Difference between revisions of "MUSH Survival Guide: MUSH Basics"

Chapter 1: Bare Bones Minimum- wherein Mushing is talked about in comparison to other mediums, and clients are listed.

Chapter 2: How Do I Shot Mush?- You're here!

Chapter 3: So How Do I Get A Character Here?- Wherein you find how to be a good guest, survive the horrors(?) of the application process, and how to construct a well-rounded character for MUSHing purposes.

Chapter 4: Everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting with Headgods???- Getting your character ready for csys 2.0, combat RP advice, and other goodies.

Chapter 5: Wait, What's This Thing You Call 'Roleplay'?- Where we discuss the ins and outs of obtaining roleplay and the tricks behind scene-planning.

[edit] Chapter 2: How Do I Shot Mush?

Welcome to Chapter 2. If you're looking at /this/, you should be in the following situation.

1: You should have a telnet client running, and know what that even means.

2: You should have an open connection to PersonaMUSH running.

3: You should have just typed 'connect guest guest', and a bunch of text should have just scrolled at you.

If this doesn't describe your situation, please go back to Chapter 1 now, or nothing after this will make sense. If you already know what you're doing and would like to skip ahead to that character application business, head over to Chapter 3.

[edit] What just happened

Alright, what you just saw was a metric boatload of text. Let's run down what we just saw:

• You'll see, at the very top, the message that you can use the command +g to chat on the Guest Channel.

• You'll probably see things like the OOC lounge coming up twice and you suddenly being ported to another room to the tune of 'There's no place like home...' This is just you being automatically ported into the OOC Lounge, in case the person who used the guest bit before you went into another room.

• Next will be "<Guests> Guest01 (or whatever number you are) has connected." That's you automatically being added to the guest channel.

• You'll see an expansive list of messages on the Global Bulletin Board.

• Then, finally, you'll see the welcome Persona screen. It will contain a link to the wiki (which you are on now), and a calender system. The calender is there due to PersonaMush being set off of real time, due to a previous 2 MU* days to 1 real day system that's no longer used. It also shows holidays relevant to Japan, since most of us are not Japanese and wouldn't know otherwise.

[edit] The OOC Lounge

Let's look at a sample of what the 'OOC Lounge' looks like.

.========================== Velvet Room - OOC Lounge ==========================.
   The Velvet Room is a comfortable, yet strange place outside space and time,
  between consciousness and unconsciousness. The room is invariably decorated
  in deep blue, the contents seemingly changing from moment to moment to
  smoothly account for any who might arrive in comfort according to their own
  natures. An eternal theme plays in the background, a wordless poem dedicated
  to everyone's souls. A fixture of the Velvet Room, however, is the enigmatic
  Igor, his bug-eyed gaze and massive nose familiar to many Persona-users...
  And his fey assistants, who change, come, and go based on need. The room is
  filled with potential, every facet designed to invoke the potential that
  lies within those who are here. The air is sometimes thick with spirits and
  masks, ready to surface at a simple call.
 ----------------------------------- Players ------------------------------------
 Kyo Enda [XIX] <The Serpent>           Katsura Tsuruya [XI] <Sigyn Custom>
 Tatsuya Suou [XIX] <Apollo>            Koromaru [XI] <Cerberus>
 ------------------------------------ Things ------------------------------------
  Trish's Lost and Found, Punishment Box, pony, The Fridge, Kitten, and
  Suggestion Box <SB>
 .==============================================================================\

This is a list of the people currently in the room, plus a couple 'Things'. For now, let's examine, at random...

Tatsuya Suou [XIX] <Apollo> 

What does this tell you? First, Tatsuya Suou is this fellow's name. The [XIX] signifies that he is of the Sun arcana, and his current 'Persona' is Apollo. We'll deal with Personas later.

.==============================================================================\
 | South <S>                     Belladonna's Stage - Stat Room                 |
 | West <W>                      Demon Artist's Gallery - Meeting Room          |
 | North <N>                     Nameless' Piano - Quiet Room                   |
 | East <E>                      Elizabeth's Corner - Free Code Room            |
 '------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

These are examples of where you can 'move' to, by typing 'n', 'w', or 'e'. You can also type north, west, or east, if you enjoy writing words.

[edit] Can I do things now?

