MUCKs I've played on!

Lemme define MUCKing with a few compound words: It's real-time, text-based, freeform roleplaying over the likes of telnet. You log onto a world, make a character (or a few), describe them, and explore the map, meeting people and getting involved in a fictional tapestry of goings-on. Well, I've heard some MUCKs have used for business networking and the like, but that group make-believe function is what I've always known them for. The settings tend toward speculative fiction with an emphasis on animal characters and kid-friendly franchises. MUCKs are part of the family of MU*s that also include MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs. They tend to be on the less-structured side, typically de-emphasizing things like systemic combat and lacking gamemasters.

MUCK stands for Multi-User Chat Kingdom, but only in backformation because it sounds pretty cool.

I've been on a lot of MUCKs, and even helped run some in my time.  Here's a place where I can archive a few things about them.

The Lion King MUCK

I discovered MUCKs as a frosh in college after one heady night in 1999 when I happened to find a hyperlinked miniature web adventure that simulated traveling the Pridelands in Disney's The Lion King (1994) and meeting the characters. It was simple and short, and now I have trouble understanding why the experience thrilled me like it did, but that particular movie had captivated me since I'd seen it.  I discovered popular, well-written Lion King fan fiction, and it wasn't long before I found TLK MUCK.

To the right is my favorite picture of Bashak, the hyena character I played there. (Click here for more pictures of him.) I decided to make Bashak a nice hyena, as opposed to the ones from the movie, albeit one who was nervous and inexperienced.

Here's Ajenti, a lioness I played on Endless Round MUCK and in 2005-6, followed by playing her for several months on its successor, Kings & Vagabonds MUCK. And over to the right, let's have a picture of Zazu, the faithful majordomo hornbill from the movie. Though I'd played on several places in the meantime, Endless Round was the first MUCK I helped run. Zazu was my wizard character, which means the character I used to perform administrative functions like creating new characters, welcoming people, maintaining the grid, and announcing things to the player base.

Here's a map of the late, great Endless Round MUCK. An earlier version of it is this page's background! And here's a map of its successor, Kings & Vagabonds MUCK.

Endless Round was the product of an enthusiastic little friend group who wanted to revive the old days of Lion King roleplay - did I mention that the entire time I've been MUCKing, the pursuit has been going 'downhill' in popularity? People want images rather than text, but we need places where text is used to play, or too much richness is lost. So we decided to send an e-mail bomb to hundreds of artists in the fandom with the news of a new place. Equipped with about eight staffers, Endless Round burned bright and fast, attracting hundreds of players and running numerous fast-paced plots both global and local. It had a compelling map, a great cast of players for the Feature Characters (or known characters from the movie), lots of interesting people, and a highly dedicated wizstaff.

You might say the staff was too dedicated in some ways. You might also just observe that the life cycle of a MUCK is one that invariably begins with excitement and ends in a poof of drama. Ours was no exception. We squabbled endlessly and eventually the headwiz pulled the plug, abruptly deleting everything. The staff rebuilt a new place with amazing speed, naming it Kings & Vagabonds, and a large percentage of the player base found us and stuck around.

While Endless Round was adventurous, scary and bright, K&V was darker and more cynical. For example, I was able to successfully run a monthlong Halloween Tiny-Plot (complete with a mini-Sudoku pocket-dimension for the finale), which felt like a big success. One K&V region was focused around the family drama of four lion brothers in contention to rule an arid land, and I decided to stick my nose in as the spritely but manipulative lioness Kyltora. Things were intense and fun until the drama beast caught up and extinguished us, just over five months into our run.

I was a full-bore brony for several years (see my fan fiction page) and this place was at the heart of it! Four of us got together to create one of a handful of places where fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic could play with text in real time. EquestriaMUCK ran from November 2011 until its collapse (see above) in early 2016. (Technically, the MUCK is still up and last I checked, there were about five people still meeting there.) As fan-favorite background pony Derpy, I maintained the grid, handled player requests, and helped run lots of events, from rodeos to fictional plays to an elaborate election for mayor of Ponyville. For one Summer Sun Celebration, I hit the multitasking peak of my roleplaying career, portraying five characters in the crowd at once. I made the surprising choice to play the mother-daughter duo of Derpy and Dinky while putting a lot of friction between them, making players sympathize with one or the other or both and eagerly try to fix their relationship. I also played a Healthkeeper Diamond Dog and a lackadaisical background pony. This is also where I programmed a Battleship-type game called Skymaster in the stack-based language MUF, with help from EqM's programmers. Man, that was a fun place. Some of us got together on a Discord reunion server later.

Check it out - the EquestriaMCK Proboards forum still exists!

Return