Hi @Autumn for clarity, the Prince, Sept Alpha, etc at Retro are NPCs. I also think it’s best for the game and community when NPCs hold these pivotal leadership positions.

I recognize there are several voices here saying ‘I tried, I saw this concerning thing, I felt like I got no traction when voicing my concerns, and I left.’ Which is all very reasonable to me. This hobby is an investment and if it’s not fun, it’s hard to want to continue to invest. I think we’ve all had experiences with this.

I would, however, encourage people with concerns to connect with the HSTs directly, and formally. This helps us differentiate between frustrations that are being vented, and a call for action. It also pulls all three of the HSTs into a discussion, versus just the Sphere lead, about what’s happening, and it helps establish a pattern of behavior (we do track things).

Our current staff line up is:

Chaos (HST, Lead: Vampire)
Daedalus (HST, Mage Lead, Tech)
Ori (HST, Shifter Lead)
Inari (Admin: Build)
Inky (Changeling and Wraith Lead)
Headcrab (Admin: Vampire)
Navi (Admin: Shifter)
Mr. Gutsy (ST: Shifter)
Pumpkinhead (ST: Shifter)
Jaskier (ST: Shifter)

There’s been a lot of changes among staff over the past year, there’s also been a lot of changes in the game itself. We’ve grown a lot, and our hope is to continue to grow in a way that promotes a healthy game, with a strong community, that operates with high levels of trust. That has always been where the best stories can be told, and best experiences can be had, and I want us to get there.

But there’s a lot of history, and frankly, a lot of trauma in this community, and we’re all human. It takes time to make things better, and communication, but we’re going to keep trying, and I encourage you guys to keep trying too. Even if it’s not with us.

-Muse/Ori

There is a lot I find myself wanting to say, but I think I’m just going to keep this simple.

Thank you to the Retro Shifter ASTs (Jaskier, Mr. Gutsy, Navi, Pumpkinhead), I’m so grateful to have 4 incredible people helping the sphere, and the game at large. My incredible team initally fielded what turned out to be a pretty horrific situation until I and the other HSTs were able to step in. Something I wish they’d never had to do.

Thank you to Cujo and Siren, for being open and receptive to information sharing to aid in keeping our shared communities safe.

I want to be clear, I am absolutely open to this kind of cross game collaboration. Feel free to reach out if something like this comes up.

I’d also like to share, that this is now a three site ban with Liberation joining in.

Being one of the people who read the logs, I’d like to say:

May they find no quarter.

======================== LiberationMUSH: Announcements =======================
Message: 1/61 Author: Siren Sat Mar 7 2026
Player Ban: Lilena 16:33:42

Hello Liberation,

Yesterday, it was brought to my attention that a member of our community has recently been removed from a couple of other games due to, candidly, grotesque and appalling behavior involving children and adult themes. After carefully reviewing evidence by coordinating with other game runners, as well as players here, I’ve confirmed Lilena to be the offending player, and that her conduct warranted immediate removal from our own.

To think that I need to reiterate this publicly is gut-wrenching, but after reviewing this evidence I feel it bears repeating: Every PC and player must be at least 18 years or older. And ANY character involved in an sexually intimate or suggestive scene, be they PC or NPC, must be explicitly at least 18 years or older. Attempting to spoof child NPCs to skirt our rules and engage in inappropriate RP will result in immediate removal.

My decision to take quick action on this breaks several of Liberation’s arbitration policies, and because of that, I believe owe you all a great deal of transparency. Normally, the process to ban a player here is a lengthy one, and one that requires alignment across members of staff and directors. We also typically do not take actions on players here based on their conduct on other games or social forums. There are exceptions to every rule, however, and these sorts of things are always reviewed case-by-case. I felt, in this case, these exceptions apply.

World of Darkness is full of nasty, uncomfortable, and oftentimes challenging subject matter. Unfair power dynamics and intimate themes are a backbone that form the spine of the horror genre. These are themes that, when approached and embraced with a mature attitude and the gravitas they demand, can create compelling narratives for us all to engage in. But that engagement requires trust and tact, and when a player’s behavior demonstrates a foundational lack of both, they will be removed.

If you hear of Lilena’s player attempting to re-join Liberation under a different name, please escalate to staff immediately.

Love always,
Siren

==============================================================================

-Ori @ Retro

@Ashkuri I totally get that. When I started painting, my art mentor told me the following about pricing “Pick a number that’s uncomfortable, and then double it” But it’s always been so tricky to do. I also have never taken commissions, nothing makes my Muse go into hiding faster than telling it that it now HAS to do something lol.

@Ashkuri If you ever do another round of doodles I’d be interested. Also if you do commissions or have a site, please share, I’d love to see more.

@Ashkuri This is so good! Excellent “doodling”!

On Liberation I played Lola Darling (at least that’s what she said her name was ) and I frequently had the writing advice ‘kill your Darlings’ in my head. Which I suppose is my weird way of saying, I am team character death.

I also tend to sit a little further back from my characters, and focus on the story they’re a conduit for telling, and not just how they experience the world. And the reality is, good stories involve strife, and I am always hoping my characters root deep enough in others, that if they die, an impact will be felt, and that will also become part of the story.

@somasatori oh man, I had a Upeo wa Macho concept for a game, I’ve always wanted to revisit, since the game only went two sessions. I’ve never seen anyone run the game since.

