@Mourne Have you seen what @Jumpscare has been up to with Silent Heaven?

I have actually, I am not sure it’s a game for me, but the technical aspects have really helped get my creative juices going for converting systems.

If all you need is to run Rhost/Penn/Tiny without a website, use a shared MU host. I used to use Genesis MUDs but that was like 10 years ago. Don’t know if they’re still any good, but their base hosting package for the oldschool MUs is $5/mo.

Though for the record, like Tez said - you don’t actually have to touch the code to run an Ares game. It comes with everything out of the box. It’s only if you want custom code, like your own skills system, that you would need to do anything with Ruby.

I may be in touch if I could run older style codebase.

For the old MU servers (Rhost/Penn/Tiny) there are shared hosting sites to run the game itself for cheap. But if you want a wiki too it’ll depend on the requirements of the wiki you choose.

My idea would be that choices would not hurt the player, they’d just be directions in which they got stronger.

You could even do it like Bloodlines where the game asks questions and the answers designed the sheet. Which would be really cool if using a custom system or one that is not well known.

This takes me back to FFXI, when all the info was hidden, and people sat around hacking the game and running endless tests to figure out what stats things actually gave you. It was incredibly annoying to learn that “I like cats more than dogs” meant you got +31.3% crit but -29.44% luck.

So as long as you can also see the numbers? Could be cool. But I would not want to go back to the days of hidden stats and side-effects.

You can even customize using the web portal without coding. It’s not hard to do the bare minimum.

Just, you know. It is the bare minimum. Obviously customizing it DOES take real work. But anyone who doesn’t have that knowledge shouldn’t feel discouraged from trying the base install!!

$10/month will get you a basic setup that’s probably sufficient for a MUSH.
$20/month will be top notch and more than sufficient to run a large game, a wiki with plenty of storage space for images, etc.

The standard Ares hosting plan through Digital Ocean is $12/mo and has enough power for all but the biggest games (including the wiki/webportal).

Disclosure: I do get a referral bonus for DO that funds the AresCentral server, but I was using and recommending it even before that.

How much is mush hosting these days?

$10/month will get you a basic setup that’s probably sufficient for a MUSH.

$20/month will be top notch and more than sufficient to run a large game, a wiki with plenty of storage space for images, etc.

I could do it, and I am not the best coder, therefor it has to be easily done by the super coders that abound all over.

You could even do it like Bloodlines where the game asks questions and the answers designed the sheet. Which would be really cool if using a custom system or one that is not well known.

Damnit…

How much is mush hosting these days?

And while I agree that games shouldn’t over-player for what staff can handle, trying to run an intro scene for every character is significantly more time commitment than “normal” GMing. I definitely agree that 5 games with 25 players getting regular GM attention is better than 1 game with 225 players not getting enough staff attention.

However, I think that you can get SOME of that if you sit down and really think about why PCs are involved in the game, and what they need in order to fully engage with it.

There may not be the staff to give every PC a custom opening scene. But you could very easily condense what might happen in that opening scene into an opening vignette, that has at the end “Here’s some ideas for following up on what your PC learned, here’s a few PCs you might immediately reach out to, either because they’re likely to find someone who’s been tossed half-dead in the harbor, or because they’re sorcerers like you, or whatever.” You could even give PCs a very definite goal with a reward in it: “Post scenes talking to four PCs (alone or in any combination) about what you discovered during your opening vignette. Put in a job linking to the logs, and you’ll receive a lead/bonus/NPC contact/XP/WHATEVER.”

Give people something to work with, and give them some starting ideas on how to work with it.

EDIT: It’s also worth thinking about if a game SHOULD have “more than 15-20 players” if staff aren’t capable of GMing for that many people. A good deal of MU* issues come, at heart, from being too large, and not having enough staff to give the players the oversight and interaction that is needed. I’d much rather have a landscape with five games with 25 players, at most, than 1 game 225 players who can’t get any response back from staff or do anything because there’s no one available to adjudicate it.

It is impossible to make a tutorial simple enough that people will not get confused/stuck, but wow, that’s a lot of good effort being put into it, @Jumpscare.

