Shadowrun Denver is an interesting experiment in player empowerment. While some of its houserules are blatantly twinkish and/or power-gamish, it has chosen to amplify all walks of characters and brings the game system to the edge of its numerical workings. Players on Denver are awarded copious amounts of money and advancement points, with the stress being that if you are willing to run your own plots for yourself and your friends, you deserve award. The downside is that there are very few plot arcs or storylines with any duration.

Denver was created by two idealistic new-comers to the mush scene, known as Craig and Wyldfire on the game itself. These men are possibly visionaries, the game balks at the standard (and occasionally broken conventions) used by the other shadowrun muxi, and atempts to empower its players to run the game for them. This has had both positive and negative effects which you can see for yourself when you come and play.

The codebase, written mostly by Wyldfire is quite impressive. Numerous commands provide ease of use to the more experience players, and enable the admins to keep close tabs on the players. So close in fact that they also record and reference player's private pages. this enables them to keep a close eye on security, and it is also used in thier dispute arbitration system. Privacy, or lack of any, is clearly stated when you log on.

The consent rules protect players from each other, they allow flexibility such that if you want to engage someone in a lengthy and violent arguement and then invoke consent rules to save yourself from a confrontation that could lead to your're characters death, you may.

Shadowrun Denver is very lenient on low level roleplayers(roleplayers with very little skill), and will admit nearly anyone who is willing to have a good time. The head wizards believe firmly that anyone willing to try deserves a chance to play. This allows you to walk through an environment of all skill levels of play, from the lowest to the highest, and hopefully find the kind of people you match up with. If you do not enjoy the presence of lower level players, you are responsible for avoiding them.

While Denver has a very active sex life, as a whole, most of this sexual activity is tucked quietly away in apartments and private areas of the mush. Although you may have the occasional trouble finding the rp you are looking for, you will never be subjected to the voluminous sexual activity if you do not care to be. There has been rumored to have been a publicly rp-ed rape scene on the mush, but as far as I kow this type of RP violates the rules of conduct.

While I personally consider Denver to be a partial success, it has been on occassion the victim of its creaters. Numerous incidents by the headwiz(nuking parts of the database in fits of anger, shouting out of the god password to all players, and seemingly random retiring and returning to his post) have damaged the place, no doubt, but it is still active and carries with it enourmous potential for success. The environment can be volitile from an OOC perspective, but is fairly sedentary in its IC world.

I would recommend Denver if you are patient and enjoy smaller and shorter duration plots and storylines, as well you are a fan of mostly roleplaying in bars and meeting new people. For those of you whom are interested, there is an active and growing Lesbian population in the IC world. You must also be tolerant of the broad range of roleplayers, and willing to make a fair amount sacrifices on your own needs and desires.

JMB