Los Angeles: A House Divided

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"Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept. . . The plastic asshole of the world."
-William Faulkner

"The town is like an advertisement for itself; none of its charms are left to the imagination."
-Christopher Isherwood

"Pick your enemies carefully or your'll never make it in Los Angeles"
- Rona Barrett

A House Divided is a MUSH based on "Vampire: The Masquerade". The setting is modern Los Angeles, a sprawling metropolis with over 15 million mortals and scores of undead who hunt them. Upon this canvas, our goal is to create the finest, most engaging and politically complex Vampire MUSH in the world.

Some questions, answered:

What is a MUSH? How do I log in?"

MUSH stands for Multi-User Shared Hallucination, which is a form of MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension). This is a text-based interface accessible via telnet or via various MUSH clients, which allows a number of people to interact in virtual "rooms" and through a coded game/stat system. In other words, we're an online, text-based D&D game, but set in LA with Vampires. Or, if you prefer, we are a series of chat rooms with role-play going on and a strict setting and theme. MUSHing as it is implemented in our game enables players to "write" a character, and play out that character's life in our designated setting. Distinctions are drawn between IC (in-character) and OOC (out of character) interactions. Role-play allows you to further your character's IC goals, but more gratifyingly for most, allows you to tell a really good overall story in cooperation with other players and staff. Thus, MUSHing is a mixture of game-playing, story-telling, and improvisational theater all rolled into one. Logging into and playing at our MUSH is free.

Available MUSH clients include: Simplemu or MUSHclient for Windows, Savitar for Mac, or TinyFugue for Unix and other platforms, as well as many others. Please note that these MUSH clients are the responsibility of their individual creators who have no affiliation whatsoever with anyone responsible for this web site or this MUSH.

But there are already 20 White Wolf MUSHes on the net, what makes you different?

What is this Vampire: The Masquerade or White Wolf thing to which you keep referring?

White Wolf Games is the publisher of a role-playing game called Vampire the Masquerade. This is a table-top game in which players play vampires caught up in the eternal struggles of salvation, damnation and power politics. Like any good GM (Game Master), we have used the rules and setting provided by White Wolf as a base point, but deviated (often to an extreme) where we see fit, partly to suit our own setting, and partly to suit the realities of translating this system into a MUSH. It is not required to have a pre-existing familiarity with the Vampire game published by White Wolf (either in the tabletop or Live-Action Role Play version). It is, however, suggested that players try to familiarize themselves with it at some point.