Almost all of the MUCK's action is set in a city called The Mess, a near-paradise of artificial evolution, surreal technology, strange fashions and decadent leisure. Legend has it that when the Mess was discovered, it was already separated into six areas (called Warps), each with their own pre-installed cultures and even their own laws of physics. The Mess is even weirder than what's normal on Puzzlebox, and that's pretty weird. Puzzlebox's built-in means for its residents to control their destiny are even more powerful in the Mess, giving them not just supplies and shelter, but the ability to shape the laws of cause and effect to their expectations. New modes of consciousness flower in the dream-like Mess, amid near-infinite resources and reality-warping technology.
The Mess's residents, in all their diversity of thought and form, do more or less whatever they like. Some join factions that express their ideological or aesthetic values, giving them a space to test their theories or just have their own idea of a good time. Although physical violence is virtually extinct (except as performance art with little long-term consequence), conflict and rivalry often develop between incompatible factions, which settle their differences through artistic terrorism, media blitzing, and psychotronic warfare.
Some beings devote themselves to altering or replacing their bodies, transforming themselves into living machinery or living art. Others custom-build new states of consciousness through chemical, electronic, or surgical means. Some, especially immigrants from less fluid societies, never quite get the hang of immortality and seem to spend their time trying to recreate the miseries of pre-transcendent life. But the enigmas of the Mess seem to have their own mercurial will. They've induced many a resident to change themselves in ways they could've never anticipated. Enlightenment and madness are only a chance meeting away.
Two of the most important features of the Mess are the backup system and the instantiator. The backup system takes a snapshot of every character's body and mind (and soul?) whenever they want it; it defaults to once a "day." (Or whatever the Mess's equivalent a "day" is. There are no astronomical features or seasons; in some places it's always light out, in some it's always dark.) If somebody is killed or maimed, or their mind is shattered, the backup can restore them instantly to health with a day's worth of lost memories. The instantiator is a public matter-creation resource, seeded into the very atmosphere of the Mess. Inhabitants who know there's an instantiator system can simply will simple objects into existence -- including food, water, and shelter. There seem to be some limits on what the instantiator can create, but they're pretty forgiving; it seems that they mostly apply to works of art, new inventions, and certain forms of highly complex extradimensional matter.
To complicate things further, even the basic laws of causality don't behave on Puzzlebox like they do in the real world. Even in your typical science-fantasy world like Star Trek or Star Wars, you can take it for granted that the laws of physics, the history of your culture, and who you are will be the same from day to day. Puzzlebox is more like Twin Peaks or Red Dwarf. It's a very "magical" world, in that willpower and consciousness can have a very powerful effect on the world. It's also very "mythical," in that reality operates by consensus, and if many sentient beings believe something to be true, it becomes true. Existential crises are common on Puzzlebox, fundamental questions about "how reality works" and what's actually real.
This makes it especially hard to make a character do something against their will, since just about anybody can conjure up a way of protecting themselves. This is why bodily violence is practically useless on Puzzlebox -- and why techniques of mind- and will-alteration are much more popular. Even if you do manage to kill somebody who chooses to be defenseless, the public backup systems will just rebuild them. You can't really starve them, and it's hard to capture them -- unless they're some really naive newcomer who doesn't know yet that they can create, say, lockpicks out of thin air. But if you can convince them they'd be happier sitting quietly inside a cage, through seduction or brainwashing -- or even simple logic -- then you have them.
When in doubt, a good rule of thumb for understanding the nature of life on Puzzlebox is: "Puzzlebox literalizes the rules of living on a MUCK server, and treats them as if they were real laws of physics." Real estate is practically free and the most important economic commodity is people's attention and affection. You can't really get killed, but you can have your whole life rewritten in a blink of an eye. Nobody can really force you to do anything you don't want to, but you'll probably let them now and then, just to keep life interesting... On Puzzlebox these aren't just software limitations, they're the way things really are.
Two more important features of PuzzleboxMUCK are the Warps and Factions.
Warps are literally zones of space with a specific theme - mind and learning, release of inhibition, discipline and moderation, and so forth. They are all part of the cityscape of the Mess, but each has its own distinctive look. Top has trees, fountains, gardens, but they're all designed and placed in impeccable and sometimes complex order. Down's sky actually fades into ceiling - it's inside a building so large that entire secondary cities sit on and in the many floors! Charm might as well be candy - raver candy among the rest of it.
