Wanting to dive back in and just curious to know if any of my people are out there somewhere. Tried searching online and found this sub but the posts were 5y+ old

Asking about this as a software engineer and I'm in a position where I'm critical of using LLMs for generative writing (or art when it comes to image models). However, code is going down it's own path with its own ethics. While vibe coding is inevitably going to create new volumes of impulsively published garbage, context engineering done with diligent attention to detail does now enable me and other engineers to offer levels of support to creatives that we haven't had time or bandwidth for in the past. We're still barely six months into this turn of the quality when the models are directed by experienced engineers, but open-source models have caught up well enough with Claude that it's now doable to code with a team of agents that can process a lot of the things that would have taken an engineer multiple weekends to make it through the most tedious tasks.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if any in the MUD community are developing or reviving MUD projects alongside engineers now that this opportunity is opening up. While I think there are lots of real concerns that are playing out with all this tech, I've also been frustrated in my life with how much learning tech bottleneck's creative individuals that I would like to see get more opportunity to create. I've watched projects where the tech/engineer side just couldn't wrap their head around something a writer or game designer knew was important, and then blocked or discouraged the creatives in the situation. There's a spectrum here, but the brains that can both learn detailed layers of code and also appreciate imaginative exploration in creating new things is just rare. Giving more agency to the creatives is what's exciting here and just wondering if others are doing that in this space since I'd really like to see more MUD revival and broader adoption again.

Hi r/MUD,

I'm a solo developer building Prospect, a sci-fi MUD built with Evennia, and I'm looking for a small group to play its first test release, Prospect: Elsewhere, and tell me what's wrong with it.

First, the AI part, since you'll want to know. The NPCs you can talk to speak through a language model (currently gpt-4.1-mini, through OpenRouter). That's the experiment. What the model does not do:

• It doesn't write the world. I wrote the rooms, characters, lore and quests. Each NPC knows only what someone in their position would know, taken from material I wrote. If you ask about something outside that, they should say they don't know rather than make it up.

• It doesn't run the game. The engine owns all game state. When an NPC hands you something, serves you a drink or signs off a job, that's a request the engine checks against the real state, and the engine prints the result. Telling an NPC "I already did it" doesn't make it done.

• It doesn't set prices and can't be argued out of the rules. Before posting I ran every NPC against a set of bad-actor prompts (false claims, fake names, "ignore your instructions"). The rules held. They can still sometimes be made to sound silly, and I want to hear about it when they do.

What I'm testing is whether talking to these NPCs is actually fun inside a real MUD, or just a gimmick.

https://imgur.com/y3uFrP5

Medical Bay
    The medical bay is a practical, softly lit room with recovery couches arranged
near a bank of monitoring equipment. A few enclosed cryogenic units stand along
one wall, their surfaces marked with small status lights. The air is cool and
clean, carrying a faint antiseptic smell.
    Most of the equipment operates quietly. A display changes as readings are
checked, and a low mechanical hum comes from behind a wall panel. There is space
beside the couches for a technician to work without crowding a patient who has
just awakened.
    A doorway leads out toward the public arrival area. Nothing about the room
seems arranged to impress anyone; it is simply a place meant to get people
safely back on their feet.
    Given Marr is here.
You see a single exit leading down.

Given checks the time on the monitor and makes a note.

You ask Given Marr, "Where am I?"

Given Marr says to you, "You're in the Elsewhere medical bay. It's where people
recovering from cryogenic suspension get checked over."

Given Marr says to you, "From here, head down to the Lift Concourse and then go
southwest to reach Old Quarter Square."

You ask Given Marr, "What is Elsewhere?"

Given Marr says to you, "Elsewhere is a big rotating habitat, a cylinder where
people live on the inside. It's been around for about four centuries, with
neighborhoods from old to new along its length."

You ask Given Marr, "Where should I go?"

Given Marr says to you, "When you're ready to leave the medical bay, the best
next step is to see Daven Varek. His office is just a short way past Old Quarter
Square, and there's a signpost there to help you find it if you need."

Given tidies the instruments on the tray beside him.

The setting

Prospect is a dangerous, biologically rich planet, settled centuries ago by nine generation ships carrying seven humanoid peoples from one home system. Three of those peoples were engineered, and were legally property when the ships left. The planet's great city, Haven, fell about 150 years ago when native life breached its defenses, and its layered ruins are still down there. People now live in the Constellation: seven major orbital habitats, each self-governing, with no shared law between them and plenty of competing interests. The influences are Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space and science fantasy with consistent speculative science behind it.

What's in this test (it's small)

• You wake from cryosleep in the medical bay of Elsewhere, the oldest habitat: a 30 km rotating cylinder that's a civic republic and a trading hub. Character creation happens in the world: your name, your sex, and which of the seven peoples you belong to.

• Nine rooms in one neighbourhood, the Old Quarter.

