If you'd like to have a guest tour of Puzzlebox before you apply, any registered player can use the "guest-pass" command to issue you a guest account, good for one session. If you don't know any players, you can also request a pass from functionxor [at] gmail [dot] com. Once your guest session is over, the pass expires and you'll have to get a new one, but you're allowed to have as many guest sessions as you want (within reason!).
The application process itself consists of a character name and three questions. PLEASE include your character's name in the subject line of your mail! It will make it much easier to track your application! Please answer each question with something in the neighborhood of 2-5 paragraphs -- we get a lot of applications and have a lot to read. :) Submit the completed application to functionxor [at] gmail [dot] com.
We will typically get back to you with further questions and constructive criticism within 10-14 days. Sometimes applications can take much longer to process, especially if you don't follow the length guidelines. We apologize for this, but we also reserve the right to process very good applications that follow the submission guidelines first. Good, clear, concise apps are much easier to process than marginal ones that ramble on and on -- if we don't know what advice to give you right away, processing your app might take a month or longer while we sort it out! Currently there are only two people processing the bulk of applications, with a little advice from a council of experienced player volunteers, but we hope to accelerate this process in the future. For now, we'd rather take the extra time to brainstorm with our prospective players.
Please be patient with us, but if you're starting to wonder what become of an app in progress please feel free to mail us and ask! Quick requests for information usually take 2-3 days max to respond to, especially if you mention the nature of your request in the subject line (i.e., "Checking up on application," "Guest pass," "Need help finding info on wiki," etc.).
The most important thing you're being tested on is your ability to make the reviewers stop and say, "Wow, that's neat." If we need clarifications, we'll ask for them in the next round of questions. So it's probably more important to catch and hold our attention than it is to be exhaustively detailed on the first try.
In general, we're not as concerned about what your character is as we are about what your character does. We're even more concerned about what your character means. Most of the applications we reject make the mistake of bombarding us with lots and lots of vaguely interesting factoids about their characters, without ever really tying them into a coherent story, or showing us how those bundles of data would make a fun character to interact with.
Yes, it's all very interesting that your character has five green arms and a datasuit named Neddy that can see people's spleens and was born inside of a laundromat that connects to all known dimensions. What sort of person does all this make them? What do they want out of life? What are they like on a first date? :) What does all this say about what it's like to be a sentient being in the Mess -- or, for that matter, what does it say about you, the player, being a sentient being here on Earth?
All in all, the application process is nowhere near as scary as we probably make it sound. The majority of applications have to go through a round or two of questions and advice, just to make sure potential confusion about the game world gets sorted out ahead of time. The majority of applications get accepted sooner or later, if you're willing to be patient and talk your character out with us. Whenever possible, we'd rather help fix a flawed concept than just say flat-out "no, that's wrong."
One more word to the wise: this application guide is probably not a very good source of inspiration for your characters. We can usually tell if somebody mechanistically tailored their character to our questions purely for the sake getting past the application process. But you're not auditioning for this set of guidelines. You're auditioning for a group of people who are, themselves, players on Puzzlebox. We're looking for characters that will be interesting and fun to play with. If you tailor every last detail of your character to match the ideals set forth in our Application Handbook, but bore yourself in the process, you'll probably bore us too. Send us a character you care about and infect us with your enthusiasm for it.
In general, we're looking for literacy, creativity and improvisational skill on Puzzlebox. But we're also looking for players with heart. We take the "technoromantic" and "metasensual" themes of the MUCK quite seriously. What that means is, we like people who are deep and empathetic as well as smart, and who enjoy poking at their own mental boundaries for fun.
There is a very strong element of identity-play on Puzzlebox, and our plots tend to reach pretty far into the realm of metaphor and allegory. Being able to genuinely care for others and put heartfelt passion into your roleplaying is probably more important than your writing ability. We're definitely much more interested in vivid, intriguing character concepts than we are about perfect grammar and spelling. Characters that adapt an interesting real-world social or cultural phenomenon to the Puzzlebox world are especially likely to get accepted on the first attempt.
The nature of Puzzlebox is substantially different from what many people seem to expect from a "science fiction" MUCK. It's somewhat "right-brained" and stereotypically rather "feminine" in its emphasis upon characters and emotional situations instead of visceral thrills and the accumulation of power. The emphasis of Puzzlebox is on exploring the symbolic, the romantic, the surreal, the subjective, the literary, the metaphysical, the psychological, the mythical... We won't exclude someone just for having a different worldview, but if there is no interest displayed in any of these ideas, it might be worth asking just what sort of roleplaying you hoped to find here.
