirely in a couple people's heads, meaning any effort to gather it all requires a non-trivial effort on their part - effort that cannot simply be put in by anyone who has the time and desire.

So there's sort of an atmosphere that discourages any major roleplay, which isn't particularly healthy for a roleplay-based MUCK.

Anyway, I include the conversation I had here for those few who might read it. I hope it might make the point without being offensive - certainly none of it was intended as a personal attack on anyone.


[OOC] You say, "Yeah, I've been trying to think of what's 'sceneworthy' to do with Jez and been coming up blank lately. Then again, I'm also considering more broadly what to do with the character and I am still undecided."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "What do you mean more broadly what to do with the character?"
[OOC] You say, "Oh, not like I'm thinking of retiring Jez or anything at the moment, but... she seems to have hit a pretty static point that's not real inspiring either. Relationship drama has died down as she found a niche with Orion and Tash that (so far, at least) seems to be working fairly well. Business is fine and dandy. I find myself thinking 'something' needs to happen to shake things up a bit. Life without conflict is realistically nice, but narratively kinda boring. ;)"
[OOC] MediCat nodnods
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "I had actually hoped that Orion trying his hand at magic could lead to all sorts of peculiar shenanigans in which Jezra would have an interest, it's just that my expectations of the magic system have been turned upside down every time I inquire about it. I feel like those who are established as magic users do whatever they want with no ruleset, and when I try to establish my own ruleset on what Orion could or could not do based on the wiki information I am told that he can't do that... I was hoping that in bringing the autocarriage to Ralyn we'd have a scene or two more with him and maybe some easy scenes would ease tension that he seems to have with me..."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Because in the end, I've found that anything I do that he doesn't know about gets questioned as to whether or not it can even be canon."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "That's been impacting my willingness to GM anything extravagant."
[OOC] MediCat says, "Yeah. I'm pretty much... not interested in GMing anything at all."
[OOC] You say, "Yeaaah. Kinda been there. I suffer from having my desire to run scenes shot full of holes long ago. I've bounced some ideas around in my head, but have yet to find something that clicks well enough to get me to actually put the effort into it to back it. Which can be incredibly frustrating at times."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Tash has been remarking--and I think I'm of the same sort of mindset--that the setting that Faire is presented as by the wiki and the MUCK rooms themselves is a pretty great sandbox to play in, but that there's way too much undocumented MUCK history sitting around that we as players aren't exposed to until it conflicts with something we just played out in detail, and then it gets thrown at us."
[OOC] MediCat says, "Yeah."
[OOC] MediCat says, "It's not friendly to unestablished players."
[OOC] MediCat says, "And it's excessively friendly to established players."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "When Kyn isn't in a particular mood toward me I find he's helpful and fairly likeable. Shiro and his myriad of alts too. I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't like the staff here, moreso... I feel inordinantly pressured by their presence."
[OOC] Jezra brow furrows. "That has been a repeated issue. Just trying to wrap my head around the effort of getting everything on the same page is a little mind-boggling to me, though. And it would require effort largely from two or three particular people whose visions may not even match already."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "I think the only way the whole MUCK would ever have a truly unified canon storyline is if every scene played out got posted publicly. And... something tells me that there are certain reasons that would never happen on a MUCK with accepted R+ rating."
[OOC] You say, "Heh. Yeah."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Summarizing would help everyone get close to that though. Eeeeevery now and then I see someone post some in-character news, but it's really rare."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Lots of times in scenes I've been gming I think about posting something to RP channel to let people know what's going on, but I usually refrain if I already have people to play out the scene with because my experience has been that including someone in an established scene before I know what to expect from them usually doesn't work out well."
[OOC] You say, "But it would take more than that. Just posting everything people do would leave a large pile of stuff that most couldn't be bothered to read through. You'd need someone(s) to sort for relevant changes to update the Wiki or something. And then you'd still have issues of people not noticing all the updates..."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "It needs to use the +bboard system I think since that notifies you of unread posts."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Existing BBoard system though has way too many unread posts for notifications to be useful."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "We need a mark all as read feature... or some other system by which we can tell players logging in to this MUCK, HEY LOOK AT THIS THING OVER HERE"
[OOC] Jezra hehs. "You can flag everything as read, but still you run into the issues of 1) getting people to chronicle events and 2) sorting through it all."
[OOC] You say, "I think +bbcatchup marks all existing as read."
[OOC] ShadowFox :O
[OOC] You say, "Didn't know that?"
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Nope."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "So you just +bbcatchup all and suddenly bboard unread notification becomes useful"
[OOC] ShadowFox worships the all-knowing spottycat.
[OOC] Jezra takes a bow? >.>
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "I guess sometimes I'm easily impressed, but that was annoying me a lot for a very long time."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "+bbcatchup isn't in the base +bbhelp"
[OOC] Jezra looks. "Under '+bbhelp bbread'"
[OOC] You say, "Which does not contradict your statement, per se. ;)"
[OOC] ShadowFox flails at multilevel help files
[OOC] Jezra fuzzles.
[OOC] MediCat peers. Yea, +bbcatchup is always present in +bboards.
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Well, I'd probably know if the Furscape headwiz hadn't stripped +bboard out of the MUCK for no reason >_>"
[OOC] MediCat says, "Heh."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "So maybe better help for new players making the bboard system a real focus of the MUCK would help?"
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "In other unrelated news, sweet and sour chicken or beef & broccoli?"
[OOC] You say, "I'm still not completely sold on the idea. ;) And there would still be a lot of work getting from Wiki to 'now' as a baseline. Uhhh... is that news? Both are good, though I'd usually lean toward the latter, myself."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Well the news there is that I'm probably ordering chinese food."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Which I do too much, but it's delicious."
[OOC] Jezra chuckles.
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Hmm. Maybe a forum would be more appropriate to govern discussions? I dunno, it feels like some kind of searchable conversation where interviews with established MUCKers were public info would help. Something like that? No matter what system is used it will take effort... what do you suppose lets us be laziest?"
[OOC] You say, "There was a forum at one point. Biggest problem was limited involvement - lots of people didn't keep up with it."
[OOC] You say, "So yeah, it comes back to that."
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "I wonder if we can get Abiri interested in Furryfaire... player from Furscape that likes to help with things like wikis. A lot. To a fault."
[OOC] Jezra chuckles.
[OOC] You say, "Would be useful, but still have to funnel the data out of Shiro and Kyn to begin with."
[OOC] ShadowFox peers at bboard. "Apparently there is a third wiki that's 'unofficial'? But it got stickied to the bboard."
[OOC] You say, "Heh. The SPS version or something else?"
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Kyldeer's wiki"
[OOC] ShadowFox mrrs, "Which I guess is a broken link at least for me. +bbread 4/36"
[OOC] Jezra hmms and nods.