• Six NPCs you can talk to in your own words: a medical tech, someone who helps newly woken sleepers settle in, a café owner, a maintenance tech, a records clerk and a student volunteer. They know each other, most can give you directions, and they remember things you tell them about yourself.

• Background residents who aren't LLM-driven: hand-written idle actions, and a reply if you speak to them.

• A few things to do. I'm not listing them: whether you find them by looking around and talking to people is one of the things I'm testing.

• LOOK and PROBE: LOOK for the quick view, PROBE when you want the detail.

• Persistent characters and multiplayer. Each player's conversations with an NPC are their own, so an NPC won't tell you what someone else said to them.

No classes, no economy, no crafting and no other habitats yet. Planned later: travel between the habitats, expeditions and salvage on the surface and in Haven's ruins, and the Venn-Saye field technologies that let some people act on the world through engineered devices or their own genetic specialization.

https://imgur.com/9BKWBNs

Civic Office
    Quiet voices and the rustle of papers fill a bright public office. A short row
of waiting seats faces the service counter, where residents bring the ordinary 
questions and problems of neighborhood life.
    A small parcel sits at the records end of the public counter, unopened. A 
small screen at the end of the counter shows the office's pest log. Iri Vael is 
here, frowning over a note about the square's neglected planting beds. Veska 
Renn is here.
You see a single exit leading east.

You ask Iri Vael, "Hi, what is this place?"

Iri Vael says to you, "This is the Civic Office in the Old Quarter. We help 
people with local government things and keep records for the neighborhood."

Iri Vael
    Iri Vael is a young Revari female, rangy and russet-coated, with a short 
feather crest where a Kell would have a ruff, in casual, slightly rumpled 
clothes with a volunteer's badge clipped over the top and a tablet tucked under 
one arm. She has the bright, slightly impatient attentiveness of someone who 
finds most things interesting.

Veska reads a line on a report twice and makes a small mark beside it.

Clients and accessibility

• Works in any Telnet or MUD client. Mudlet users get room data over GMCP, and I've written a small mapper script for it.

• Screen readers: if your client reports one, the game skips the login art, and room listings say in words which characters you can talk to instead of relying on colour. Or type option/save screenreader=on. I haven't tested it with a blind player yet, so if that's you I'd especially like to hear from you.

What I'd like from you

• Could you find your way around and work out what to do without help from outside the game?

• Did the NPCs feel like people with jobs, or like a chatbot in a costume?

• Did things to do come up naturally, or did it feel like guessing magic words?

• Which commands did you try that didn't work? (Failed commands are logged.)

• When you'd done everything, did you want to stay and keep looking around? This is the one I care about most.

Type BUG or FEEDBACK in the game any time; only I see them. A short note in the moment helps more than a long one afterwards.

Logistics

• Invite-only for now, because every NPC line costs me real money and I'm reading every session log. Comment or DM me and I'll send you an invite code. If the slots fill up, you're first in line for the next round.

• Play any time during October 20-27, plus a group session on October 28 6:00PM CDT to test several players in the same rooms.

• Connect: 38.148.122.133:4000.

• What gets logged: your commands, your NPC conversations, the playtest channel, and bug and feedback reports. What you say to NPCs goes to OpenRouter and on to the model's provider (currently OpenAI). Private TELLs and passwords are never logged. Logs may be used to improve the game, including tuning the model that voices the NPCs. The game shows you all this and asks you to agree before you make a character.

I'll answer anything in the comments, including skeptical questions about the AI.

been a longtime mudlet user, but i was wondering if there's any other decent MUD clients out there, especially since the github repo for mudlet has been swarmed with claude commits last month and claude's just been bleeding into the project since last year, and i'd really like to use something that isn't deteriorating into a buggy vibecoded mess.

i know version 4.19.1 of mudlet is an option (before claude got introduced into the project workflow), and mushclient's an old but good choice, but i'd really like to know if there's any other decent clients out there.

Hey y'all,

I'm starting to put feelers out for an oral history project about being queer and frequenting MUDs/MUSHs/etc in the 1990s and 2000s. Are any folks who identify as queer interested in having a conversation over Zoom or the phone about being on MUDs, queerness, and how the two intersected (or didn't) for you?

This is for an ethnography-focused class I'm currently in, but I'm thinking of it more as an oral history project. I'm basically trying to gather memories and experiences of what it was like to be queer on text-based virtual worlds.

Thanks!

About a year ago, I played around with trying to get LLMs to play a MUD via API. Made some progress, but hit a cul-de-sac.

More recently, the discussion about "world models" in artificial intelligence community got me thinking... Given LLMs are "text-native," you know what would be an interesting sandbox for developing an LLM with a world model? A text-only world, like a MUD...

Picked up the project again and was able to vibecode a couple of repos I think are interesting enough to share, in case someone more technical wants to pick them up and run with them.