@Pavel said in Minigames in MUSHes:

@Muse said in Minigames in MUSHes:

@Pavel Or maybe a self limiting factor, like clues know how long since the last clue and will stay in hiding until it’s time again.

Just let me have my slap-upside-head tool okay.

Fiiiiiine, but only because I’m a sucker for a sad face.

The 2023 movie, ‘Anyone but You’ is based on Shakespeare’s play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

@Pavel Or maybe a self limiting factor, like clues know how long since the last clue and will stay in hiding until it’s time again.

@Jumpscare Wow Jumpscare, thank you for putting this together, I don’t know nearly enough about coding in Evennia, but I know Evennia has some very special features that I’m interested in and anything that contributes to community knowledge about it is a win in my book!

I suddenly now want a programmed cat cafe where the cats are interactive and their affection levels for PCs increase with affection/treats. Man I really appreciate you guys sharing, there’s a lot of inspiration in these.

Out of curiosity, and totally not born from the fact that I’m newer to MUSHing but also love the idea of programming in a bunch of mini games…what sort of examples of minigames have you guys seen or imagined?

I’ve seen hunting, I’ve seen fashion, I’ve always liked the idea of a mission board that spits out mini prp’s or scene prompts.

@MisterBoring One of the tactics I’ve been working on integrating from my pre-MUSH HST time is what I dub ‘plot pages’. They live on the wiki and can be maintained by staff and players, with information that is considered public for that sphere about that plot. Historically I’ve found them really successful for getting new people caught up, making sure plot details are centralized for easy referencing, that plot tidbits are readily available to characters and players and not being lost in the shuffle , or gate kept, and serves as an easy historical reference for past events.

It’s a work in progress, but one I hope finds some success.

@somasatori while I never played there past a flirtation with Alpha, I will say, I still remain thoroughly impressed with the pioneering you did with Evennia. It’s incredible how much you taught yourself, and what you pulled off.

My experience with ‘solo rp’ isn’t MUSH based. But in my pre-mush games, this was frequently called ‘blue booking’, and it was used for little peeks into a character’s life that didn’t always warrant a scene.

In some games characters had a perpetual thread on a forum where they’d post their blue books, they were available to everyone to read, in others you just shared where you wanted, in some only staff saw them. Some sites awarded XP for them, some only for really well written ones, and some not at all. Some places allowed blue book submissions for XP justifications.

I tend to treat RP games like collaborative story telling between me and other players, rather than just a thing my character is experiencing, so blue books were often a way for me to add another layer to the story. Sometimes they’d be flash backs to significant parts of their life, sometimes aftermath to emotionally punchy scenes, sometimes legit journal entries.

It often felt like the RP equivalent of throwing in some material for the player, the way a cartoon throws in some material for the parent.

But there wasn’t really a showboating component to it.

@Jenn It is known.

Hi @thrax ,

This definitely looks like only one small part of the story, including messages taken out of context (I do have the full conversation, it’s in the file). But to address your concerns-

We did try to weigh if this was conflict avoidance in play when reviewing Kahula’s situation. The problem with that is, she had a no contact order elsewhere on her by the player, and she obfuscated who she was across two games and discord, and SOUGHT OUT rp with that player specifically.

I don’t know about you, but if I tell someone that we aren’t good company for each other, and then find out months later that they hid who they were, on multiple platforms, and intentionally befriended me across multiple games, I would consider that some major red flag behavior and not an attempt to avoid conflict. It flirts with stalking territory frankly.

I don’t really think harrassment in any form is okay. Including outside the game. But it would be unrealistic to expect staff to address harrassment outside of the scope of the game. We do however address it in the game and take all tickets regarding it very serious, and the player harrassing her, was also banned at the same time for their own hosts of reasons.

Even with what I’ve shared here , it was only a part of the picture on why we reached the decision we did. Bannings are a laborous process, we often spend days if not weeks discussing and reviewing the material we have, and weigh the decision against the good of the community as a whole.

I understand many people use this hobby as a way to escape or cope with their own mental health struggles, and/or the world at large. I have in fact built my sphere and how we approach things with mental health in mind, we often can accomadate for ADHD, Anxiety, Depression and other mental health issues by adjusting stories, engagement, and how information is shared. But it is important to remember that neither the staff nor the playerbase are trained therapists and should not be held to the expectation of fulfilling that function.

So in summary, we absolutely took into account the reasons she might have hid who she was, the idea it was conflict avoidance unfortunately didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Hope that clarity helps.

P.S. I don’t know the policy here, but many places it’s poor form to offer up someone’s discord without permission.

Hi @Jenn ,

I’m happy to affirm that Pika is no longer associated with RetroMux. She stepped down from staff shortly after I started back in November/December. Then in April there was a site outage, from what we could discover it was likely due to non-payment.

It seemed like the right time to officially part ways. We got a new host, new wiki, and removed all traces of her affiliation. It was also a good time to refocus on our intent to have a community first game, which so far has seemed pretty successful despite the rocky origin of the game.

I recognize this is my first post (yay!) but my account isn’t brand new, in fact I made it shortly after we got situated from pulling the new site together. My lack of prior posts really just sums up to the reputation this place and it’s ancestors have, which is a bit…intimidating, especially to someone relatively new to Mushing (less than three years). But I’ve been liking posts here and there, and debating chiming in. You finally got me to do it!

Hope this helps offer some reassurances on the Pika front. OH! And so no one has to fret over the ‘who is who’ game, I’m Ori, an HST and the Shifter Lead on RetroMux.