FAQ
From Soulfire MUSH
Frequently Asked Questions
So far, the staff have come across a lot of the same questions that are asked by new players. This page attempts to address some of those.
Character Creation-Related Questions
Can I make a hedge mage or a wizard character who does something not outlined in the skills or stats?
Quite frankly, no. If it's not available in the code, it's not going to be possible, even if you present an excellent case using the books to support your argument. The staff has made every effort as it is to get as close to the theme as possible, with some allowances made for the skewing of reality that a MUSH environment will invariably present. If you're trying to argue for something that isn't already present, chances are it's a very obscure, out-there circumstance or concept, and you're encouraged to think of something else that's a bit closer to the theme ballpark.
Can I have a Theriomorph take an animal form that isn't on the list?
Right now, the code wizard is severely overburdened, so it's not likely to happen for a little while. Please use the existing list until the rush of the game's opening has passed, all the kinks in the systems have been worked out and things have settled down into a routine. Later, new animal forms can be added, but it's not as easy as just slapping a word in a list and being done, so it's a low-priority change right now.
Can my normal human use magic? BUTTERS DID!!
No, Butters did not use magic in the sense that you're thinking of. Please stop trying to convince us otherwise to justify your normal, mundane human being able to pull off weak magic tricks. If you really want to pull off weak magic tricks, just play a hedge mage and be done with it.
What Butters did was simply exploit a basic, fundamental law of magic. Spiritual beings from the Nevernever are unable to cross running water or circles. Anyone can draw a circle made of chalk and close that circle with just a little imagination. Anyone can cross a river, turn around and thumb his nose at the pursuing Snot Demon. Does crossing a river make the person magical? No. Nor does drawing a chalk circle.
Why can't I play a (INSERT SUPERNATURAL RACE HERE) character?
If you're asking about a vampire, scion or a lycanthrope type of theriomorph, then that's because currently our playerbase is so small that these sorts of characters would not have much support. When the game grows in size and has gained some stability and a good, sizeable core, then we can begin opening up these concepts for play.
If you're asking about Faeries, Demons, Angels, Dragons or whatnot... then ask yourself something. Have you read the books? Do you realise how powerful these beings are? Can you imagine what sort of impact they would have on the grid if we let you run around with them? If you cannot realise it for yourself, then trust us when we say that they are far too powerful to be left into the hands of the players. Some of these types of supernaturals may get placed onto the grid as NPCs for usage in plots, but they will not appear for day to day RP.
Besides, even if we were crazy enough to let you have something that could effectively nuke the entire city if it got mad, most of these beings can't stay in the earth realm or don't even /care/ enough about the earth realm to want to stay here. Great cosmic forces generally don't care about the humans roaming around with their own woes and troubles, just as you probably don't care too much about the day to day toils of an ant.
What can I do with a Knight's Weapon?
With a Knight's weapon, generally, you can get some enhanced damage for that weapon type. You can easily get moderate boosts to any stat, skill or specialisation. For instance, if you decide you want to be a Knight of Pan, and you get a mystical, magical flute, you might get a minor boost to your Instrument skill when you have that equipped.
Normal humans - which is, in effect, what Faith Knights are without their weapons - cannot do magic. Ever. In instances where you'd like to have your special weapon mimic a magic effect, you can use a willpower roll instead. Faith activates the power inside of the weapon, and if your roll is successful, you can then RP the flashtastic effect. You still won't get any boosts to any magical skills for you to roll, though. There's just no point.
Why do you have Faith Knights set up the way you do?
First of all, given there are only /three/ canon Knights, our allowance of lesser Knight types is a stretch of theme. If you've been around here a bit you realize in almost every other respect we've worked very hard to keep things as thematic as possible. So we almost didn't /have/ Knights. We almost brushed them aside as a non-playable concept--only 3. However, we saw that lots and lots of people wanted to play them.
So we had a choice. Do we decide nobody can have a Knight at all, or do we figure out how to make it work within the confines of code, and theme as we know it?
Here's what we recognized. That God has a whole lot of followers, so it's one of the most powerful Gods you can follow. Yet there's others with a lot, which is why we don't allow Knights of Buddha, Allah, or Hindu Gods, etc. either. They're so powerful that we'd have heard about them. We allow Knights of lesser Gods. Gods of other, smaller, older pantheons who aren't worshipped much anymore. To work with the code we allow a magical item which can do a number of things. The item can simulate some magical abilities or boost up stats, boost up skills, whatever.
So yeah, we're really really aware that Michael, the foremost of the Knights of one of the most worshipped gods in all the world burst a vampire into flame with a touch even without Amoracchius. He was the Fist of God! I'm also aware that a follower of Odin or Erzulie or Ptah or whatever isn't going to pack that kind of punch. And any God you want to argue who would pack that kind of punch is one we can't allow for on the game.