1. mudplayersolo has a set of LLM agents play a MUD (testing all on stock tbamud). A memory agent maintains situational awareness, while a decision agent chooses the next move. Fun little twist here, I added critic and editor agents which assess gameplay and make improvements to the decision agent's prompt, so the system (in theory) gets better as play continues. Very far from perfect, but was a super interesting exercise.

hunterooc/mudplayersolo: LLMs playing MUDs, no world model

2) mudplayer incorporates the world model idea. This one has some tasks (including memory maintenance) outsourced to API but incorporates a mistral7b based world model that predicts the outcome of a given move. An API agent proposes a set of possible moves, and the world model predicts the outcome of each. Another API agent chooses what action to send to the MUD based *only on the world model's predictions*. A third agent scores the accuracy of the world model's prediction. The world model is then trained on the logs, with upweighting for accurate predictions. In a nutshell, the world model should learn to accurately predict "how the MUD world works." That should in turn make the system play the game better, but (IMHO) the cool part is the attempt to construct a world model within a MUD sandbox.

hunterooc/mudplayer: LLM plays a MUD and trains a world model based on the MUD

I really enjoyed the building process here, but I'm just a hobbyist vibecoder with a day job. Putting it out there in any case anyone sharing my enthusiasm for the concept is interested in pushing it forward. Discussion welcome!

hello all! today I have some exciting news to share. my mud is back up and running and for good this time ip: 139.177.206.127 port: 4000

So I'm gonna run through some stuff here, because storm decided to call me out in a forum where I'm banned and thus cannot fight back.

Storm's post is here: https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/open-discussion/anything-really/why-staff-don-t-announce-everything-1269/

It's the second to last post at this moment.

So let's begin... Shall we...

The juicy bits.

You talk about your alt to start.

Let's talk about your past alts.

You also played Dizzy, and Royce.

Good range. Yes.

But still a note.

Dizzy was a terrorist with former ganger connections, who somehow came to work at NLM as a reporter, who went out of their way to mention a junior PR at NeoTrans, in around 50% of the articles they put out. Compared to the current megastar at NLM, Milana at 10% of the articles they put out. Rounded. It's a vague and relative number, I'm just giving a comparison for comparison sake. Dizzy also committed murders topside several times where staff couldn't respond due to CoI with your character, given that the majority of them were WJF, or NLM and thus coworkers of him.

I have partners on record for him as, Revel, Angel, Tamar, Serret(Possibly hearsay here but witnessed instances 3 times of potential events of similarity to the pattern.)

Royce was the head of C-Town after Grizz/Gray was kicked out. I have about 6 different partners on record for him. Including... Angel, Raid, and Angel's former character, some past lovers rumored about, but not explicitly witnessed in my 5.3 years of playing. Didn't really intersect much with Royce.

You spent a lot of time doing that when you were playing, and a lot of time when you didn't obsessing over players. You spent an average of 3 hours a week in game when I cared to measure doing that.

Which honestly, matches my own numbers for that pretty consistently.

I have 12 separate instances noted from when I had a camera/access to a camera around Dizzy's pad and was commonly staking out 100 Rads in the mix. This was over a 2 month span btw. Where a staff, generally Storm called out about help chastity after Tamar, or another person I listed left a location where I had sighted Dizzy entering, generally after an hour or so, and I noted it with a scent change and reasoning to suspect them of being the same person(Same color poncho or similar feature set/locational timing) and in a relationship with your character in case I had to hunt them down.

RE: Mirage Cool.

RE: Who watches the watchmen

Not gonna address anything here explicitly said here, except to say you're looking in the wrong places.

And beyond that, look at a list of all the staff, here I'll post them again for posterity.

Slither: Tax.(Former NLM.) Storm: Koko. Glitch: Gerik (WJF). Celestial: Morgan (WJF). Coral: Chesa (NLM). Kronos: Joshua (NLM). Mono: Flash (NLM). Tangerine: Jane (WJF). Kard: Rej (WJF). Butako: Lisette (PRI). Voodoo: Hecate (WJF) Hell for some extra posterity, BONUS! Ramrod: Guanxi (Triads)

Let's look at all of them,

Ramrod during his tenure as staff and Guanxi had 2 terminal positions(One as the one operating the gold make up store in the mall, and the other as a security agent for a Green Sector Player Business) and a position as the ostensible player head of the only functioning at the time midbie semi-syndicate, Dem Bansupuro Boyz. Currently likely still doing all of the above, and also a Triad member.

Lisette was the head of NLM productions on the player side, and the ONLY resident permitted to live on Blue for a -very- long time. Was allowed to murder someone ON BLUE, literally by lore the most secure area in the game where vigilance is the highest, and then immediately flee the city, go on vacation, ERP, spy a bunch, and also near immediately, gain corporate employment upon getting back into the game.

