ON GEOGRAPHIC ISSUES

ON THEMATIC TRAVEL TIMES

ON THE PROPER SIZE OF THE IC GEOGRAPHY

ON THE SPONTANEOUS CREATION OF ADDITIONAL GEOGRAPHY

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ON THEMATIC TRAVEL TIMES

There are five approaches to this that you can take, and all of them have been used in the past - some with more success than others.

1) "Travel times? What travel times?"

2) "Travel times? Follow your conscience!"

3) "Travel times? Here's a timetable of IC / RL trip lengths. Follow it faithfully or suffer the consequences."

4) "Travel times? Use the coded transportation system. Once you punch in your destination and enter the vehicle, it won't let you out until you've been in there long enough to count as a decent trip."

5) "Travel times? Well, we have no intention of giving you an ironclad timetable to guide you, but we DO intend to criticize you if, in our opinion, you travel from one place to another faster than we think you should have done, even though we didn't tell you how long you were supposed to take."

TRAVEL TIMES? WHAT TRAVEL TIMES?

This represents what you might reasonably say in response to a question from a Newbie if you were a Wizard on a mush where practically everything was set within a single metropolitan area (such as the city of Arrakeen on REGENT OF DUNE MUX). In such a setting, it is assumed that if any two characters within the city want to rendezvous, they simply start walking until they find each other and can start RPing immediately. If there's a better way to arrange the early days of a mush to encourage frequent spontaneous RP, nobody has ever shown me the examples to prove it.

TRAVEL TIMES? FOLLOW YOUR CONSCIENCE!

Some mushes say, in effect, "We aren't going to be peering over your shoulder, but it would get downright ridiculous if in a single RL day on our medieval mush, you were in the capital city of Country A roleplaying, moved to the capital city of Country B to RP a scene, and back to Country A for another scene before you logged out for the night."

They say it, but they don't make any special effort to find out if you went ahead and did it anyway. They just hope you know how to restrain yourself a bit.

TRAVEL TIMES? HERE'S A TIMETABLE OF IC / RL TRIP LENGTHS. FOLLOW IT FAITHFULLY OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

This can turn into a straitjacket.

QUESTIONS

How hard are you going to work at enforcing it?

What will you do if you find someone violating it?

Just how far apart are the extreme reaches of your IC map, anyway? If it's supposed to take, say, 2 RL weeks to get from the north pole to the south pole (or whatever you call your extremes) then you've probably got some major problems building up.

What is your policy on alts? If you're stingy with them, you encounter a big problem when your player gets lonely and there's nobody else within 500 IC miles and he already has as many characters (1 or 2, let's say) as you permit.

[Brace yourselves, I'm going to repeat myself. I already told this story in another chapter in illustrating the dangers of having a Great Big IC Geography (like a continent or two) but I'm going to tell it again to illustrate the related issue of how stringent travel times could strangle RP opportunities. You've been warned]

I was once on a fantasy mush with a two-alt limit (plus I had a puppet who had managed to get some regular RP going with friends elsewhere) and at least 14 Areas total. One evening I found myself, despite having previously made two appointments for RP that night, logged on with all three characters ready for action - and for the next few hours, each was the only thing alive in his entire Area (each Area was an IC Nation). Several people were online in other Areas but it was supposed to take at least a couple of RL days to get to those places before RP could commence. Nor was this the first, second, third, nor fourth time that I had encountered such a situation within the past month on that mush.

Finding myself full of idealistic zeal and with nothing better to do at the time, I ended up posting a lengthy discussion on the OOC BB, mainly in hopes of seeing if anyone else agreed with me that the current situation was insane. A complete transcript of my original arguments, critical responses from two other RPers who strongly disagreed, and my subsequent responses to them, is found HERE.

TRAVEL TIMES? USE THE CODED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM. ONCE YOU PUNCH IN YOUR DESTINATION AND ENTER THE VEHICLE, IT WON'T LET YOU OUT UNTIL YOU'VE BEEN IN THERE LONG ENOUGH TO COUNT AS A DECENT TRIP.

I have it on good authority that the original Dune Mush used some such system for travel from one planet to another. The original Dune Mush is no longer in business. These items may be connected, but I can't swear to it.

