@L-B-Heuschkel I sent a friend your way a couple months back who was new to Mushing, but their concern was that they couldn’t figure out how to engage. No one talked to them, and as a newbie, they couldn’t figure how to get involved with the story. This is probably on them as much or more than anything, but I know it specifically related to Keys and someone being new to the hobby.

(To clarify, this is not me trying to slam Keys or LB, both of whom/which I think are awesome. Just thought it might be relevant. I think a lot of us forget what it’s like to be that true newb and flailing around trying to figure out how to mine for fish.)

I don’t feel slammed, no worries. Getting to the new folks – particularly the shy ones – is a challenge all games face, all the time. We try our best to be accessible and have readable and sane helpfiles, but there are always some that are going to fall through.

I am of course happy to take any feedback that might help catch the next one that might otherwise fall through!

but their concern was that they couldn’t figure out how to engage. No one talked to them, and as a newbie, they couldn’t figure how to get involved with the story.

As someone who’s been MUing for a couple decades, now aimlessly drifting alone because their friends have moved on, I can’t even figure this shit out anymore. I can’t imagine coming into this hobby brand new, but that might be my aging brain and diminishing will to live talking.

A smaller game might be easier to engage with, depending on the people running it and the game’s RP culture, but this can be hard to figure out without giving it a go. The ability to blindly ask for RP, offer yourself as tribute when other people ask for RP, and to not be emotionally devastated when you’re consistently ignored on channels is also helpful.

Unfortunately, I do not possess any of these skills lol

(To clarify, this is not me trying to slam Keys or LB, both of whom/which I think are awesome. Just thought it might be relevant. I think a lot of us forget what it’s like to be that true newb and flailing around trying to figure out how to mine for fish.)

I can’t speak personally to whether any are more newbie-friendly than others, but the Ares platform as a whole is designed to be easy for new players. Especially the web portal. From a client, the base commands are basically the same as PennMUSH. Even commands that are different (e.g., pm instead of page) have aliases for compatibility.

Honestly I think most of the Ares games and community themselves are newbie friendly. Most people are happy to help a new person get adjusted to things. These are ones I’m most familiar with:

I recently opened up Neo Draconis and have tried to keep it relatively simple to create whatever you want and run with it if they’re into stuff like Twilight Zone/Welcome to Nightvale/Small Town Weirdness and certainly welcome new players and people.: http://neodraconis.com/

If they likes Superheroes and Marvel, Excelsior is a roster game where he wouldn’t need to create a character. They could just pick up and go. The staff are friendly and always looking for ways to get characters involved if you feel like you need help: http://excelsior.troll20.com/

Game with Zombies has a bunch of veteran Ares players on it that are happy to help new people out if Zombies are more their style. http://gamewithzombies.com/

The Network is another good one that’s open to helping new people. The concept can be a little bit to wrap ones head around but it’s a good community and staff/players are quick to try and assist people with concepts and answering questions. The wiki also has a ton of good information on it re: theme. http://thenetwork.mugames.org/

The commands are pretty similar, so the places you’d be on not-familiar turf is more about additional functionality than not knowing the commands.