Now, let's teach you how to hit buttons and influence people!

One of the things you should have seen looks sorta like this, right?

<Guests> Guest has connected.

<Guests> is a 'channel'. To you WoW players, it is similar to General, or Trade. To you IRC users, consider it a global IRC room people can choose to listen in on. Depending on when you connected, people may be frantically greeting you or some such enthusiasm. To reply, consider one of the following:

+g Hello!
+g :waves hello!
+g ;'s connection is being a drag!

The difference between these two is pretty slight, and hinges entirely on the presence of that colon. Without the colon, the top line looks like this:

<Guests> Guest says, "Hello!"

And with the colon, the second line looks like this:

<Guests> Guest waves hello!

With the semicolon, the third line will look like this:

<Guests> Guest's connection is being a drag.

The difference between a colon (:) and a semicolon (;) is that a colon inserts a space before what you type, while the semicolon doesn't.

Along the same lines, people in the room will likely be interested in interacting with you as well, and doing so is a fairly simple process as well! Consider one of the following:

"Hello!
:waves hello!
;'s connection is being a drag!

This does precisely the same thing as the previous commands, but only displays it to people in the same 'room' as you. That being, in this case, the OOC lounge. (If you're interested, type 'who' to see who is connected to the MUSH as a whole.)

[edit] By the way, I typed 'help' for help, and...

You may have typed in an incorrect command somewhere along the line, and received a message that says:

Huh? (Type "help" for help.)

This message means the MUSH did not understand what you just typed in. As a complete MUSH newbie, I would highly recommend you not attempt to navigate the default help menus. They are coded primarily to teach the PennMUSH coding language, so they're not really there to help someone new to MUSHing.

Instead, for a useful list of notes, type +help. This will give you a menu of commands you can look at. If there's not a +help file for it, you can try help <command>, as, sometimes, it can give you something useful. If everything else fails, just ask. Many who have MUSHed for years sometimes have to ask things constantly, like the person writing this specific part.

We'll be explaining enough here as well to get you going, fear not!

[edit] Paging

During the course of your guesthood, you may find that 'say' and 'pose' just don't have the functionality you want and desire. For instance; private communication between two or more people. Try the following command, with our completely randomly picked brave, heroic friend, Yosuke Hanamura:

page Yosuke=Hello! or page Yosuke=:waves hello!

Just like say, pose, and the channel commands, this will alternate between:

You page Yosuke Hanamura with 'Hello!

Long distance to Yosuke Hanamura: Guest waves hello!

This can only be seen by the intended target of the page. If you are solely paging one person at a time, you only need to indicate their name once. For instance:

page Yosuke=Hey!

page Hey, are you listening to me?

page :prods until you awaken.

This will continue to send to Yosuke Hanamura until you specify another person. A word of advice, though; The MUSH recalls who you last paged on a character-basis. This means that if you disconnect, and reconnect, it is highly suggested you specify a target on your first page, or you might accidentally be talking to the wrong person!

Now, when you get incoming pages, for instance:

Yosuke Hanamura (Yosuke) pages: What's up?

You'll notice the word (Yosuke) in brackets. This is an 'alias', which effectively just means you can type 'page Yosuke' instead of 'page "Yosuke Hanamura"' which is just a pain in the neck. Most people on the MUSH--including you, incidentally, right now--have aliases set for easier paging.

[edit] Global Bulletin Board

---------------- Unread Postings on the Global Bulletin Board ----------------
Public (#1): 1 unread (13) 
Announcements (#7): 1 unread (26)  
Character Announcements (#10): 2 unread (1, 2) 
Scene Announcements (#11): 2 unread (10, 11) 
Vacations (#12): 2 unread (12, 13) 
Code/TP/Other Suggestions (#13): 2 unread (5, 6) 
--------------------------- BBS at 13.3\% capacity ---------------------------

Now, what the heck did any of that mean?

What you just saw there is an example of what the Global Bulletin Board, or 'bboard' of the MUSH, might look like when you connect. As a guest, the MUSH assumes you haven't read a single post, so will show you every post on the board. Let's read a post now. Try the following, in order!

+bbread 1

Might give you something like...