[NOTE: I was once told, by someone who claimed to know from firsthand experience, that the following description of a travel system represents the way thing were done on the now-deceasedDune II MUSH. Since then, serious doubt has been cast upon this proposition - i.e., it probably didn't happen that way. However, I have also heard from other people that some such sytem has in fact been used on other M** at various times, so I have left the description in, for general study.]

One approach is supposed to have had interstellar travel times coded in as "exactly X hours of online time to get from any planet to any other planet." Yes, they only counted ONLINE travel time. Assume that "X" meant "Four," for purposs of discussion. If you got in a spaceship headed from Planet Alpha to Planet Omega at 10 PM Thursday RL time, right before logging out for the night, when you logged on again at 6 PM Friday you would still have a 4-hour wait, before, at 10 PM Friday, you were actually permitted to step outside the ship and RP at your destination. The 20 hours you were offline didn't count. I suppose one approach was to try to find a friend to be in the ship with you so you'd have someone to talk to, but if no friend was already on Planet Alpha and willing to travel and able to meet your schedule, you were looking at a complete loss of 240 minutes in a flying coffin that could have been used to RP a couple of scenes on a better-administered mush. And of course you still had the trip back home to look forward to . . .

TRAVEL TIMES? WELL, WE HAVE NO INTENTION OF GIVING YOU A TIMETABLE TO GUIDE YOU, BUT WE DO INTEND TO PUBLICLY CRITICIZE YOU IF, IN OUR OPINION, YOU TRAVEL FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER FASTER THAN WE THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE, EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN'T TELL YOU JUST HOW LONG YOU HAD TO TAKE. YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN TO READ OUR MINDS SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHAT WE EXPECT.

Okay, okay, granted, I've never seen a mush where there was an online file giving this as the Official Policy. But I've seen mushes where the Wizards merely told people to keep it "fairly realistic," but provided no guidelines on what that meant in any particular situation, then turned around and scolded people on public channels and/or BBs for traveling "too fast." So the heading here WAS the policy these Wizards faithfully adhered to, even if they never admitted it in writing.

My own preference has always been for Approach One, but I think I could learn to tolerate any of them except this one, if other factors made the mush a pleasurable place to be. Don't fall into the trap. Your players will decide that you're an idiot if you habitually criticize them for violating a standard that is never clearly stated in the first place.

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ON THE PROPER SIZE OF THE IC GEOGRAPHY

To an extent, the question of how big you can afford to make your original IC community is dependent upon how many characters you intend to permit each player to run at the same time - or perhaps it works the other way around.

As any old military man can tell you, a bald statement of distance is meaningless unless you know how much TIME it will take to get from point A to point B with the available transportation. Clearly, the important question is "How long do you expect it to take for a character to travel from one Area to another IC?"

Let me illustrate that point : suppose that someone creates a Star Wars mush, codes in 20 inhabited planets that players are allowed to visit, and states that for the two planets furthest apart (about 1000 Lightyears, they estimate), a player needs 24 RL hours in a spaceship to make the trip. Meanwhile, suppose someone else creates a Wheel of Time mush based on that portion of a continent which shows up in the map in the books (about 3000 miles from east to west) and states that getting from Arad Doman (in the northwest corner of the map) to Mayene (in the southeast corner) should take at least 1 RL week because you're using Medieval technology (horses or sailing ships). Which mush is geographically "bigger" from a traveling player's perspective? The second one.

Two of the MUXes where I was active for several months in the early stages of their existences were Cuendillar MUX and Regent of Dune MUX. Each set of creators chose to begin with their IC activity largely confined to a single large city, although characters from a wide range of habitats described within the books were permitted. The advantages of this were obvious:

1) Any two players who found themselves online at the same time with nothing else to do could quickly strike up an acquaintance via page. If one suggested they RP together, and the other accepted, they could ICly meet one another instantly since they were both in the same town. This kept the loneliness problem to a minimum.

2) Only one set of local politics had to be set up for the time being, instead of trying to populate 6, 10, or even 14 Royal Families and their associates from scratch, all at once.

