This is a message from Nymeria & Balerion, the owners of Blood of Dragons, which attempts to give players an idea of their vision for the MUSH.
Our first priority is to make Blood of Dragons into a game which we ourselves will enjoy, as we have looked forward to roleplaying in Westeros for many years. We hope that, in doing so, we will also make it into a game which many other people will enjoy, but we know that not everyone agrees on what makes a game a fun game. Given this, we would like to present some of our thoughts on what we are striving for with Blood of Dragons, to give players an idea of whether or not they think they’ll enjoy playing here.
Of paramount importance to us both is thematic accuracy. While we will undoubtedly have to make some changes for playability, and we will have to make educated guesses about other matters, our goal is always to be as thematically accurate as possible. As such, we strongly urge all players to have at least some familiarity with the setting, in order to be able to roleplay their characters accurately.
On the subject of roleplaying, we will also strive for a game of quality roleplayers. Naturally, what constitutes quality is highly subjective to some degree, but not entirely so. We want players who pay a reasonable amount of attention to spelling, to punctuation and to grammar. We’re not perfect, and we don’t expect anyone else to be either, but MUSHing is a text-based activity and it is simply common courtesy to make your poses as well-formatted and readable as possible. We do not encourage the use of indented poses, but do find that using a line-break or two to break up a long pose is a good idea. Of course, poses need not be very long, that is all a matter of style after all, but we do want to discourage short poses that give the other players very little to work with.
Naturally, everyone is free to roleplay just as they please, but our own preferences are certainly taken into account when it comes to approving people for important characters or offering promotions to such, as we want to make sure that players in leading roles exemplify what we ourselves consider to be good roleplaying.
One aspect of roleplaying which often causes controversy or disagreement on games is the approach to consent. You will find the policy outlined elsewhere, but here we wanted to say a few additional things about the matter. While the setting for the game can be a quite harsh and brutal world, we do not feel that this is necessarily the kind of atmosphere we want to foster on Blood of Dragons. Players can, for themselves, decide to play with very high stakes, but no one should feel forced to do so if they would prefer to not recreate quite such a harsh, realistic experience.
Connected to this is the matter of coded systems. Our feeling about them is that any coded systems made available should enhance the roleplaying experience for those who wish to use them but not greatly impact the experience for those who do not wish to use them. They should be as voluntary to use as is possible to make them.