So firstly, this is going to read somewhat conversationally because this is me putting my thoughts to paper. Who am I? I'm Ari, the co-runner of Hope Island MUCK. So expect a lot of first person language here.

That out of the way, I get asked a lot about how to run a MUCK. Mostly, from a technical perspective; the actual mechanics of getting a MUCK up and running. However, I know a lot about this topic in general and I have a lot of perspective that I think anybody who wants to run a MUCK would be wise to pay attention to.

And I think I need to start by telling you why what you want to do is a bad idea. You probably won't listen, but I implore you to read this section before reading the rest out of respect for the person who took the time to put this information together for you.

First off, usually the request for information is accompanied with an assurance. “I'll still play here”, they will say, or “I won't take players from here” they might say. That's actually a fallacy. I believe the best way for a roleplay based MUCK to survive is to gather as many people as possible under a loose theme so that you can have the largest possible population of people that want to roleplay under one roof.

Hope Island is reasonably close to being that, and that is why it is “successful” (arguably). The more splintered MUCKs and the more specific themes get, the more spread thin the pool of people who want to roleplay, and the less people show up on these MUCKs. And ultimately, the whole batch of them die due to people leaving MUCKing or going back to the big ones.

So who are the people in the pool of people that want to roleplay?

So this is going to get into some armchair psychology here. However, I've been MUCKing for around 30 years so I have seem a lot of stuff. And the first thing to understand, is people MUCK for different reasons. More or less, the reasons are:

• Showboating. Some people like an audience for antics of various sorts. These are the people in the Plaza on Tapestries, for instance; you'll notice there's two distincts groups in that plaza. Those that pose publically and those that are whispering others. There's a little bit of overlap; sometimes you get someone that will pose a couple times in public, but mostly stick to whispers. The ones that go into the plaza and make a lot of noise, I call them Showboaters because they're out there for the audience and sometimes wrestle amongst themselves for the crown of who can pull the most attention. Showboaters only have fun if they have a big audience, and while what they do might be RP, they won't stick around on a small MUCK. Trust me, I know.

• Sex. Let's not kid ourselves, here. A lot of people are on MUCKs just to find partners for this. There's nothing wrong with it, either, but this isn't really roleplay and these players are kind of like a drag on a roleplay MUCK. They don't contribute much, but they take people who might contribute out of action on occasion and may even annoy people to the point they leave.

• OOC stuff. Some people just aren't interested in roleplay. I've seen RP MUCKs that have turned into OOC MUCKs because nobody feels like playing the theme and they all hang out in the OOC zones. More likely than not, these people won't be usful to a new MUCK.

• A Very Specific Thing. Some people have a kink or some such that they are totally all about, and they'll pursue the ends of the Earth to find it. I'm not going to make a list, because that will make people feel singled out, but we've all met one of these before where all they're interested in one thing (not counting sex). These types will stick around as long as their one interest is being tickled, but usually aren't very useful for RP.

• Kids. This is related to A Very Specific Thing, but it deserves being called out specially. There is a very large percentage of the MUCKing population that's just out there to play child characters. Some of them play children in a child-like fashion, but the majority of those are after sex. This is, possibly, the most devisive issue in MUCKing as it is one of the few things that will make players up and leave if they don't like your MUCK's treatment of them. These players are toxic and usually not useful for RP; if anything, they'll drive other good players away.

• Roleplayers. People actually looking for roleplay. The players you want to court! These are different from showboaters because they don't care about the audience, they just want to play a game and escape the RL world for a bit. They're different from the Very Specific Thing crowd because they want to play a wide variety of experiences. Sex may be part of it, but it isn't all of it.

There's probably other reasons, and sometimes you have someone out there for more than one reason, but I think those categories are broad enough to get the major use cases. Why do I mention these? To show that the people actually interested in playing on your MUCK are actually a sliver of the pie. So how big is the pie? Let's consider that next.

So now we know why people MUCK, the next question is, how many MUCKers are there? By my estimation, not that many. The big boys, FurryMUCK and Tapestries, at max capacity host maybe 1,000 connections between the two (Furry has the 'wg' command that helpfully shows you connection stats) and that's being incredibly generous. Of those, a lot of them will be overlap – people on both, and/or alts. There's probably between 500 and 800 actual players at keyboards amongst that 1,000.

People play on smaller MUCKs, but those MUCKs will be 1 - 20 people. The larger of the small MUCKS might get up to 50 on a good day. However, those will mostly overlap with the larger MUCKs. Very few people ONLY play at one small MUCK (though it does happen), but not enough to effect the count much.

Further, it's doubtful that every MUCKer in the world is ever online at the same time. Multiplying that 500 to 800 number by, say, 4 to cover different “shifts” (i.e. time zones in which players are active) means there may be between 2,000 and 3,200 people at keyboards, in the world, playing MUCKs. And I think that number is actually high, because MUCKs tend to get really quiet past midnight Pacific time; there's less activity during non-US daylight hours because MUCKs are a naturally English phenomenon and large swaths of Asia probably aren't playing on them. The real number is probably between 1,000 and 2,000 if I had to take a guess.

That's a lot of people, but a lot of them only come on once a week, or once a month. And of that number, only a fraction of them are looking for roleplay and willing to leave a big MUCK to find it. And there's lots of competition for those eyeballs – Second Life has been a huge blow to MUCKs as that draws people away. Wolfery is another blow – it's a MUCK, but its in a web browser interface that makes it difficult to play other MUCKs in the same window, and I have already observed people that prefer Wolfery often leave traditional MUCKs.

In the end, any small RP MUCK is going to wind up competing for the same, small handful of people that are looking for RP and willing to join a small MUCK. Many just aren't willing to add another MUCK to their roster, or have tried them before and seen them fail, and aren't willing to try again. So I would argue, any new MUCK that springs up, is indeed taking people away from Hope Island, and possibly souring their experiences if that new MUCK isn't done right. Our best interest is to gather together, not splinter apart.

But, I'm also guessing you probably skipped reading this part.

Before you start making a MUCK, you need to have some supportive friends. People already signed on to help you out. If you don't, it will fail. Why? Because nobody wants to join an empty MUCK. If people connect and see just one person there, they will almost always leave. It's a self perpetuating problem. The most important thing for a new MUCK is a decent body count of active people. Your alts don't count.

That's a very common question for new players to a MUCK – how many active people do you have? How often is their RP? If you don't have a good answer to those questions, people won't stick around.

Hope Island succeeded because it had a good core of people that showed up most days and actively played. That's it, right there, the secret to success. If you don't have that support out of the box, don't bother – it is a waste of your time. Trust me, I've started many MUCKs, and not a single one survived. I didn't start Hope Island, Isidore did – and his greatest success was cultivating and drawing those first few players. That's something I've never been able to accomplish and is harder than it sounds.

But it's also the only part that really matters. If people won't come and play, there's no point to doing any of this.

• Break down tech skills
• Policies and theme (and how these can shoot you in the foot)
• Attracting differnet player types
• referal link to my digital ocean
• link to different guides, etc.