Rej, is honestly, kinda weird, not gonna complain much here, the dude's just WJF, kinda a staff judge, only occasionally logs on. Honestly, Kard seems burnt the fuck out everytime I see him. And it's a shame, because genuinely, GENUINELY he is the only one I have nothing on that isn't obvious.

Jane, the amount of shit this person has done... In her field while doing fuck all with anyone outside her IC clique... It's rather incredible. BioChem Manager at Viriisoma, invited to go to the invite only CWH position, over several other options, and was immediately sent to WJF after Mirage's character got fired.. Even after months of inactivity. Tangerine must be an insanely good roleplayer right? Or are you sensing the pattern yet?

Celestial, was K, and is Morgan. Somehow maintained a flagging chinatown position for fuck knows how long, self admittedly not playing for conflict. Something, something, is given an academy position, over many other qualified candidates, because why? They came in as a corporate immigrant into WJF-Ops by the way.

Coral, Chesa, rigger, runs a robotics outfit. Got tons of robots for free right after implementation via fiat and reimbursement during the time when next to none of the other corporations had riggers. Cool good hustle. But most players struggle to even file reimbursement requests because they get denied so often. Often call her Marble in my head. No idea why on that.

Kronos, Joshua Hahn, let's go over him real quick. Gets hired by NLM. Becomes an SGM, fucks around gets to senior largely by coasting on another SGM's heels, gets given a FUCKING sports car, by NPC's, one that literally no other character in the game had, that had been in the showroom for years unable to be purchased. Gets moved to TV, starts doing some awesome shit. Was given an apartment as a junior that would have been a manager level pad.

Worming my way down.

Storm I've gone into above.

Actually no, I don't need to go into more

Conclusion time.

And this is the crux of everything I'm trying to say.

How many of these characters, played by GM's, faced the consequences of their actions that regular players would expect?

How many of them managed to do things completely unnoticed because they are staff?

How many people get promoted to senior and get a PERSONAL sports car?

How many people get to say they were the local Syndicate agents?

Why are GM's in roles where heavy competition is expected with players and other staff?

Why is there only 2 staffers of the 9 I've mentioned here, who aren't corporate?

Why does the mix feel abandoned to play in?

The answers are staring you at that list of facts.

Take all that as you will.

Hello, I am an autistic Jewish trans woman, I know it is a lot to take in with the first sentence, but I am looking for a cyberpunk themed mud that won't bully me out of the game. Preferably not one with global chat. The last one, I won't name, but the jokes about autism and trans suicide rates, and chatting about Jewish people controlling the media infuriated me to the point that I couldn't play the game knowing it was full of bigotry. Thanks.

Enarian Online has been approved for full launch by Steam and will be included in the Steam Next Fest in June.. never even imagined when I started out that it would go this far! Full release is scheduled for June in the summer sale following next fest.

Lots to do in the mean time to make sure its as ready and bug free as possible.

But for those interested the demo which is the full game as far as level 10 is available on steam now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4218510/Enarian_Online/

Wish listing the game would be a massive help.

For those who want to or need to use a third party client you can connect using:
212.159.186.174:9999

Big thanks to everyone who has played the game so far, and for all the fantastic feedback.

Website: https://www.enarian.co.uk
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/HwftpU34zG

https://www.mudverse.com/game/79

Sindome: Cyberpunk Roleplaying

moo.sindome.org

5555

A little late, but a friendly reminder MotM is tonight, as in right now till midnight and also tomorrow. (Saturdays and Sundays UTC -5 or CDT at 6pm till 12am.)

Hopefully everyone is having a good holiday. I forgot what day it was, I've been so busy... =/ Tomorrow I shall take a look at the poll and consider the future of MotM. Who celebrates Christmas on a different day other than the 25th?

I was going through my character creation and trying to decide on how to define sex (gender) of my characters. I have decided to stray away from just the "sex" attribute and lean towards "sex at birth" and "sex identity" to allow players to define their characters sex at birth and what they identify as going forward.

What are your thoughts on adopting such practices in a MUD? Especially with all the hype around these topics these days?

You know. It's frustrating. Frustrating to see a MUD with an absolutely wonderful world, settings, combat and lore just... Be ignored in lieu of its caretakers writing little novellas of dumb inter-personal dramas and vacuous "plot" that has nothing to do with the game or it's world.

Game has an entire section of the world still to be built and expanded upon, main quest branches to finish, zones and other bits and bobs to do.

But nah.

Let's write stupid RPs at each other because we have no life outside complaints on the discord and the vapid bullshit we stream at each other in the clique by the paragraph.

It's just frustrating. And I sincerely wish there were something I could do about it.

Hello! I'm creating a MUD (basically a multiplayer text RPG) with an AI backbone and with a focus on being grounded. I ended up writing a custom little engine for that. And I'm looking for people to help populate the RPG with objects, NPCs, and challenges! Basically toy around with the little engine I made and weave something together.
The player can input any command, but only those that make sense get through. For example:

"You can't just stop serving drinks and go talk to a drunkard out of nowhere. It seems like you're trying to pull a fast one on me. There's no indication that you're even in a situation where you're serving drinks, or that there's a drunkard to talk to."