3) Group activities were easily scheduled since everybody who could possibly attend, would in fact be in the immediate neighborhood when the event started if they cared to attend.

4) They were not permanently confined to the one-city setting, since in Cuendillar's case, other cities were under construction and could be opened up at appropriate times (i.e., when the population became big enough to make it practical).

Nobody has ever convinced me that there is a better way to start off a new MUSH. However, it is clear that others have strong feelings that disagree with mine, and some of those mushes maintain a high number of regular players online each weeknight, so I recognize that there is at least room for argument about which is "better," if well-administered and depending on such factors as the original theme, the number of characters permitted, and so forth. In one case, I took an active role in such an argument, after discovering myself one night with three characters in three different IC Areas (of a total of 14), and each character the only thing breathing inside that Area for a few hours, and the rules prohibited me from traveling quickly to another Area with any of those characters to look for RP. This wasn't the first, or even the fourth, time that had happened to me in the past few weeks, so I started a discussion on the OOC BB. No need to bore you here with the specific details which only made sense on that mush, but if you're interested in seeing the opposing schools of thought, follow this link.

I might mention that this was in spring of 1997 and the changes I was plugging for never happened, but the mush in question seems to still be going strong regardless. Which isn't too surprising, considering that it had a high number of dedicated Roleplayers and hardworking Wizards. Don't think I didn't enjoy my time there, just because I didn't see eye-to-eye with some of them on administrative issues.

Obviously there's no way to prove that they would be doing even better if they had less Areas (short of persuading them to try it), but I believe it to be true. Regardless of the details of that case, I think there is an unfortunately common problem that occurs when someone is trying to duplicate a Theme which had many different Nations or Planets described in detail in the original material.

Instead of casting stones at length at any particular mush, I shall give a fictionalized example.

Let us suppose that a group of true-blue fans of Dave Duncan's double quartet of fantasy books set in a single world, the imaginary world of Pandemia (the two series being A MAN OF HIS WORD and A HANDFUL OF MEN), decide to create something they will call Pandemia MUSH. We shall name the first few Wizards as : Bright Water, Olybino, Lith'rian, and Zinixo (four of the most powerful people in the original four books).

WARNING : VERY MINOR SPOILERS CONCERNING THESE BOOKS MAY BE EMBEDDED IN THIS SUMMARY. NOTHING THAT WOULD GIVE AWAY A SURPRISE ENDING, THOUGH.

Examining the map of the great Supercontinent, Pandemia, and the associated islands, Our Heroes tally up 12 Races of humanity in what they decide to call 13 Areas. 11 of the 13 Areas are independent nations; the other two are ruled by the Impire.

AREANAME	DOMINANTRACE	NOTES
Dwanish	Dwarves
Faerie	Faeries	Ruled by the Impire
Goblin Territory	Goblins
Guwush	Gnomes	Ruled by the Impire
Ilrane	Elves
The Impire	Imps
The Keriths	Merfolk
Krasnegar	Mixed - Mostly Imp and Jotnar
TheNogid Archipelago	Anthropophagi
Nordland	Jotnar
Pithmot	Trolls	Ruled by the Impire
Sysanasso	Fauns
Zark	Djinns

Clearly (say Our Heroes) we'll just have to set up the CharGen to permit a newbie to set up a character representing any of the 12 Known Races (ignoring, for the moment, the problem of hybrids). And we'll have to recruit builders to help set up 13 different nations - concentrating on a capital city for each one, for the moment.

Many long hard months later, they finally are ready for the grand opening.

After a first rush of volunteer players from people who are familiar with the original series, plus people who just want to check out a new fantasy mush, they find that the ones who have stayed have settled down in about 3 Areas (give or take) and the rest are virtually ghost towns ninety- nine percent of the time. What do they do?

