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About GarouMUSHGarouMUSH is an online, text-based role playing game that opened in 1993.Unlike Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, or EverQuest; MUSHes are based upon a very early means of online gaming that revolves around text rather than images. MUSHes were initially used as places for people to socialize together online--much like a primative version of AOL's chatrooms today. However, a MUSH is able to tie multiple "chatrooms" together and integrate a degree of coding into actions that can or cannot be taken. In a MUSH, your online persona can move from one (chat)room to the next as if they were connected in some virtual world. The primary differences between a MMORPG and a MUSH are that a MUSH does not use graphics or sound and MUSHes typically support only 50-200 people online as opposed to the tens or hundreds of thousands that an MMORPG can handle. Also, adventures on a MUSH are largely driven by the players and focus more on the characters (and character change/growth) and less on the actual quest. With a MMORPG, quests are typically pre-coded adventures that focus on equipment and spells and number crunching rather than the characters. On a MUSH, you get to know the people you're playing with, which allows for deeper and more meaningful interactions between individuals and groups. And this is no coincidence, as MUSHes evolved out of the desire to create places on the internet where people could interact meaningfully with other people while using a fictional persona in a specific setting. GarouMUSH arose out of an interest to pursue an online game that explored the culture of the fictional werewolves from White Wolf's Werewolf: The Apocalypse role playing game. The playerbase generally consists of between 40-60 people, so it is a fairly intimate online environment. Currently, GarouMUSH is based largely on a hybridization of the sourcebooks for the 1st and 2nd editions of Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Due to the online nature of the game, we've also had to make a few modifications and clarifications to the original rule systems in order to make things work in an online situation and to elaborate or improve upon concepts proposed in the source materials. We largely ignore most of the tribebooks and supplements and the "timeline/metaplot" that White Wolf developed through their sourcebooks, supplements, game modules, and various revisions. (i.e., "The Apocalypse" has not happened on GarouMUSH.) White Wolf's current version of the Werewolf universe--Werewolf: the Forsaken--is not used on GarouMUSH; however, if you found Forsaken to be an interesting role playing game, you might enjoy GarouMUSH, which explores the "roots" of the current iteration of White Wolf's Werewolf legacy. If you're interested in GarouMUSH, please take a look at the rest of the website and feel free to log in to GarouMUSH as a guest. Just click here and type "connect guest guest" to connect and talk to current players and administrators (wizards). |