Ok, I've been out of the loop because starting a business is all encompassing.
I really want to take a more simple approach to this hobby, and I'm hoping a MUSH might be a better choice
than either re-inventing the wheel or messing with spaghetti.

Any thoughts?

In some respects mushes have way more going for them in terms of features than other bases. On the other hand some of those same features could be seen as drawbacks (i.e. mushcode being the big one).

If you find that you can accept the quirks of mushcode (and there are techniques to help with that, such as unformatters and so on), it's a very extensible and mature family of bases that you can do a lot with.

If you fancy something halfway between a mature mush and a barebones base, you might try looking at Evennia, which is Python-based (instead of using mushcode) but stays true to mush conventions.

eta: oh yeah, as to the topic title – the differences between the four major bases in the mush family (Rhost, Penn, Tiny, and Mux) are probably not great enough to be a deciding factor if you're just getting into mushes. I just suggest trying them all and picking the one you vibe with the best.

Mushcode isn't horrible for most purposes, but it does have some nasty "gotchas"; but all in all I've enjoyed the couple of MUSHes I've played around on.

Maya/Rudha