No system is perfect, folks. We did what we could to open up a type that people want to play. I'm sorry if some people don't feel like we got it right--we worked hard to do everything in our power to create a compromise and yet stay in theme.
But if I play a (INSERT ANY CHARTYPE THAT IS NOT WIZARD HERE), will I still get RP?
Yes. Yes, you will. Playing a wizard has a lot of disadvantages to it, and those disadvantages are not shared by normal humans. Wizards can't go anywhere near technology without destroying it, so by taking a character who's adept at doing things we take for granted - using a computer, driving a nice car, using automatic weapons... oh wait, most of you probably don't take that one for granted - you've got an advantage over the wizard type of character. There are also plenty of normal character types already on the grid. You can see it for yourself by typing +census. There is also nothing at all to stop the normal human from discovering the existence of magic and then going through a struggle to reconcile the modern world with something he can't fully understand.
There is also nothing to stop a normal character from coming up with his own plots that don't touch on magic at all. In post-Katrina New Orleans, there are a lot of problems. The city is in ruins and chaos, in many sectors, and poverty runs rampant. Not only are there supernatural threats, but there are gangs, murderers, thieves and other such threats running rampant.
There are lots of possibilities. However, realise that you yourself are responsible for getting your own RP. The staff will always do its best to present a variety of plots to keep the playerbase happy, but at the end of the day, if you aren't willing to get out of your room, stop idling and get proactive, you're going to flounder.
Chargen's doing funny things with my points! Is there an error?
Did you read the help files?
No?
Go read them then. Chargen explains this, right in the Stats and Skills section.
Still confused? Okay then. In short, there is no error. It's doing some funky mathematics behind the scenes. Raising your score in your stat or base skill up to 50 does not cost 50 points because the higher your score goes, the more chargen points it costs to raise your score by 1.
Raising your score from 1 to 10 takes 1 point per increment. Raising your score from 11 to 20 takes 2 points per increment. Raising your score from 21 to 30 takes 3 points per increment.
So on and so forth until you reach your maximum in chargen.
Chargen won't let me take a Hedge/Wizard/Faith Knight/Normal!
Did you select human as your Race first?
No? Well, there you go then.
Hedge Mages, Wizards, Faith Knights and Normals are all Humans. You have to select Human as your race first. Read up on Chargen for more details.
General Policy Questions
Why is your alt policy set up the way it is?
Thematically, wizards are a very rare type of character. In fact, magic in and of itself is rare, and if we didn't try to find some compromise, we would either have only one or two select people holding wizard characters, or we would have hundreds walking around in New Orleans.
So the compromise was allowing each player a single high-powered character - a wizard or a Faith Knight; a single medium-powered character - a Changeling, Theriomorph or hedge mage; and as many normal humans as he liked. As you can see when you type +census on the game, there are still a lot of wizard characters running around, but it hasn't gotten completely unrealistic if you are willing to suspend your disbelief for the MUSH.
We couldn't adhere perfectly to theme on this angle. The rarity of wizards is a concept that works far better on paper than on an RPG, and if we had tried, it'd have been unfair and not much fun for the players who were denied wizard characters in order to preserve the theme.
I really don't agree with the way you've set up this game.
That's really too bad, but it's doubtful we're going to change our policies for some random player who comes in and presumes to tell us how we should be running the game. While we'll be happy to listen to suggestions and constructive criticism, we're not too appreciative of pointless complaining. Soulfire MUSH was developed for about nine months prior to opening, and throughout that development period, we have had the wonderful fortune of being able to work with one of Mr. Jim Butcher's own theme consultants.
So when we say we take theme pretty seriously, we mean it.
Granted, in a few places we've had to bend the rules of the Dresden universe a little to better fit with a MUSH environment, but wherever possible we've tried to adhere to theme.
What if staff doesn't like me?
What if we don't? We take every effort to apply the same rules to everybody, to treat everybody equally and to open up the same opportunities within human ability and reason. You can always play with people who /do/ like you.
General dislike from the staff does not mean you will be automatically banned from the game. It would take a violation of one of our policies to bring that consequence about.
Why aren't you using the published PRP RPG System for your chargen?
The short answer is, "The game wasn't out yet when we put the MUSH together, and still wasn't out as of the writing of this FAQ." We weren't willing to wait, though we do consult their website for theme considerations. We may spend a lot of time discussing new material before working that material into our game though, both because of code changes that might be required and because we want to have a thorough understanding of what we're doing.
When the RPG comes out we will be getting a copy and looking through it. At the very least we'll be integrating the theme information we find there. We will give consideration to changing the codebase if and only if we feel it would serve our game far better than our current system already does.