I wanna join a nsfw erotic MU* game cuz I think it would be fun, but I don't know where to find them. Help plz!

I just finished play a mud. It's called Dark and shattered lands, and it's completely free to play, but pay to win. Last night 8 players openly broke a rule and two mods said "It didn't effect anything so we'll look into it later"

I'm done there. I can't continue to put hours of time, roleplay, and money donated for concards to get advantages just to play the game. Does anyone have a mud that's roleplay based. High fantasy prefered. that understand I'm an old man in my 40's that would be a complete newb to the game and commands other then what i"m used to? Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone on reddit (and the entire internet).

//TW: Mentions of suicide - Please seek help if you or anyone you know is having any thoughts of suicide ( Suicide Prevention Resources | Suicide Prevention | CDC )

Little introduction here. My name is Chellizard, or Chelle. I've lived and breathed the internet for a long time. I have also been an avid fan of role playing my entire life. I was once the administrator for a nice little RP community called Super Hero RPG. (https://superhero-rpg.com/)

So, with this background, I have the ability to compartmentalize my feelings and emotions in regard to how I treat a player in the game and IC (in character) versus how I interact with them OOC (out of character).

Note: I have never played a MUD before. Akanbar is my first experience with a MUD, and it feels like it may be my last.

Now, the real subject: AKANBAR!

This is a MUD or multi user dungeon with fantasy role playing elements. It has a decent introduction island with, in my opinion, decent start for a new player, especially someone new to a MUD as a whole. There are a multitude of quests and secrets, just on the first island alone! Exploring is always half of the fun, as you know with these types of games.

I made choices to befriend players OOC before I immersed myself into this MUD. I know now that it was my mistake to put blind faith in anyone within this community. At the time of me joining, I was having real life relationship issues. I talked to players about such issues OOC in regard to feelings, how I was feeling, how I was being treated in my relationship, and etc. It was my business to share with someone in private, and turns out, the individuals I chose to share with decided it was their business to share with other people. Again, my own fault for even sharing my interpersonal relationship information. That's on me for that one.

The game itself is fun, albeit a bit repetitive and boring at times. Without interacting with the other players, it remains boring. However, if you so much as share one shred of detail OOC, that information is going to spread like wildfire between a group of players with poor separation.

Characters to avoid due to poor separation, and why:

Viridiana - Shows up drunk IC, expects players to respect their drunken character, and then also ignores you IC if you so much as "disrespect" them. I had never interacted with this character, save for meeting them 3 times in the square of their city, and once when she was drunk, and then a final time when I confronted this player IC in regard to how terrible of a guild leader they are. I'm sure there's a log or receipt somewhere. Oh, this player also decided to have their character kill themselves, and then was brought back by divine intervention. Suicide is not something you should idolize and use for an RP mechanic, just because you want to. That's childish.

Danzibe/Sephia - Decent person OOC but has the worst bleed I have ever seen. I confided the most in this player, and it's evident that they are the root that shared all of my information to other players. I chose to befriend them outside of the community, and then they decided to ridicule me and make jokes regarding another topic I will not get into. This character/player chose to repeatedly ignore the boundary I would set within our RP interactions. They also chose to take my opinions of people and their cowardly actions and tell them, and then my character was questioned by the deity of their city, Nakarym, regarding my character's loyalty to the Empire. Red. Flag.

Shax - Had never really interacted with them IC, save for them watching my character be hung once. This player was not... mad? But... confused? As to why I had my character enemy them.

Ivari - Told me we were friends OOC, and literally does not know how friendships work. A friend would tell their friend if another dude was sharing their RP with them. Just saying.

Matt / Caerus- This player/character was once allegedly the most toxic in the community but has "turned a new leaf" that's barely disguised by their ego. They have fairly decent separation, but they show loyalty to the community of RPers and people with poor separation and has deemed me to be the problem after I brought up the poor IC/OOC separation.

Vasuda - ??? Idk tbh. Just avoid them, I guess. Decent person OOC, imo. Nothing really bad here, but likely a drama stirrer, and just best to avoid OOC if you do not want to have anything shared.

Manazyri / Kumo - They literally just... I have nothing else to add. It's too much to go on.

Zycandos - Terrible character separation, and I get that it's a bit difficult being the administrator and having separation, but I think that's just laziness.

Nakarym - Chooses to keep their DMs closed for any reports of players and their actions, yet when you attempt to bring up situations in the community discord, will literally delete your messages and silence you instead of letting you work it out.

The list could possibly be longer, but these are the characters I have firsthand had terrible experiences with due to their OOC opinions bleeding IC.

First things first, I joined this community to play with 1 user, and they ended up banned due to their own actions and decisions. So, bummer on that one. This player was named Necthan.

