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WHAT IS MUD?

MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon. It's the most advanced, interactive, computerized adventure game in the world. What makes MUD so exciting is that, unlike "normal" adventures where there's no-one around to see you battle against monsters, score points and carry out deeds of daring, MUD is affected by the other people playing at the same time as you. You can chat CB-style to your fellow adventurers, cast spells on them, help them, even attack them! This makes every game of MUD different. You can save your "persona" on the computer any time you like and, later, continue play from where you left off. To play MUD, you need a home computer (almost any with an RS-232 port will do) and a modem.

In MUD your score determines your "level" which in turn determines your ability to play. This is MUD's method of keeping the novice players from being completely overwhelmed by the more experienced players. For example, while novices are still wadering about the mainland exploring, more advanced players are off on the island hunting dragons! Eventually your score will get high enough (assuming you're clever enough not to get killed) and you'll take on the rank of wizard. This is the ultimate aim of every MUD player, but becoming a wizard doesn't spell the end of the game. MUD changes dramatically for players who become wizards, with all sorts of new commands becoming available to them. Later chapters in this book will explain wizards and their purpose in the game in more detail.

The MUD program comes in two parts, the database and the iterpreter. The former is a description of the world, what will happen if people type certain things, and what will happen of its own accord whether you do anything or not. The latter is the program which takes in commands from the user and follows a sequence of actions which this entails as defined in the database. To clarify this, you can look on the database as if it were, say, a BASIC program. It describes exactly what you want to happen, but doesn't actually do anything. The interpreter is like the BASIC interpreter, which reads in the program (database) and brings it to like. MUD's interpreter comes in two parts, one which compiles the human-readable database into computer-readable form, and one which loads and runs this.

The reason for partitioning MUD in this way is so that it can be ported over to other machines very easily, at least in theory. All you need to do is to reqrite the interpreter, and the database can remain unchanged. Unfortunately, the database is at quite a high level, and the interpreter is pretty colossal. In the new commercial version of MUD (ie. you pay to play), the interpreter is much smaller, the brunt of the work being done in the database because its more transportable.

When you run MUD to start with, it looks like an average adventure game. It asks you for a name, what sex you want to be, and a password. Then it gives you the description of the first room. MUD's descriptions are normally about seven or eight lines long, any more and you'd get killed while reading them! The object descriptions come on seperate lines (to give some hint that they're not actually part of the description, and you can do things to them), and so does the information about who is present in the room with you.

The aim of MUD is to collect points. There are three ways to do this. The most common way is to get treasure and drop it in the swamp, which effectively puts it out of the game, so points can't be scored for it twice. The second most common way is by killing people. When you top another player, you get one twenty-fourth of their points, in general. The last way is to do some menial task such as making the bed or drinking some spring water, although points for these are piteously poor.

You can lose points, too. Points can be lost for doing stupid things like trying to smoke the wolfsbane, but more often than not they go when you're killed. In MUD you die often, how permanenet it is depends upon how it happened. If you're dead, it normally means you did something which killed you, like jump off the cliff without some sort of parachute, or drink some poison or whatever. This in mudspeke, the jargon MUD players use, is known as being DEAD. You can come back from being DEAD, but you lose points for it. If you are killed in a fight, however, you end up permanently deceased, or DEAD DEAD. Hence, although fights have good rewards when won, they're soul-destroying when you lose! The only way to be DEAD DEAD for doing something silly is if you carry the uranium around with you, ignoring the messages about how tired you feel, until your stamina drops below zero. Resurrection is the only way to recover from being DEAD DEAD and it costs half your points. It's very costly, but the only other alternative is to start over again.