[TOBECONTINUED]

ON THE SPONTANEOUS CREATION OF ADDITIONAL GEOGRAPHY

I first became aware of this phenomenon in my early days as a Newbie on CASTLE D'IMAGE MUSH (hereafter called CDI). Online maps showed the relative positions of three towns and a couple of other things in the relatively small area (a few days worth of travel from one end to the other) which existed as IC construction and was ruled by the D'Image dynasty. The southern boundary was seacoast, incidentally. What existed beyond the borders of the map in each direction? I believe the IMMEDIATE neighbors were known, but beyond that . . . official policy was silent. If somebody wanted to claim he was the longlost prince of an obscure island nation a thousand miles west of the D'Image area, nobody was going to argue the point. If somebody else came along and claimed to be a shapechanging dragon from a rocky, volcanic region about a thousand miles west of the D'Image holdings, nobody would argue with that either. If a third party came along and stated he was a religious pilgrim who had travelled all the way from the steaming jungles a thousand miles west of the D'Image area, nobody argued with that either (these examples are purely fictional, but you get the point). I appreciated the freedom this gave Newbies who wanted to invent fancy background stories for themselves, but later I started worrying about it. Not so much for CDI in particular, but as it concerned the question of keeping IC Geography reasonably coherent on ANY mush.

Now, I'm going to make some basic assumptions about your mush (and even if I'm wrong, the general principles are still worth looking over):

1) Your mush is set on something resembling the Earth - a roughly spherical planet, approximately 25,000 miles in circumference at the equator.

2) You have not even attempted to construct enough rooms to represent ALL of this planet's major geographical features and geopolitical units. You have built at least one urban area, possibly a nation or two, or even a continent, but not everything.

3) You have a crude map showing the relative positions of the nation or nations you have actually built, as well as any neighbors they have which will be important in RP, even if those neighboring nations will never be built as IC Areas in your mush. This map is available online to the Players.

4) You feel it's reasonably important that everybody know just what the big cities, major international powers, etc., ARE so they won't keep inventing names and details in their RP.

Example of what could go wrong if you don't put your foot down:

LANCELOT : I come from the realm of Avalon, which has a population of five million people and fifty thousand are in the regular army.

LITH'RIAN : Yeah? Well, I come from the land of Ilrane, which has a population of ten million people and a standing army of one hundred thousand trained soldiers!

ZAKATH : Yeah? Well, I come from the continent-spanning empire of Mallorea, which has a population of one hundred million and a standing army of one million men, so you better not mess with me or my homeland will chew up both your homelands and spit them out again!

We assume, of course, that the Wizards on whatever mush this happens in have never before heard of Avalon, Ilrane, or Mallorea, and certainly don't have them listed on the world map.

Now, I'm not suggesting you forbid players the right to invent towns or even nations (unless you already have worked out a map showing every single nation on the surface of your planet) for themselves to hail from. But you CAN require players to register their geographical creations with a Mush Geographer (this would only be a parttime job for some member of your Staff; it shouldn't require much time each week). Post word of this in all sorts of conspicuous places - CharGen rooms and the BB should refer to the appropriate newsfile, which probably ought to be duplicated on your webpage for good measure.

The newsfile could say something like this :

NEWS GEOGRAPHY CREATION

"You can invent a town to come from, as long as this town is within one of the Nations already officially recognized as being in existence (see the Mush Map), but you should fill out a quick form and submit all relevant details to the Mush Geographer. If you feel the overpowering urge to create a brand new nation to come from, you should fill out a form and submit it to the Mush Geographer for approval [Remove this sentence if you feel that every nation-state that exists on your mush's planet, or at least every nation from which you will accept players, is already named and mapped]. You should be aware that he may reject the name, location, or other details of your proposed Geographical Creation if they conflict with previously established geography and/or the general theme (for example, a town called Gotham City or a nation called My Private Playground would be grossly unthematic)."

On a related note, if your mush is set in a SF setting with hundreds or thousands of inhabited planets scattered across the sky (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.) it's not unreasonable to permit your Players to have the option of inventing their own homeworlds. However, it is also reasonable to request, or even insist, that if they do create a planet to come form, that they also fill out a brief form giving a few vital statistics about their homeworld (name of planet, population, principal religion if any, principal species inhabiting the planet, principal imports and exports, name of capital city, form of government, name of the current Chief of State and/or Chief Executive, gravity level, number of moons, etc.). You can then compile these forms into a Galactic Almanac on your webpage (better make it available online as text files as well, for those without browsers), where Newbies can look through what's already been done and decide if they would like to come from one of the planets already created rather than inventing YET another one