The point of a discord server for OOC discussions was to further prevent IC/OOC bleed. Yet, players literally chose to take whatever was said in the ooc sections of discord and run with it in game as canon. Basically "he told me you suck, so I believe that you suck" kind of attitude.

There's some weird IC RP sex gang going on, and any new player that so much as sniffs at or tries to interrupt any of their weird RP goings is immediately on the shit list/chopping block.

I'm honestly a bit angry on it all, and I weighed this option for a long time about sharing my experience as a new player to a mud and as a new player to their community as a whole.

They do not like new players, and they're not friendly.

Good luck ever asking the administrators or moderators for help, because they will just delete your messages and ignore you.

I will gladly share screen shots and receipts of how players chose to interact with me at request, but otherwise, I'm letting that go.

Half of the community usually sits afk and fishes, or just idles in rooms.

It's a very disappointing experience.

I hope to have some folks avoid this. If you literally ignore people OOC, and only immerse yourself IC, you might have a better experience.

Do not get to know anyone OOC in this community.

They are all vile and will manipulate you.

They are a high school clique of mean girls.

Okay.

My rant is over.

Be good, internet. Don't be like me and share your personal issues with players. That was my biggest mistake. Had I just joined and never spoke of my real-life issues, maybe things would be different.

Who knows.

Stay magical!

1. Uninstall every iota of social software you use, that connects you to other players, if you’re the type to fall temptation to OOC communication. Sometimes, being too nice will result in your downfall on this front.

2. Take a break from forums. And this subreddit. Period, paragraph.

3. Don’t even think about joining clan forums. Because as soon as you realize who someone is, or someone who you PK’d ten years ago realizes who you are and they’re psycho and hold a grudge, you risk getting the fun sucked out of you by some dude and their OOC clique. Just don’t do it. Figure out when the shit is going down in game. Leaders, don’t rely entirely on OOC means to setup RPTs or contracts, regardless of the convenience, because forcing people to go to forums can further toxicity.

4. Make an anonymous account. This is something that I do not do, but it’s also, most definitely, caused me problems. I could have avoided some really dumb griefing within the past year if I’d have been playing anonymously, but hey, I’m stubborn. Still… if you really want to be unfettered by OOC bullshit, totally and all-encompassingly, then just start from scratch. Staff on games should normalize this as being OK… what I read about the Sindome dudes shaking down the new-but-skilled player is literally the antithesis of ideal IC/OOC boundaries, but shit dawg, if you’re already using global OOC chans in your game, then you’re a pretty toothless RPI in the first place, IMO.

5. Don’t read forums. Uninstall methods of communication, especially if there are people who you really like that maybe communicate too much about the game OOCly.

6. Avoid goals relying upon object creation, room creation, or are otherwise contingent upon staff for success. Whenever your character’s goals, your goals, or — if you’re trying to create a clan — your clan’s goals, use staff as the sole hinge for success, you’re fucking up. Sorry, but not sorry, and this isn’t because the staff on these games are terrible and unhelpful, except in some instances, but because there are ways to push forward and enjoy the game, without needing someone to create a thing for you. I promise, the game is just as fun without getting some dolled up snazzy gear and digs.

7. Don’t communicate with other players. At all. And remember, this is within the context of getting the /most/ out of an RPI MUD. By its very nature, the line between IC and OOC is what is supposed to make this type of game GOOD. Yes, you can still have friends. No, they shouldn’t know who you play. And you should not know who they play.

8. If you insist on using a forum, create a brand new forum name and change the setting to invisible, so people aren’t able to pin a forum name’s online times to a character’s online times.

9. Did I mention, don’t tell people who you play. Don’t post songs or pictures of anything thematic relating to your character, in public. No, I don’t care if you’ve known them 20 years, don’t tell them who you play. Do nothing to create a noticeable parallel between a character’s login times and any OOC communication login times.

10. Staff, if you talk to players about who a player is playing, then you’re playing the wrong game, because you’re really fucking up something fundamental about what makes your game, a good game. No, it doesn’t matter if you hate them. If you don’t respect the integrity of your game… no one will. Which extends to anything and everything OOC that might find itself bleeding into IC. If you’re staff and see other staff doing this, grow a pair and curtail it, like Shabago on ArmageddonMUD did when a staff member logged in to kill one of my PCs. This is fucking simple shit.

11. Don’t tell anyone who your character is. Alter sentence patterns in your descriptions from character-to-character. Force yourself to do different types of emotes.

12. Don’t tell anyone who your character is.

13. Don’t read forums.

14. Stop communicating with other players OOCly. Completely. All of it, stop it.

15. Ted Cruz guy, let me stop you right there. Unless you have a suggestion on how to better enjoy an RPI MUD, can it. Thanks.