@Pyrephox That example sounds awesome… but it also sounds like a TON of work for a staff to do for a game with more than 15-20 characters. Because that investigation will have to be GMed, and the encounters will have to be GMed, and the follow-on would have to be directed to other PCs by a GM. As @Mourne said, awesome, and I would love to do it, but way too much effort to be practicable on most games.

Aka awesome, but very hard to reasonably do in practice on a MU*

So, in a tutorial style setup, one of the first things I think a game would need to do is identify a) what are our core gameplay elements, and b) how do characters fit into that.

Then, for each character that is approved, generate a hook that introduces the character and player to each core element that is most relevant to their character in a structured way that’s designed to give the PC something to build off on in their interactions with other PCs and NPCs.

So, for example: let’s take an urban fantasy setting where what you want people to do in the game is a) become aware of extra-dimensional abominations that threaten the world, b) use their various supernatural powers or mortal talents to act in the world, and c) accomplish A & B without making magic and supernatural beings common knowledge among the mundane. For my money, you also want to include d) it’s okay to take a loss.

In that case, for every PC that’s approved, you’d want to give them a narrative bone (say, from an NPC) that will lead them towards A, require B, and have C as a meaningful challenge towards progress. Ideally, that initial hook ends in some sort of setback or failure. Why? Because that gives the PC motivation to find new resources (like other PCs) and come back stronger. On an OOC level, it helps the GM assess how the player takes a loss. If they CAN take a loss, mostly.

If you have a sorcerer who has made a deal with a demon and that’s the source of her power, then you want that sorcerer to hit the grid with, say, a demand from her demon to investigate why several Imps have gone missing in a certain part of the city. Investigating that should require the use of her powers AND there should be a threat from some mortal agency that is about to uncover the supernatural that she has to counter. And then, something happens that puts her on the backfoot; maybe she uncovers a mysterious ritual circle with symbols she’s never seen before, but cultists descend and she has to flee. Maybe she gets the shit kicked out of her, but they dump her in the harbor instead of checking to make sure she’s dead, and she hears a name that she can follow up with.

In a perfect world with unlimited, excellent GMs for a game, this would happen in the very first scene where she hits the grid - “Okay, you’re approved. Now, let’s start you off in a warehouse in the Docks district. Your patron, Azorith, has promised you a power boost if you check out this place and see why a couple of Imps that were working here have disappeared.” And the challenges would be tailored to encourage the sorcerer PC to use her key abilities, and - honestly - get to be pretty damn cool. Even if she does take a loss in the end, it’s a loss that sets her up for MORE RP - sets her up to be invested in those bad guys, in getting revenge, and reaching out to other PCs.

It also gives her something to immediately RP about, and lets the GM seed a lot of little plot hooks and emphasize points of theme.

The answer for me is documentation.

Oh no, not more reading! (I hear some cry in the back of my head) Yes, more reading.

Have a clearly presented ideology behind the game.

Express what kind of initial stories are being told, the overarching theme, the playground so to speak.

Making theme and help files /easily/ accessible, both on game and off is important. Not everyone wants to go to a wiki or webpage and there’s no reason why the documentation can’t be accessible on game too.

If it is a custom system (Which honestly, it needs to be at least adapted. Many TTRPG’s are not an easily put into place whole cloth into a MU*) make sure the rules of that system is easily available so it’s a level playing field.

Beyond those more design level things, for me, overall setting is a huge thing.

Generic Chronicles of Darkness, probably going to pass. Interesting take, even if it’s crazy (Looking at you CrackMUX, even if you were oWoD), a lot more intriguing than seeing the default race to Power Stat 8+ and who can make the most broken combat sheet to lord over everyone else.

I can generally make fun for myself, but being able to engage with the theme because it’s well written enough that everyone can make use of it is another thing entirely.

Sorry about the ramble, and probably missing the point.

I’m curious whether any Ares game runners have found people actually pay attention to this.

I’ve heard people mention it a couple of times as incentive so the knowledge is certainly out there. I don’t think it plays a big part, though.

I honestly cannot remember for the life of me how I made it through my first MU* tutorial.

That’s incredible. NICELY DONE.