Getting around in the Warps is fairly easy, unless there's an area which is deliberately hard to navigate. Their conceptual space is infinite in each of six fields, but their muckspace is limited to a handful of rooms; most further construction is handled by the players, including areas like the Warrens, Otissa?, and Elysium. You can always, if you get lost, either go home or to The Transit Nexus, the room between all Warps.
Factions are groups of sentients with a common theme, principle, or purpose. They exist for flavor, for social identity, for entertainment, for belonging. Joining is generally as easy as saying you're a member; for factions where membership and rules are important, you may want to contact a current member and ask for advice, or arrange to play out or write up an initiation of some sort.
Some people (such as Morgan --I'm making an assumption here, please correct me if I'm wrong!) can easily identify with the primary characteristics of a given Warp or Faction; others, like Echo, may sleep in various places like a cat, belonging to no particular place or people but the Mess entire.
One of our most important principles is collaboration. Yes, this is a private MUCK and we do reserve the right to run it the way we like. But in a sense, Puzzlebox also belongs to its players and we like it that way. The Functions (the administrative staff -- what most MU*'s call "wizards") don't believe in micromanagement. We don't like laying down hard-and-fast rules about what people can and can't do on Puzzlebox. In our experience, that kind of regulation just stifles creativity -- inevitably, somebody gets an idea that's really cool and harmless but violates the letter of the law. We'd much rather lead by example, trust in our players to be grown-ups, and make sure they have all the resources they need to make intelligent decisions. We also believe in being constructive whenever possible. If we hear an idea that doesn't work, we'd rather salvage something that does work from it than dismiss it altogether. We encourage our players to follow suit and build on each other's ideas.
Something else vital to the atmosphere of Puzzlebox: We're a bunch of freaks. A disproportionate number of our players are queer, pagan, kinky, poly, transgender, punk, hippie, raver, goth, otherkin, libertarian or socialist or both, highly fantasy-prone, gamers, stoners, or just plain oddly wired. While being any of these things doesn't make us superior, we do pride ourselves on the fact that we're very open to new modes of thought and being. We love playing with ideas, and we love blurring the boundaries between our fantasy lives and our reality. We believe very strongly that online roleplay is a valuable tool for making real-world friends and experimenting with new social possibilities. A good MUCK should stir up real emotions in its players.
We want Puzzlebox to be a safe and respectful place for these experiments, but we also want it to be vibrant and full of friendly debate and challenge. So, yes, you do have to be nice to each other. But we do know that the cost of having a MUCK full of romantics is that passions will get the better of people occasionally. Our usual approach is to forgive people, look for the source of the conflict, fix it, and move on. We don't like people who force us to do otherwise. :) We have an Etiquette Guide and a guide to handling intense plots, but most of them can be condensed to "be considerate of others, talk your problems out with them instead of making assumptions, and give people the benefit of the doubt."
More than anything else, we want Puzzlebox to evoke certain moods: surreal, sensual, literate, futuristic, artsy, fanciful, romantic... Roleplaying on Puzzlebox isn't about who has the biggest phaser rifle or shapeshifts into the biggest monster. It's not about impressing us with TEH FUNNIE catch phrase from some Flash animation somebody else wrote, or showing off your superior jaded indifference. It's about playing around with bodies and minds and thoughts in a world that's very, very safe and very, very pretty, but also very chaotic and challenging.
If you feel a little lost, try using the Dotcom command to ask for help on channel "Newbie." New players, please keep all requests to one line or less -- just briefly saying you need help, and what basic sort, is enough. (e.g., "Could somebody help me with the morph command?" or "Who are the Otissa, again? Does anybody here play one?" or "I'm feeling like a bit of a wallflower and there's nobody in public. Does anyone mind if I come join them?") PBX veterans, please respond with a similarly brief message saying you'll be helping them, and give the details by PRIVATE page. This way, we won't clutter the channel with noise, and people will have more of an incentive to leave it on even when they're scening.
Also, don't forget the "guide" command on the MUCK. It tends to get outdated, but much of the theme and background information from the website and wiki appears in more concise form there, and it's still good for a quick refresher.