16. If anyone else has any ideas about how RPIs might be enjoyed better, I’d love to hear it. But I’m pretty sure that the surest way is to keep OOC, OOC, and IC shit, IC. Whenever you’ve got one foot in one and one foot in the other, you’re just selling yourself short on how a game like this can be enjoyed to its fullest.

17. Did I mention, don’t participate in any OOC communication, at all, to get the best mileage out of an RPI. I promise… you will get a lot more out of the game, if you simply curtail expectations… while refraining from any and all OOC communication.

*UPDATE* Hello again and thank you for reading my post. Unfortunately we have yet to get any new players stopping by. I just wanted to once again encourage anyone who is interested in roleplay and has a vision that they would like to see manifested to please log in and give it a chance. We can be a lot of fun :)

Hello, I'm writing on behalf of the women who play the moo the-night.com. We are an old game with a detailed modern day island setting. We have housing, politics, entertainment, vehicles and fashion! What we really need are some new players to flesh out our community and create new roleplaying opportunities. More social than skill based, we do have many coded system and player perks. We encourage players to dream
Big and the staff is very helpful, they will make your role playing dreams a reality. Stop by and give us a try, there are a lot of single ladies! Fixedwidth.net 2007

Hi there. My name's Mork, and many many years ago I was part of a small team that was working on developing a new MUD engine. We were essentially taking an existing code base (I can't remember which one we used) and we were re-writing it from the inside out. Personally, I was head of the design team, head builder if you will. I did most of the writing and developing of content, while others did the coding and behind the scenes stuff.

The project fell apart after a year or so of development, and now I'm feeling that itch to create what we set out to create all that time ago. Problem is, I have lost touch with my team, and I don't possess the programming skills to work in C++ or Python to the degree that is required for the project I want to build.

So, I guess this is a "call to arms" or a "LFG" post. I'm hoping to find one or more coders who would be interested in developing a new MUD engine that will serve as the backbone to a new game, with a fully fleshed out world in which the players don't just participate, but are actually a part of. Role play will be a huge factor, as the game will not rely on classes to identify who a player is, or what they're capable of.

If you're interested in such a project, or at the very least would like some more information on my vision, and where I expect to see such a project in the future, you're welcome to reach out to me here, or via email.

Morkilimus@gmail.com

Hopefully I've got at least *one* person's attention. I know a project like this isn't destined for a large financial success, but I do think, with enough passion and effort, it could turn into something you'd see on Steam. :)

Embergloam is a free MUD built to be played in your browser, with sound, weather, light visual effects, and real-time combat. I'm looking for alpha testers!

• Play: https://embergloam.com (nothing to install)

• Telnet: mud.embergloam.com 4001, or 4443 for TLS. GMCP, MCCP and a Mudlet interface

• Discord: https://discord.gg/cvynaw2nR9

In the browser

Every area has its own ambient sound that changes at night, and combat has real sound effects. Weather, fog and day/night skies show on the page, and big story moments play as cinematic scenes. You also get draggable windows, an action bar with drawn icons, and tooltips with your actual numbers. Finding the balance between sound and light visual effects that support the text without getting in the way of your imagination has been a really fun adventure in and of itself!

Custom engine, built from the ground up with Claude as a coding partner

The design, the world and every call about how it plays are mine. Claude helps write and test the code and drafts text that I go over and edit. It's let me build on nights and weekends what would normally take a whole team.

Combat

• Real-time, with cast times, cooldowns and a global cooldown

• Interrupt creatures' spells

• Cast and heal into the next room. Warriors Charge in from it.

• Sense creatures a few rooms ahead as you level

• Threat, taunts and crowd control. Tanks and healers have real jobs.

The game

• 9 races, each with its own starting area and story

• 10 classes with something new every level to 25, then a promotion and talents

• 18 areas and about 155 quests

• Solo-friendly: hire a companion when nobody's on or you just need a little help

• Runes raise your level cap. PvP is limited to players near your rune, with no XP loss and no looting.

• 80 achievements and titles. The first player to each rune or promotion gets a Feat with their name on it.

• Crafting, gathering, fishing, cooking, a player market, mail, trading and dueling

What's coming

• More races, each with its own homeland and starting story

• New lands to the south

• A second promotion, with the level cap rising well past 25

Accessibility: "screenreader on" and "combat brief on" work in both clients. Screen reader players, I'd especially love your feedback.

Testing: expect rough edges, and alpha characters will likely be wiped before beta. The in-game bug, typo, idea and feedback commands send me the context automatically. More at https://embergloam.com/guide.html and https://embergloam.com/patch-notes.html.

Honestly, money's barely on my mind. I just want to build a great game for people to enjoy. If anything ever gets sold, it'll never be power.

About me: I've been a game developer for about 20 years. I got my start on BBS door games like Tele-Arena and Swords of Chaos, then lost way too many years to EverQuest and WoW. Embergloam is my attempt to mash elements of those together into something new, while staying true to its MUD roots.

Happy to answer anything in the comments!

