Armageddon MUD crumples to the ground.

i'll be surprised if they stay shut down. the post has the tone of 'if you don't stop acting up i swear i'll turn this car around'.



this has been a thing for 25+ years. the only difference is it's getting blasted in mehtastic's TMZ-styled threads instead of AIM and IRC messages.



man that tip line is going to be flooded as those sorts of people start turning in everyone and anything to get arm back. this guy will tell you where jimmy hoffa's buried if you just give him one more shot at playing a byn trooper.



wtf? you were claiming that staff had a rape culture and talked about quitting arm, but you're staff?

I think the game will stay shut down, with the exception of some last hurrah where they open the game just to give everyone closure before re-closing it.

If the producer team's condition for reopening is that the leak must be plugged, that's never going to happen without a player coming forward with credible information, a staff member turning themselves in, or the producers firing everyone else.

Players won't turn in credible information because it would most likely implicate themselves in OOC info sharing.

No staff member will turn themselves in because it would put them in the Hall of Fame with Nyr and Nergal.

The producers won't fire everyone on the staff team because replacing them is impossible without inviting more leakers and reducing the player count even further.

They could reopen without meeting those conditions, but then the producers are proven liars about wanting to secure the privacy of players and the integrity of the staff contract, yadda yadda.

They have no incentive to reopen the game for a bunch of ingrates that reacted to staff's final letter to the playerbase by throwing a tantrum and throwing the storytellers under the bus wholesale.



The worst playerbase in MUD history ain't getting their game back.

Hey there!



I wanted to clear up some things because my name has been mentioned repeatedly on these forums. I’m pretty much at the end of my rope in dealing with the drama associated with the game, so this is likely my only post in response. I’ll try to be as comprehensive as possible so that follow up questions aren’t needed.



Yes, I posted in 2023 that staff had a rape culture issue. That’s why one of the first things I did on staff was suggest a slew of changes, to include the ERP policy that would be shared with players. I suggested this before we opened and went into discussion with the team so that we could make the game a safer environment for people. As a person who was a victim more than once of dubious consent or no consent, it was important for me, even if it only affected a small subset of the playerbase.



A snip from my IDB thread:



The posted policy that we landed on:


However, it didn’t get posted to the public until August, but it was the exact same policy that we’d agreed on internally back in April.



I asked for it to be posted right away so that it was available, but that never happened until the accusation in the thread here. With that being said: It was immensely distressing for me to see that there was a “cucking conspiracy” posted about me. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the request tool to share with you that I did open up requests with people who began romantic relationships with my NPCs in order to share this policy with them. I can share screen grabs of the email I still have access to, instead, which are direct copies of the requests. I kept things within the PG realm my entire time on staff - I think the most involved I ever got before a fade was a kiss.



I think I know what situation “prompted” the rumors of me “cucking” a player. Characters A & B were never “together” to begin with, and my NPC came in after PC A made it abundantly clear to PC B that they were not together. PC A was actually in a secret relationship with PC C, (which I knew about), before my NPC met PC B and she pursued a relationship with my NPC. I kind of expected it to be dramatic and silly - it was. They had a very PG date and then ended up breaking up because of politics. (I had NPC’s boss break them up.) It led to some interesting roleplay and tangled up some of the PCs into some form of danger, but we ended up brushing up against the no harm rule unintentionally - so I cut the plot and moved onto the next thing.



At the time when there was mehtastic’s thread, my NPC and PC B hadn’t engaged in anything explicit. (Nor did we ever.)






Either way, it was sort of upsetting that I was painted out to be some kind of pervert exerting my power over players. Even more so because of the real world bigotry surrounding my identity as a trans person. People of my identity are often politicized as a predator when those stats just don’t line up with reality. It felt like I was being harassed personally with the same talking points that bigots use against people like me.



Anyway, that’s that. I was upset that you posted that about me, mehtastic. I would say it’s probably one of the things that caused me the most stress on staff. Should people be able to whistleblow? Yeah. In this case, it wasn’t anything, just rumors. There may have been some jokes on the discord about it, but there was no cucking, heh. I followed our policy.



Still: Why did I apply to staff? I don’t know. Depression, probably. Nostalgia? The game was allegedly going to die. I spoke to staff members during my interview and had some uncomfortable questions for them as to what happened/why. The answers I received in confidence were not great, but they were minimally acceptable. I was not willing to work with particular members of previous staff teams but they weren’t on the team any longer, so I felt like I might be able to make a meaningful impact. The ERP Policy was one of those things. I’m happy I managed to influence the team enough to implement it, so that other players wouldn’t have to go through what I had years ago. I had hoped it would protect future players, even after I left the team.



I was assured that the staff culture would be different and I was skeptical at first, but then I got to working with everyone. I was pleasantly surprised! I really did enjoy working with the team. We had a really positive culture and rapport. One staff member I’d previously butted heads with repeatedly is now someone I really enjoy talking to. We’re both in different places in our lives, years after our previous communication issues.



