Come play in the mud with me.

[brainface]

Multi-User-Dungeons, they're like a free text only World of Warcraft.

Though there hayday has kind of passed with the death of the 56k modem and the coming of the free to play mmorpg, there are still a number of active muds and active mud players (crazy people like me).

In case you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, a mud's a lot like the old text adventure games. You're presented with a text description of a room as well as any objects, npcs, or other players within, and you have a number of text commands you can type to interact with said objects, such as "go north", "cast magic missile on brainface", "look at shrubbery", etc. Using such commands will give you some feedback in the form of text or an update to the room description.

These games are generally all played with a "client", such as telnet. You can connect to a mud by typing, say "telnet retromud.org 3000" into a windows command prompt. Telnet is absolutely not specialized for playing muds, it's made for running commands on remote servers and many mud-specific clients exist, such as gmud (a graphical program) http://sourceforge.net/projects/g-mud/ http://darkover.isilm.com/download-gmud.php or tintin++ http://tintin.sourceforge.net/ (for you people that love command line programs).

The players on such muds are divided generally into 1 or 2 admins (usually the person paying for the server and calling the shots), several creators (who can code areas and make stuff), and any number of players (who, if you can't tell, just play the game.) Creators are, for some reason, sometimes called wizards. I don't know why.

One of the upshots of muds is that they're simple enough (they have no graphics!) that pretty much anyone can "code" for them, adding zombies or blaster wielding ratmen or whatever else they can think of. Generally admins don't let someone go straight to creator, you kind of have to earn your stripes by playing the game. The exact process varies wildly depending on muds and their admins.

Most of the muds I've played on, if you can't tell, tend to be gamey-combat oriented with a mix of roleplaying. There's a variety of mud types, some are closer in style to a free-form chat room without any actual magic attacks or whatnot. They also run the gamut of genres from post-apocalypse to sci-fi to generic fantasyland.

I don't thiiinnk anyone else has made a mud-post before. Maybe other people could post what muds they have played on with reviews and all that razz.
Or maybe I am so damned old that only I have played these things. :/

[brainface]

[spoiler=Split Infinity]
splitinf.org port 4000
character: Pollux, nightling rogueish thing.

Split Infinity is based on nightmare, a skill-based mud. (You train blacksmithing by sharpening weapons, you train blunt defense by being hit by clubs.) The class system was entirely freeform. You picked a number of skilled dependant on your stats and that was your class. (I had a guy with all the theiving skills, psionics, and... physician.) It features a funky mix of demon-invaded fantasy worlds and spacestations full of blaster wielding security forces. While it was somewhat active back in the day, with people logging on from across europe and america, I don't think it's seen a player log on in years.

Pros:
It had a pretty awesome creator and player base. Universally nice people. This is not always a given on muds. Oh god, it is not.
While it didn't have that many areas, most of them were fairly awesome. Dreams and nightmares in an opium den could send you to toonland heaven or a trojan war hell. Predatus was a heavily polluted world overrun by vicious mutated animals evolved to retaking the world.
Also, the start location was a pirate island.

Cons: It was a fairly small mud. There weren't actually that many areas to explore, and eventually you got to just die on predatus over and over. Also, training weapon defenses was a soul crushing ordeal, but that's more of a fault of the nightmare system as anything else.
It's pretty much defunct, which is a damned shame.
[spoiler=screencap]
Calle de los Piratas [n, w, tavern]
The few honest people who dare to travel this part of town at night carry torches and walk in groups. Shadowy figures flit
along, bound on some nefarious purpose. A suddenly choked-off groan echoes in the ominous quiet of the street. Very dim
light filters through the windows of the tavern, while the building to the east is only a dark looming mass. The wharf to
the south is quiet and still.
A light sea breeze blows away the smell of stale ale.
Screams, laughter and shouts from the nearby tavern occasionally mask the thunk of waves hitting the wharf supports.
A trash can and Players' Board [296/296 posts read] are here.
The air is much more humid.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Retromud]
retromud.org port 3000
(website only loads as "http://www.retromud.org", NOT "http://retromud.org")
My Characters: Ghalt, werewolf ranger.

Retromud is an experience based mud (i.e. you level up by killing things.) It has several worlds, a bunch of classes, a solid party based system, and a good amount of "service" abilities. Like, there's a merchant class that can make castles for other players. It also unfortunately sports a rather large learning curve--it's one of the few games I've played, for instance, where you can be punished rather severely by the game for leveling up too soon. What it definitely does have that most other muds don't is a relatively large player base: there's usually a good couple dozen players on at all times, sometimes more.

Pros: Even though it's not *exactly* my cup of tea, this is a really well-developed mud. Like, there are a spells to raise and lower the water level in an area.
Huge: there are five different planets each full of areas of their own.
There are many, many races and guilds (classes) supporting a variety of gameplay.

Cons: Once you level past the protected "newbie" levels, the game will search out new and destructive ways to kill you and crush your dreams. Gameplay can be seriously unforgiving at times.
The game makes fun of you when you typo. Combine that with typing in random commands trying to find a secret area and maaayybbee you want to punch your monitor screen.