==============================================================================
                              **** Public ****                               
        Message                            Posted        By
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/1   T Persona PSP SQQ Save               Sat Oct 24    Aigis
1/2   U Regarding Myself                   Sat Oct 24    Yukino Mayuzumi
1/3   U Re:scene                           Mon Oct 26    Tomomi Fujimori
1/4   U Re: Demon Artist                   Thu Oct 29    Minato Arisato
==============================================================================

+bbread 1/1

Will get you the first post of the first forum, which in this case is...

=================================== Public ===================================
Message: 1/1                       Posted        Author
Persona PSP SQQ Save               Sat Oct 24    Aigis
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If anybody wants a save with a level 28 main with the 500k moneys and the ect. 
basically required to do a thanatos run for the snow queen quest, send me a calls.
You'll have to use the 0003 number to get it to work in the folder you put it in.
==============================================================================

Similarly, you can use +bbread 2/1 to read the first post of the second forum, or +bbread 2/2 to read the second post of the second forum, or any combination of boards. Of course, the exact posts you see will probably differ when you use the command; Posts are automatically trimmed fairly quickly on the bboards of MUSHes.

Of course, you may now ask yourself, "Do I need to manually type the board number each time just to go to the next message?!" Fear not, fair visitor to the Velvet Lounge. +bbnext is here to save the day. Just keep hitting that in, and it will automatically go to the next message in all the boards you have access to.

However, your next question may be "But... will I have to do that when I get a character just to get that wad of text to go away?!" For this, you have +bbcatchup all. This will get rid of all the message notifications.

So, why deal with the message board at all? The message board is an important resource for tip-offs that a future scene will occur, what time it will occur, and whether or not you need to bring that *one* persona in your roster for the 'Goddamn That's A Weird-lookin' Persona' contest. It also has IC (In Character) news, IC rumors, OOC observations, OOC links to weird youtube links of babies doing the cancan- ER. Yes. It's a valuable resource. Thus, when you get your character, read it. Love it. Make use of it.

[edit] Guestly Behavior

While we're all pretty easy-going here, we want to make sure guests feel the same way. Many of these suggestions come from past experience. Feel free to add any tips you may have here!

• You can use the guest channel for guest-related things. To do this, type +guest or +g to speak on the channel. It should look like this:

+g I love you all!

The OOC lounge gets spammy, so it's easy to lose questions. The guest channel has a handy color to it, making it easier for people who are on it to see your question. Don't worry about bothering people on it since that channel is there for you to use!

• Even if the +guest channel is quiet when you log in, it doesn't mean no one's on it. Feel free to let people know if you need help!

• If the OOC lounge spam is too much, type 'n' to go to the Quiet Room. The room is rigged up so that no one (including you) can speak there, so it's a useful tool if you need to concentrate on something, but want to be open to pages from other people or chatter on channels.

• No matter how silly or small you think it is, ask questions! This is a good idea no matter who you're apping, or even if you have your character.

• If you're apping an FC, staff can see if anyone from your cast, or if anyone was familiar with previous takes on the FC. If you're apping an OC, see on the guest Channel if some people from your city, faction and/or school can help you get a sense of what's going on.

• If staff rules 'no' on a part of your character concept, such as their persona, or an aspect being something that may be too sensitive for the setting, don't worry- people may be able to help you find an alternative that's even better!

• PersonaMush is constantly evolving, so you'll see news files bork up, different sources contradict each other, or files suddenly updated in reference to a ruling staff had to make on the spot. Let staff know if you find something, and if policy doesn't reflect what's in one news file, let them know so they can change it! They'll <3 you for it.

• Even if this is a MU* set in modern Japan, you do not need to know how to read or write in Japanese.

• If you do something wrong and someone corrects you, it's okay! Some things you won't know about unless you're told and we all make mistakes, no matter how long we've been roleplaying.

• If you have an app sent in, and it hasn't been processed yet, a good rule of thumb is to ask after a week.

• Feel free to hang out in the OOC lounge in the meantime! Catch up on board posts so you'll be partly caught up, as faction boards are not be available for guests to see. Just use +bbcatchup <board numbers you've read> when you get your character. Observe the zoo that is the OOC lounge. It's all good.

• Certain things are going to seem bewildering and even annoying simply due to being new, and there's nothing wrong with asking questions to clarify things.

Anyway, to move on to this weird thing called character application process, proceed to Chapter 3!