But wait...what is a MUD?Well, I'm glad you asked! It's sort of like a cross between a modern MMO like WoW and the old text adventure games like Zork! Lots of people in a text-based world, having fun and playing a game!
So I have to type and stuff?Yep. And use your imagination. No, no graphics for you my friend, but what you lose in pixels you gain in freedom! You can create your own story, your own items, your own character exactly as you want it and enjoy a vast, rich world.
So you just sit around and talk all day like a chat room?If you want. But it's also an actual game! You fight monsters and win or lose on dice rolls(random number generation) and strategy like any other RPG. You fight other players and match wits! You explore and create, kill and destroy!
Give me an example.Easy!
Dusty Lane
You are on a dusty lane running north and south here. At night, you can't
see much of anything except deep shadows and moving figures. Best move
quickly through this part of town.
[Exits: north (east) south (west)]
(C) A street urchin is hanging around.
(C) A ferrling scuffles about.
(C) (Flying) A large, black raven flies overhead.Well see here? This is a room, a dusty lane in the middle of a ruined town. You can go north, south, east, or west by typing any of those directions. (The ones in parantheses are doors!) There's also some creatures here! That big (C) means they're roughly your level. You can fight them by typing "kill raven" or whatever the heck you want to kill. Let's see what happens.
Your pathetic stab misses a large, black raven's leg.
A large, black raven's pathetic peck misses your hand.
Your competent stab perforates a large, black raven's leg.
A large, black raven is DEAD!!
You receive 189 experience points.
You hear a large, black raven's death cry.
You sacrifice the corpse of a large, black raven to the Gods.
The Gods award you vitality for your sacrifices.Hot dang. We kicked that raven's ass! That'll teach it to be alive!
Well, cool. I want to kill birds for no real reason! How do I play?Well, first you need a MUD client. The standard one is Telnet, which comes with every version of Windows. DON'T USE IT. It sucks for MUDs. A really good one is
zMUD/CMUD. The current version costs money, but you can use a trial version or download a very old version for free!
Second, you need a MUD to connect to. There's a lot out there and most suck! I'm going to promote one that I really enjoy:
Lensmoor! Just start a new session and put in the hostname field: lensmoor.org and port number: 3500
Okay, but why Lensmoor?You're certainly good at coming up with great questions! Well, here's the thing. A lot of MUDs are solely hack and slash kill kill kill kill kill games. In fact, so many are that most are dead because no one actually cared that much after the first week of killing things. There was nothing special! On the other side, there's a lot of games similar to MUDs called MUSHes where there's almost no killing at all. It's all people being very dramatic and usually acting out interactive fanfiction for their beloved universes. Boooriiiing.
In the middle, we find the reasonable Lensmoor. You can hack and slash and power game to your hearts content or you can role play an interesting character or do both at the same time. You'll be rewarded for your effort in either direction! In addition, the entire world is uniquely created with its own mythology, having been built and expanded upon for over 12 years.
How do I start?Well, when you start you need to choose a name. Choose something unique that you can remember, and not something you'd tend to find in WoW like CoolStoryBro or Anakin'smom. Then you need to choose what continent to start on. See, there's two major continents, eternally at war. Lensmoor is a land of lush green forests and plains, where you'll find many standard fantasy races to choose from such as humans, sidhe(elves), gnomes, etc. Antrippa on the other hand is a harsh, mountainous land with vast stretches of desert. Here you'll find more manipulative or cruel races like orcs, the spider-like arachnaia, or the beautiful louryl(also elves). Don't be fooled though! Each continent is filled with good and evil alike and you're not bound to playing a good person in Lensmoor or an evil person in Antrippa.
What about my class?You have no class! Lensmoor uses a skill-based classless system. You're free to learn whatever spells and skills you choose as long as you have the required pre-requisite skills. However, you can only learn skills as long as you have the required number of practices(you get one every two hours or can buy them through questing) and enough "skill cap". Once your skill cap is full, you're done until you level up! This makes sure that no one knows every spell and forces people into creating their own unique blend of skills to play their character as they feel appropriate.
Okay! What's all this advanced options stuff?It's a little more complicated. Get a feel for the game first, then you can work it out. No one sticks with their first character anyway.
Anyway, if anyone wants to play, I'm Izymar, a new character I just started after having not played the game in a year or two. I'm on Antrippa but will gladly sign on to the Lensmoorian side (on Ozymar) if people want to play there to help you along!