Since players with more points tend to be more popular targets for those with an urge to kill, they have better attrributes than those they started with. MUD generates a raindom set of characteristics from you when you start - your "persona" which consists of three attributes, these being:

• Strength
• Stamina
• Dexterity

The other attributes usually associated with adventure games such as intelligenve and charisma are provided by the actual gamer. These three main attributes all affect your gameplay in various ways, most obviouslly your effectiveness to fight. Strength determines how much damage you'll do to your opponent, stamina how much damage you can take, and dexterity affects your chances of landing a blow. The average new character's attributes total about a hundred and fifty, but as your score increases so do your attributes. When you go up a level, your attributes go up by ten points each until you reach a maximum of a hundred in each category. Be warned however, that some of MUD's monsters know no such limitations, and may have a strength and stamina of well over five hundred, making them formidable creatures indeed!

The level in MUD have changed as the game developed, with the score needed to reach wizard increasing from approximately seventy thousand when MUD started, to nearly a quarter of a million! This is due to two reasons, firstly the game itself has expanded in size, and there is more treasure for the taking. Secondly, however, MUD has been "solved" by quite a few people, and those who ask enough question will be well on there way to wizdom. So, as more players solve the game, the level of difficulty required to become a wizard must be preserved. The current point levels are shown in the tables at the end of this chapter.

You start off as a novice and remain a fighter until you perform a certain heroic deed. Magic-users are just as poweful as fighters but have the added ability of being able to cast spells. Long term wizards and people employed by MUSE, who are especially trusted, may became archwizards. They are appointed by the game's administrators.

The reason for the exponential gain in points between levels is that novice players take just as long to gain their first level, as the more experienced players take to move from Sorcerer to Necromancer. This allows the better players to get back quickly to their levels of play (if they're killed) and go off in search of treasure completely beyond the reach of the newer players.

Such treasures might include the throne, buried deep within the dwarfen realm, or perhaps the legendary druidical treasure trove hidden below the dragon's island! And finding these items is just half the problem, for to score any points youmust return safely to the swamp and deposit your treasure there. Dumping hard-earned treasure in a swamp doesn't sound like the best thing you could do with it, but this ensures that other players can't score points for treasure that you've already been credited for. If you are waylaid on your way back to the swamp, and have your entire haul stolen, you get no reward for your work. Instead the points go to the player who finally manages to drop the treasure in the swamp. The strategies that can be built up around this are endless.

This gives rise to one of MUD's main characteristics which is that is allows you to behave in a way which would be totally unacceptable in real life. It is this fantasy element which makes the game very enjoyable and encourages players to return for more. You won't be able to recover your treasure if it is stolen, but you might extract smoe grim form of pleasure in exacting punishment from the player who deprived you of the fruits of your labours. Revenge can be taken by chasing after the fellon with a broadsword and running him through. You won't score nearly as many points for this, but perhaps such a threat will keep that player from trying the same thing again! There is a good chance you will kill the offending player, but there is the possibility you will lose the fight. Fighting techniques and strategies are detailed later in this book.

MUD is a huge game, played in an area often described as the Land. Currently, MUD has over a thousand rooms to explore so its easy to see while you'll be able to spend quite a long time just getting familiar with the game. A room doesn't have to be an enclosed chamber but, as with most adventure games, its just an area with its own description. The eastern pasture is as much a room, for example, as the entrance to the mine. You move frrom one room to another by telling MUD to move your persona in a specific direction eg.: GO SOUTH. To find out where (most of) the exits from a room are, type EXITS and a list of possible directions is displayed. Sometimes exits are hidden though, and it is wise to try out every possiblity.

As you explore the Land it's likely that you'll encounter one of the wizards or witches that have mastered the game. Called wizzes, these are players who have "finished" MUD and are now playing as the game's referees, helping (or hindering) the mortal players as they see fit. Wizards have powers far beyond those of ordinary players, some of which will be described later. At this point, it's fair to say that wizzes are not to be trifled with. They can be great allies, but they can also be horrendous enemies if you get on the wrong side of them. Remember, wizards are usually happy to help you, but if you pester them continually for advice and points it won't go well for you in the long run. Part of the game (in fact, a major portion of it!) is learning to allow for each wizard's eccentricities. That you will learn later, so for the time being let's stick to the basics and examine MUD's command set. This is what MUD allows you to tell your persona to do in the game.

The original version of MUD, has a very different table of levels, as there is no such class as a fighter. It looks like this: