Avernus MUSS project
A public world-development project for the MUSS engine.
Purpose
This project is an attempt to collaboratively build an explorable, interactive online public space in the still-developing MUSS game engine. Its intent is threefold:
- To provide content freely available to public users to explore and discover, primarily for personal enjoyment.
- To curate a body of narrative and scripted content to which anyone with creative interest may contribute.
- To provide a body of code against which the MUSS game engine may be tested and proven.
Exploring The World
In pursuit of the first project goal, the content base present in the master branch of this repository will be hosted live with the MUSS game engine on a public server.
At this time no such live server exists, due in part to significant security and stability concerns with the MUSS engine. Development continues however, and as soon as possible this will be rectified.
Game Content
The experience provided to users who wish to explore the game setting through the game engine is generated by content contributors. This could be you! Technical details are available in the contribution section, below.
At its simplest, game content is a series of narrative descriptions written by people, and then formatted into a structured text document that the game engine can read. This formatted-text content must then be included in the set of documents that the game engine reads to understand how to render the world for connected users.
Anyone can write game content and submit it for inclusion in this project. Additionally, as this is a open-source codebase, you are free to copy all the world content and start your own instance of this world, to which you may add your own content without submitting it here for public distribution. If you choose to do so, please briefly review the included license, as it may apply to you.
World Lore
Explanatory material should be developed before, or in parallel with, any encoded MUSS content documents, to clarify to other contributors the context of this content, it's purpose, and its creator's intentions for it. Programmers and people with similar technical backgrounds generally refer to this as documentation.
The main purpose for creating and publishing this information is to help other creators (and any users curious enough to read the development wiki) to understand why you made the choices you did, and what creative visions you had in mind for any future details. This helps to promote creative continuity and reconcile differences where two different creators' work comes in contact.
Publishing Creative Documentation
Mostly, documentation of world lore should be recorded in the project wiki.
Please to not alter or add material to the wiki that is not generally agreed upon by other creators who may be impacted by your changes, unless you have been expressly granted sole creative control by the project maintainers. Material detailing geography and topics which are clearly within the realm of something you have already been cleared for is generally fine. Use good judgment.
Contribution
Content submission is open for anyone who is interested. The project maintainers offer no promise that submitted material will always be included. However as stated above, public involvement is one of the basic goals of this project. In pursuit of this, the maintainers will make an effort to be responsive to all submissions, and provide supportive feedback where possible.
If your submitted material contains language or subject matter which is deemed by the maintainers to be excessively offensive, we may find it not possible to provide feedback, or even respond at all. Generally an application of basic discretion should be enough to avoid this (lack of) response from us, but if you are concerned please first contact us with a brief list of the topics you would like to explore and we will be able to tell you if you should continue with your submission.
Preserving narrative and thematic continuity
One primary criteria by which submitted content will be judged, which may not be readily apparent to first-time contributors, is whether the written material would cause a jarring narrative shift for players exploring the content through the game engine. Similarly, content that clearly contradicts historical facts or facts about the natural world as described in the world lore and evidenced in other game content may be grounds for rejection.
In order to avoid these problems, it is recommended that first-time contributors spend some time exploring the game world as a player, and reading any material published in the wiki that deals with the history, region and cultures about which you wish to write.
A submission rejected on the basis of these sorts of problems is likely to be returned with feedback about the specific concerns held by the maintainers. This may mean we just need you to fix a few things, and are hoping to see you resubmit your material soon.
Content delivery
For those comfortable with git, the prefered method of contributing content is submitting a pull request containing your content additions. Please test your contributions, as you would with any software, to ensure that there are no formatting errors or other problems.
For those not comfortable with git, never fear, you are not out of luck. Please contact one of the project maintainers with (at least) a sample of the content you would like to contribute, and we will work with you to get it added to the code base.
We prefer that you format your content in the standard way, even if submitting through one of the maintainers. Formatting templates will be available in this repository soon. If you feel uncertain or daunted by this process, we can walk you through it.
Creative control
Final say about what content is merged into the master branch of this repository (i.e. what content is exposed in the project's public game server) is reserved to the project maintainers. No promise, explicit or implied, is made to any public contributor about the inclusion of their material.
Judgment about acceptance or rejection of submission will be made based on the grammatical and aesthetic quality of the content in that submission, and with an eye to preserving a reasonable degree of similarity in tone and theme between material from different authors.
If you have submitted content which was declined for inclusion without sufficient comment or explanation, you are invited to inquire with the project maintainers about the grounds on which your material was declined, or how to alter it to meet the needs of the project.
Copyrighted material
This project and its maintainers have neither the means nor the artistic desire to license controlled creative works from other parties. No copyrighted material, or uncopyrighted material containing copyrighted content such as character likenesses, settings, or other narrative or conceptual work, will be included in this project unless that project is licensed terms that allow free and unrestricted duplication and modification of that content by the public.
If you are the owner or controlling party of an intellectual property which you believe has been reproduced or represented in this body of work in a manner that violates your property rights, please notify a project maintainer immediately and we will do all that we can to address the issue.
Contacting Project Maintainers
Here is a list of current maintainers. Please visit their github profiles to find their preferred contact info.