[spoiler=screencap]
North Entrance to Keystone
 You can see the pennants waving of Keystone Kingdom's proudest city, the
'Keystone of the World', known as Keystone City.  The walls create a sense of
strength, pride, and more than a little bit of awe.  Truly, this is the best
humanity on Welstar has to offer.  A long stream of merchant's caravans seem
to be constantly streaming in and out of the place.  There is a player-owned
Fort here. You probably shouldn't go in unless you have been invited. It looks
brand new. It is of incredible quality.
   The sky is dark blue and a yellow glow comes from the east. Fluffy white
clouds drift lazily overhead. It is fairly well lit here.
  Obvious exits are: east, fort, gate, north, northeast, northwest, southeast,
southwest, up, and west.
A sundial
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Havenmud]
havenmud.org port 4000
players: Fortunado, half-elf marine; several alts; Mahkefel (coder guy)
Havenmud's another nightmare based mud, but modded to be somewhat experience based. (You gain experience by fighting or using a skill such as sailing, and use that experience to advance any skill.) This is currently where I play so I am slightly partial to it. It features a fairly generic fantasy setting with mages and fighters and all that. It also has a fairly interesting sailing system and well-developed towns and areas.

Pros: Haven's a pretty huge mud: it used to have a larger playerbase, and has all the areas to support them. (Retromud's probably a bit larger.)
You can buy a ship and sail around the world, sinking pirates as you go.
IC chat and OOC chat are split. You can talk about what your cat is doing or how awesome your +15 hackmaster is on the OOC channel, but your character is limited to IC conversation.
Cons: There's not really any crafting system, and it can kinda devolve into a brainless leveling grindfest. Roleplaying opportunities are also kind of hard to come by if virtually no one else is online.
Like a lot of muds, there are also "gotchas". I.E, you can swim out in the ocean and drown fairly easily. It does not outright conspire to murder you like retromud though. >_<
[spoiler=screencap]Inside the Parvan Town Hall [east, out, west, north, up]
The inside of the town hall does not give great relief to those scared by the state of disrepair in the rest of Parva. The
main hallway seems infrequently travelled. A stairway leads up to another level, and halls lead off to the north, west, and
east. A pictographic sign sits in the middle of the room, detailing the contents of the rest of the hall.
The town hall smells of a strange mix of rum and vomit.
A large news board is here.
Rodrigo de Vivar is here.
Hernando Morgan the Muscular Brute is here.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]

[SDragon]

See, here I was, expected to be disappointed, and yet, this thread delivers exactly what I was thinking of.

I've had a MUSH running from my own computer before, and lately, I've actually been looking into finding a free host for it. I've found it to be a fun extension of world-building, really.

The clients I've used are SimpleMU http://simplemu.onlineroleplay.com/ and recently, MUSHclient http://www.gammon.com.au/mushclient/mushclient.htm (both for Windows), and Kmuddy http://www.kmuddy.com/index.php/Main_Page for Linux. All of these are graphical, which is nice, I think. If you want something lightweight and minimalist, as has been said, Telnet is the way to go, but I'd advise against Telnet on Windows machines; you can't see what you're typing, which makes it very frustrating.


Brainface, what MUD's do you like going to? I don't know which game-oriented MUD's are the best to start with.

Edit: a bit of a glossary, for those who have absolutely no clue what I mean by "MUSH":

a MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon (Dimension, Domain), is a text-based MMORPG, with a general emphasis on gaming. Graphical descendants of these would be MMORPG's in their modern sense; games like Everquest, World of Warcraft, Guildwars, etc.

A MUSH (Multi-User Shared Habitat/Hallucination/etc) tends to have more of a general emphasis on social interaction. Since all of these games typically have a social element as well as a gaming element, MUD and MUSH can usually be used interchangeably, and either can be used a catch-all term for other, more technically specialized variants, such as MUCKs (Multi-User Creation Kits) and MOO's (Multi-User, Object-Oriented).

[brainface]

Brainface, what MUD's do you like going to? I don't know which game-oriented MUD's are the best to start with.

. (This does not happen often.)

[Nomadic]

Ah this brings back memories. I used to play Cleft of Dimensions which was a pretty awesome mixed MUD. Always wanted to get back into them (I have a soft spot for classic games and indie development which are things that MUDs have in spades).

http://cod.mudmagic.com/

[brainface]

The gigantic racial picture pretty much put me in stitches.

[Nomadic]

The gigantic racial picture pretty much put me in stitches.

Yes and as I recall the sailor suits are all from some sort of inside joke and it's driving me crazy that I can't remember what it was.

[Kaptn'Lath]

clearly as sailor moon refrence...

[SDragon]

I've never played a muSH specifically, I think; I'm not sure what the differences may be. Wikipedia says something about players being able to create rooms, that sounds interesting but I'm not sure if it's true. ^_^

From my understanding, the difference is more in the implementation than in the codebase itself. Some codebases are better suited for some implementations, but the more major ones are typically flexible enough to handle quite a bit.

Whether or not players can create their own rooms, however, I imagine to be dependent first on the codebase used (PennMUSH, the codebase I was running, does allow this, though some might not. Haven't run into that yet, though), and then on the specific configuration of the codebase (PennMUSH can have a cost for building new rooms, which can be set prohibitively high, and an "income" rate which can be set even as low as 0, and players can be denied permissions for commands.)

Most of the MUSH's I've been on do allow players to create rooms, though. This is definitely handy if you want your own apartment or whatever. There's typically some sort of rule about connecting your rooms to the main grid, however. Some don't allow it at all, some have an approval process, some just don't care, and one that I've been to even had an apartment complex that automated creating apartments.

[SDragon]

Bump.

As I mentioned, I've been looking for a good hosting service for my MUSH. I've got it down to http://www.isunlimited.net/index.php/hosting/shared and http://www.vermaxhosting.com/services.html , but I can't decide between the two. They look comparable to me, but I want to be sure I'm not missing anything.

[SDragon]

'Nother bump. More people should play these things.