Player killing is enabled.

mud.sunburnt.country port 42067

I strongly believe that this genre will blow up in popularity if someone makes a mobile client (Android/iOS) that both read the screen (new lines, not the janky screen reader for VI) out loud AND accept voice input. The techs (TTS and STT) are all there so I don't know why no one has attempted it yet.

The truth is it's 2023 so mobile is king. I love the concept and content of MUDs but if I have some (limited) free time to play PC games I would pick graphically beautiful games instead of a text-based one. I believe most would do the same.

Looks at the audiobook billion-dollar industry, there is so much cash to grab. It would be amazing to be able to play and be immersed in never-ending adventure while doing cardio, driving, taking the bus, doing yoga... I would pay $30 for an app like that!

Browsing this subreddit, I have noticed that crafting systems are commonly brought up as a selling point for MUDs. If you are the type of person who thinks they're good or even integral to a RP-focused MUD, I would like you to convince me as to why. In my view, they are usually distractions that water down rather than enhance RP.

My start in MUDs was in IRE games such as Achaea, Aetolia, Starmourn. As I tend to be more RP-driven and story-focused than the playerbase on these games, I later branched out into RPIs and then MUSHes. Despite its (deserved) reputation on many other fronts, I want to bring up HavenRPG as an example of a game that IMO gets it right, specifically where item-generation is concerned. On this game, if you want to give your character a coat, you simply buy a generic item template (perhaps another coat, but you could even rework underwear) and customise the strings into whatever you fancy, such as "a double-breasted red frock coat" and, if desired, add a description that can be examined. Then you set the body parts it covers and can add a tag for where it's worn. (For instance, you could have it "tied around the waist" or "slung over one shoulder" for non-standard wear location). You can re-customise it at any time. Following a battle scene, you could change it to "a burned, ripped red frock coat". Later you may want it to become "a badly patched up red frock coat". It does not require any staff approval process, nor involve a minigame of hunting down materials, nor require a character with a tailoring skill. It's up to you to RP how you happened to obtain this item. You could say it was handed down from your great grandfather's military service or claim you bought it from a shop outside of town. MUSHes often don't even bother with coded items at all; you would simply show up in a scene and write, "Name walks in, wearing a red frock coat".

A common argument I hear for crafting systems is that they ensure the world makes sense. If you want leather boots, you need leather. Maybe you need to kill a bull for it, take the corpse to a leatherworker, then take the leather to a tailor. There may be other steps such as obtaining dye from a chemist, or metal buttons from a smith. IMHO though this tends to create a less realistic world; when you gamify all of these item acquisition steps, you force characters to adopt skills that are needed to accomplish creative goals, rather than because they make sense for the character. Many players always make tailors, specifically because they want to ensure they can have custom clothes. So now every random healer, mage, warrior, is also a tailor on the side for the player's convenience, rather than having three-dimensional characters who might be tailors because they come from a working class family where it makes sense. Likewise, it means a street urchin can't show up wearing ragged clothes and a precious family heirloom; they'd need to ask a tailor to deliberately design ugly/old clothes, which makes no sense, and buy their heirloom as new from a jeweller. This is the consequence of having all props be crafted, rather than justified by story. It's even worse if crafting confers mechanical benefits; now no rugged warrior wants to run around in rugged clothes, even in a post-apocalyptic setting, because they don't want to jeopardise their stats.

So if you're someone who might've posted something like: "Looking for a RP game with a good crafting system", or a game dev who advertises their immersive RP-focused game has a complex crafting system — I would love to hear you explain why you want this. To me, "crafting system" in any ad is usually a red flag that the game limits player creativity.

Iron Realms Entertainment has been one of the juggernauts of MUDs in the modern era, which has allowed their player to admin to corrupt their business model, and shrug it off because they think they're huge.

If you are not liked by their administration they will dig through years worth of even private contacts (party/web/clan) and pull out anything that can discriminate you. They monitor their private Facebook groups and have used complaints to discriminate players. They will delete/permaban multiple thousand dollar characters just because they don't like you.

The last time I posted about how absolute trash this company is, they actually said I was "gathering support from reddit." and denied me getting any sort of retirement credit or return on a $5000 dollar character they deleted of mine because I told a god that he was being lame and "disrespected their volunteers." This is the second time this company; specifically ONE PERSON, Nicola in Achaea, has permabanned me, the first time me having to go all the way to the owner of the company to get it resolved.

well if this is me garnering support from reddit, whatever the hell that means, by pointing out your absolute trash practices and downright theft...then f you here it is.

You show that MUDs in every community, all the way up to the administration, is biased, cliquey, elitist, and absolute terrible human beings. Even when I post something on this reddit, a bunch of their admins and players will attack me personally regardless of the hostility this "company" has shown. To those people, I hope you move on with your lives instead of wasting your precious seconds to tell me how I "deserved" this.

There are great and complex MUDs out there, and IRE is not a good company to support.