A MUD-dy Intro

Here's a beginner's guide to MUDs based on the two I've played over the years. This will not necessarily apply to all MUDs on the Internet but serves its purpose as a general guideline.

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• The MUD Objective
• The Concept of Rooms
• NPCs
• Classes and Guilds
• Battle Systems
• Weapons, Armour and other knick knacks
• Money makes the MUD go round
• The Social Aspect of MUDs
• Wizards and Immortality

......Introducing a Great MUD Client

You don't have to rely entirely on your simple telnet program to get you connected to a MUD. There are plenty of MUD clients you can download from the web which are designed specifically for playing MUDs. Common MUD client features include scripts (for "robot players"), aliases (for often-typed commands), auto-mapping, filtering screen messages and more - all these features enhance gameplay for novices and hardcore gamers alike.

My favourite MUD client by far is TinyFugue, for Linux/Unix systems. It is remarkably fast and versatile although being text-based and relatively more complex than basic telnet, it may be initially daunting for any non-programmers out there. Knowledge of regular expressions helps tremendously in scripting. TinyFugue is an essential tool for every true Power Mudder.
TinyFugue also runs efficiently on a WinNT port which is available here (Druware).

The TinyFugue WebPage (download)
The WinNT TinyFugue Site
The Unofficial TinyFugue Info Page for scripts, tricks and other FAQs.

If you insist on using Win95/Win98 (or have no choice) a decent graphical MUD client I've also tried is ZMud, a trial version of which can be downloaded from:http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud.

Back to the MUD primer.