A couple more things that I want to share before I banish myself in the netherrealm:

There was a consistent claim on these forums that “nothing was happening”. I’d say that’s incorrect and while I think every player is entitled to their opinion, I don’t think everyone’s opinion is informed. I think there are valid criticisms with how we presented some plots or that we were unable to keep up with player demand.



Plots were difficult to move ahead when we were short-handed as it was, and then we started to lose staff when their RL took priority. I don’t begrudge any staff members for choosing their real lives over the game. That’s great and healthy.



Either way, we put a lot of work in to get things moving. I didn’t make all of the decisions and only controlled my piece of the pie, so I tried my best to contribute to my area. Insofar as the feedback that I received on the clans I was ST for, I had a lot of positive feedback from players. Still, I understand that Season 1 wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s okay. When you try to please everyone: you please no one.



I think we had immensely high expectations to meet with a cast of nearly all new Storytellers, and it was difficult to keep up when the population was high. We started to hit our stride around August I would say when the population decreased enough for our heads to be above water, but most of us were overworked consistently. There’s just too much to do in this version of Armageddon. We plotted and managed more than any other previous iteration of staff, I would wager.



I animated 10-15 times a week for my clans. I know that this is a level of activity previously unheard of, but I was allowed to do it - so I did. I believe my clans saw that and they expressed to me that they appreciated how much work I put in. We enjoyed playing with one another.


Here is a list of the active plots we tracked.




Here’s a snapshot of our clan tracking threads. Here we kept track of all of our animations and relevant stuff that we’d need to bear in mind from our clan members. A majority of it was our animations because that’s easiest to track rather than grepping logs. We tried our best to connect player activity here with one another in case there was crossover.




I don't think that this whole thing is personally worth it to me personally, nor is it worth the headache for the Producers any longer. We did a pretty good job on the team and ran a game that a lot of people enjoyed. I don't care about overall player numbers - I only could effect my clans, so that's what I focused on. I had meaningful interactions and fun with players who expressed their happiness at a greatly changed staff culture. But it's over, now. All of the Storytellers were asked not to post here. I don't know if there is a staff leak or not. It's upsetting if there was, but I don't have the spoons for it any more.

To my players in Tor, Fale, and Kurac: I really enjoyed our time together and hope you got some good nostalgia out of it. Your creativity was awesome to behold as your ST and I feel honored to have been your ST for the time we had.

Altogether, I think I’m done. (I presume I'll be fired for posting here! I already let Producers know I was going to.) I did my best to be a good ST and contribute meaningfully to the game. I was having fun with the players in my clans. I’m upset about the situation but I also am eager to return to my regular life without having to worry about this place any longer. I wish you all the best and I hope that you are able to find a healthy outlet for your roleplaying.



Cheers!

Ripperino Arm o7

I haven't sifted through all the drama because I didn't play since before Seasons was announced and what does it matter now, but really it felt like it spiralled faster and faster towards this with each wild staff decision and the backlash it caused.

I personally saw staff (and was given evidence of them) doing some crazy shit and abusing power all the way through the mud, and some of it would have probably killed the mud ever so slightly quicker had players known about it.

Not sure what the drama was this time though, but I am guessing it was the same sort of stuff.

That being said there were some amazing staffers over the years, it is just such a shame that the cone of silence was over so much staff nonsense.

Anyway, gg guys! I wish everyone good fortunes in life and gaming in the future! The amazing stories and adventures I shared with so many of you will stick with me all my life I think, and got me through some hard times in my life earlier on! Thanks for all contributing.

My focus in my post about that event was to highlight staff skirting the no harm rule, since it appeared to the players involved that harm was being done. Which you obviously acknowledge happened. Speaking of harm being done...





These three images you posted imply about as much about the game's secrets as anything I ever posted. In fact, for a lot of this stuff, I held back from passing from the OOC rumor mill to here because I figured it would spoil a specific player's experience who didn't deserve to have it spoiled. If the producers fire you, it will be justified at this point, since much can be inferred from your lack of qualms with posting this information.

When people argued about nothing happening in game, they were taking visibility into account. A lot of the plots, especially the magickal journey plots, involve one player.

Best of luck with your regular life, my2sids. My game shop is looking forward to playing a couple of the games you worked on.

1. Probably doesn't matter at this point.

2. There's no real plot details available with just the titles.

And yes, plot visibility was something we worked to get better at over time. It's difficult to run plots and stay above water when we're short handed. A lot of balls got dropped on the player and staff side, but that was a staff team going from 0 to 100mph on day one. No staffing team had ever encountered those types of unique problems, like 15 brand new leaders on day 1. Add on top of that perceived and real issues with players and it was just a lot to contend with.