| The Feel Of Denver - Rating the Grope |
| This file is a comparison of Denver to the other Shadowrun MU*s, and highlights the differences, good and bad, that Denver has from Detroit and Seattle. I'm going to try to be completely unbiased here, but it probably wont sound like that. So, in reading this, one should rememebr that I only play at Denver. The feel of Denver Shadowrun can probably be summed up in one word. Casual. Casual is a good word to describe the mux because of the way it generally approaches things. There are generally no timelines, and the casual feel gets into everything, which I'll explain in detail a little later. The biggest difference from the other two MU*s, Seattle and Detroit, is that unlike them, Denver is player driver, almost entirely. Unlike other MU*s which have a staff that is required to keep the grid active, Denver puts that responsibility squarely on the players. This policy has filtered over to the other two MU*s over time, however never to Denver's extent. Staff here are mostly in the background, they essentially dont do much except make sure the MUX mechanics tick over, sorting out karma spends, reading PrP logs and the assorted paperwork associated with playing on a mux. It is this fundamental difference which creates a totally different feel to Denver, that one doesnt get on the other MU*s. It also means that staff have very little input into the MUX itself, and outside of Policy, they dont really to any proactive stuff, more post mortem things. They're not all that visible, and the MUX lacks events. Originally, this file was going to be PArt 2 on the history of Denver SR, but it became apparent that there was no real history to speak of. Without staff creating large events (as staff often do), there isnt much to effect the mux as a whole. Detroit has its Blight Blockade, it has players whos actions changed policy. Seattle has similar events, plus it has PC Mafia (not the lesbian type), it has the Renraku Shutdown and other things. Denver has....Player plots which usually cant effect the mux as a whole, and as such, a history of events for the Denver MUX would be rather anoerexic. Now back to that casual feel. Because Denver is not centrally run, it has no real central vision or drive. Jobs and runs are taken on very casually, in an OOC manner. They're usually just paged or announced, something to the effect of "I have a run, who wants in?" These runs tend to be one nighters, maybe two sessions if they couldnt get done in the first. They're what I term 'boxed' runs...often, these type of runs forgo any type of preliminary RP or legwork. The meet is not RPed in favour of using OOC to ge the details across, and enough intelligence is provided by the johnson to not have to do any legwork, or not much of it. Planning is short...still, its the longest preliminary event to a run in real time, often taking an hour or so for everyone to decide on a course of action. This is a large step away from what is generally considered a good way to do things. Many of the literary and multimedia sources of inspiration for Shadowrun, for example, bladerunner, the movie Ronin, crime novels and most recently, The Score, all show 'runs' or jobs that happen over a long period of time, and require large amounts of planning, getting in touch with your contacts, co-ordinating your team and basically preparing more before hand so decisions dont need to be made on the fly and everything goes smoothly. Often, the complete opposite occurs in Denver PrPs. This is because of two things in my mind; one, the PCs dont plan enough to know the job inside out (although that can be very dull at times), and 2; the players arent professional criminals or security people in real life (I assume) so they dont necessarily think like a trained and experienced super criminal. This makes the run a lot shorter, in real time, and gives more time to the crux of the issue...the job itself. While this can be good, as runs can drag on, it means the mux loses one of its prime elements to an extent : It loses its immersibility. Online games are different to TT, and often their attractiveness comes from the total immersion in the environment that they provide, roleplaying your character with detailed purposes and whatnot, being in a world (or city) that is thriving with many other people, both NPC and PC, and the ability to interact with them. By cutting out the middle men...not RPing the meet, not RPing your contacts, not RPing your legwork, you lose a certain amount of that immersion. More is lost through player attitude, which I will talk about next. |