By Brian Jones (Otter @ Redwall MUCK brianj@otterspace.com)

On September 30, 1982 a sitcom called Cheers aired for the first time.

The premise was simple and the scope small. It was set in a Boston bar and involved the owner/bartender, an aid behind the bar, two waitresses, and a small group of regular customers.

There were no slavers or sea-rats; there were no abbeys. There were a few churches, as marriages came and went (and were left at the alter). Why write about Cheers?

There are many places on the Internet where one can go and talk to people. IRC, ICQ, AIM come to mind. Web-based chats. Ultima Online, Everquest, and their ilk have thousands of users. And of course, there are the text-based virtual worlds of the MUCK/MUD/MUSH/MOO/MUSE variety. Such as ours, Redwall MUCK.

What makes a place like Redwall MUCK special isn’t that it’s a multi-user chat system...it is of course. The MUCK provides a place, a context, for people to go and belong to something with others apart from their local geography. In Redwall, like in Cheers, you want to go where everyone knows your name.

Being known isn’t enough; the pleasure comes in changing over time (in developing the character). Characters enter our world as many things. Some come in as ex-slaves, with nothing to their name except memories and hopes. Some come in as bold warriors with the expectations of victories. Some join as family beasts, some as carpenters, bread makers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, and everything in between. Then, they become more. Not just "a strong mouse that slays vermin" but they become friends, family, sometimes enemies and rivals. They become people we look forward to encountering.

That small bar in Boston was visited by millions of people. Those characters changed; some for the better, some the worse. They struggled. Granted, they didn’t struggle against slavery or fight grand battles, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have stories going on.

The tough waitress Carla who was terribly superstitious comes to mind...she found a great deal on a house, only to learn it was haunted. Her friends helped her stay a night there, and when the truth came out (the house wasn’t haunted, it was located at the end of a runway so it was too loud for most people) she was ecstatic!

Believable? Of course not...but in that show, with those people, of course it could happen.

So too can the IC lives of Redwall MUCK. "But wait!" you say, "I don’t want to sit around, I want adventure! That stuff you talk about is boring!" Adventure is a wonderful thing. Its great to talk about in the past tense, but its not so great in the present tense. One way to have adventures is to write about them or dream them up, and then talk about the adventures you did have. The other way of course is to make them happen in play.

An interactive world is much more like improvisational theatre than like literature. It’s a lot more like Cheers than like any particular novel. In order to keep Cheers interesting, they had conflict. Mostly, it was romantic conflict between Sam Malone and the female lead (Diane or Rebecca). But, the show would have been pointless without Cliff’s facts, Norm’s capacity for drink, and Carla’s inability to be nice to a customer. It took the interaction of everyone to make the show shine.

So when role-playing, remember to pass the center stage of regularly, and don’t worry that it won’t come back, it will. Choose friends to "play off of" by having a running quarrel or rivalry. Don’t pre-plan what you will say and do, just both agree to a goal that you will never let be reached...so its always there in the background ready to move to the foreground.

What you choose to make into an issue has a great impact on how many characters you can involve. A mega-plot draws hundreds of characters, but small groups of six to eight can move a topic along quite smoothly. A larger group requires a smaller group within to have a plan that keeps drawing the others in; this is the magic behind tiny plots.

If you wander in somewhere, don’t immediately try to solve the problem and be the hero; a solved problem doesn’t have much play left, does it? Instead, page the person who has the problem and ask them if they want it solved by you. If they don’t want the problem solved (or not by you) then play along without wading in and interfering.

If you do want to be a hero, then come up with a goal to be reached. Setup some obstacles (or challengers!) with alts or zombies to impede that goal. Then recruit people to be involved. Give them a chance to speak up, to be heard. Play along with what they come up with, realizing that you can choose to let the solutions work or not since you control the problems. When someone pages and asks if they can help, you are the one that says, "Sure, but don’t point out that there’s marks on the sword that in the light mean something! "There’s nothing wrong with being the hero. Some of the best play is when the non-hero becomes heroic...and saves the day--even if just in their small part of the world.

For most of the time you’re in character, the moments will be small, in small groups, and meaningful only because of the characters you interact with. And that’s fine--because most isn’t all. Like Cheers, all our little groups within our larger world have their heroes and problems, and from the outside, may seem pretty straight-forward or simple. And yet, such small scales are tremendously popular. Even a few people in a bar can have years of stories.

Over 11 years, Cheers became an institution, and was #1 in its final year. It last aired August 19,1993. And we came somewhere else...

"...where troubles are all the same. You want to go where everyone knows your name."

Keep the Light,
Otter,
Chief Wizard,
Redwall MUCK