Also note that Puzzlebox is sex-friendly, queer-friendly, fetish-friendly, pagan-friendly, and fringe-culture friendly in general. You don't have to be a member of any particular demographic or lifestyle in order to be welcomed. But if you have easily offended sensibilities you'll probably see a lot of things on Puzzlebox that you won't like. That's your prerogative, but we won't pay much attention if you complain or stop doing what we enjoy. :) Puzzlebox is intended to be a low-shame, low-guilt environment.
We are also predominantly a "postfurry" MUCK, which means most characters are anthropomorphic animal characters. However, humans and other alien species are entirely welcome. Just keep in mind, the Mess is a retrofuturistic, hedonistic leisure society where fashion is a major source of power. Inhabitants have the luxury of choosing their forms of dress, physical incarnation, and even neurological architecture based on personal whim instead of physical necessity. Surreal beauty and flamboyance are always in style; when in doubt, wear rubber, neon, and deelyboppers, but you can probably do better than that. :)
These are the skills we're really testing you on: making connections between ideas, extrapolating more ideas from those connections, building interesting systems out of those connections, and telling good stories about those systems.
We give some preference to characters that originate from the city of the Mess (where most of the MUCK takes place), or at least from somewhere else on Puzzlebox. The Puzzlebox is an enormous collection of thousands of worlds, all connected by various bridges in spacetime, and we deliberately left its nature vague so that players could easily fit their characters there. Therefore, we'd general prefer you not submit a character who's from Earth, unless it's truly necessary to a great concept. We'd really prefer you not just resubmit a character unchanged from another MUCK!
We also very rarely allow people to play characters borrowed from other media, though characters inspired that way are fine. (For example, you can play a Taoist space monk trained in ritual duelling with energy weapons... but you can't play a Jedi... and you sure as hell can't play Mace Windu. :) You may, however, play a character who references a Star Wars-like world in witty and satirical ways, as long as they also stand up as a real character.)
You might wish to have a look at the list of Cliches, just to see what character concepts have already been well-tread on Puzzlebox. We get a lot of applications that try to use devices such as amnesia or polymorphism to excuse characters that are vague and have no strong central concept. Please avoid this temptation. If your character makes good use of something like amnesia, or is a formless cloud for a reason, that's fine, but don't do it just because it's an easy cop-out.
The first question is simple: what does your character look like? This should be a two to six paragraph visual description of your character, the same one that will appear when players use the "look" command on it (i.e., the "@desc" property). What we're really looking for here is evocative, stylish @descs that make good use of imagery and figurative language. We should get a really strong feel for your character and its potential place on Puzzlebox just from the @desc. Don't dwell on irrelevant technical details at the cost of a vivid, artful, coherent concept. This is where the uniqueness of your character should really shine.
(Note: We aren't sticklers for conventional @desc etiquette. It's fine if you do something unconventional like put an implied pose in your @desc or include an narrator's comments, as long as you know what you're doing. We'll judge it on its effectiveness, not on whether a technique is "right" or "wrong.")
Second, we'd like a few paragraphs of background information about your character concept. Where are they from? What's their personality like? What are their abilities? What inspired your character, and why are you interested in playing it? Again, the most important thing is to be concise and leave us a strong sense of what's interesting about your character. A strong unifying theme is a definite plus. (For example, "finding a sense of renewal after a guilty past," or "having lost one's real self in an organization or ideology" or "still finding challenges in a world where anything is possible.") Consider, is your character's history just an accumulation of random events, or does it tell a meaningful story?
When writing your character's background, try to focus on what your character will be like in the "here and now," in the Mess with the other player characters. What will they do on a typical day? How will they react to some of the common sights and experiences of the Mess, as detailed on the wiki? Having every moment of your character's life spelled out from their creation really isn't necessary, nor is knowing every aspect of our world's background backward and forward. We just want to know how your character will fit into the gameworld. A few especially interesting tidbits are usually more effective than attempting to explain every last detail.
The third thing we'd like you to do is pick a topic from the list below. These are all themes that we feel are important to PuzzleboxMUCK. Tell us how your character relates to that theme, and give an example of a hypothetical plotline where your character might explore that theme. (An example: "My character has some power-exchange elements, since she has a broken voice modulator and will be powerless to speak until somebody else decides to fix it for her. It might be fun to arrange for one of the Architects to pretend repair it, but really set it so that they control everything she says from a distance. It'd be interesting to see how she'd get anyone to rescue her, when they can make her tell people she's fine!")
The list of themes is not exhaustive. If nothing really fits, you're welcome to try using a theme of your own. The purpose of your answer is not simply to show us your character ties in with the MUCK themes. We figure it does, or you wouldn't be here. :) The point is to test your ingenuity and your critical thinking skills, by giving you an elementary exercise in literary analysis.