Muds are simply games that are hosted online. There's thousands of them, in
every genre, so your first problem is choosing one that fits the kind of
game you want to play.
They are text based, so a simple telnet client is all you need to play them.
There are mud clients that make interacting with the muds easier, but they
are by no means essential to play.
Sincce you're new though, you should probably give it a try with a mud that
does have features for visually impaired users, such as 3k, or alteraeon,
since both of those muds have features to cut down on the amount of spam you
receive while logged into the game, and that can make a huge difference even
for veteran players.
Basically though, head on over to the mud connector
http://www.mudconnect.com, look for a mud that looks interesting, and have
at it.
When you first log into a mud, you can (generally) use any name you like,
since it's a game, the point is to have fun, so nobody needs (or in most
cases wants) to know you real name, so just pick something that sounds good
to you, and run with it.
As you get more and more experience with muds, you'll gravitate to
particular kinds of muds or particular mud drivers/systems. Some folks love
the diku style muds (circle, rom, tartarus, envy, and so on), others prefer
a more custom esperience, LPC muds (btw, 3k and lostsouls are both lpc
muds), Alteraeon is a custom written driver that kind of resembles both
circle and lpc, but it's agood combination that works.
If you're looking for a mud that has lots of other blind players so you can
get assistance, alteraeon might be where you want to start, but if you're
interested in just trying things out, 3k may be where you want to start,
because they have areas for science, fantasy, and chaos (thus the 3 kingdoms
monicre), but they do have a bit of a newbie friendly zone to get started
in, though it's nowhere near as guided as you might find on circle based
muds, what with their newbie school that practically walks you through the
first few levels, telling you what to type, how to type it, and when to do
different things. I was never a fan of that myself, but I do see the
appeal.
So, anyway, either take a listing from the mailing list that looks good to
you, or check mudconnector and find something for yourself you think might
work, then dive in, you can't break it.
There's tons of mud clients, aand to be perfectly honest, I've never in my
life used anything other than a mainstream mud client. I've never even
tried those put out specifically for visually impaired users, because I
personally can't stand the hand holding most mud clients try to do (even for
sighted folks), which is why I've stuck to things like muddle and tintin
over the years, because those both have scripting languages, but it's more
or less up to the user to do their own scripting to make it do what they
want, and that's more my style. I never did like preconfigured clients that
only allow me to do cer5tain things, because someone thought it was a good
idea to protect me from commands I might accidentally type.
(why? You can't break anything, so why bother?)
The first mud ZI ever played on was called dark wind, and I believe that mud
is gone now, although it still existed a few years ago. That was also the
first mud I became a wizard on, and built areas for other players to use.
I've also run my own muds from time to time, (rom, LPMud, mordor, empire,
and others, but running a mud is a *lot* of work, and I just don't have the
patience for it.
I did host muds for several years in the late 90s, but I eventually got out
of that too, dealing with customer requests got out of hand, even with terms
clearly outlined I was still being asked to compile a mud, fix a bug, and so
on and so on. You run the mud, it's up to you to maintain the thing. Too
many folks thought running a mud was a s simple as putting up a server, and
the players show up. <sigh>
Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
The take away from this message is that there's thousands of muds out there,
find one that works for you, and you'll be happy.
On 1/23/2023 11:32 AM, Day Garwood wrote:
Hi,
I've seen a lot of messages here about muds. I'm getting the impression
that, given that not many audiogames are made any more, seems like muds are
the way forward if I want to try anything new.
I don't know a lot about them, in fact I thought "mud" was a game, but
based on messages that I'm seeing I'm getting the impression they're merely
a type of game.
The only think I really know is that you need a "mud client", suggesting
that they're online based. That makes me think of things like QuentinC and
RS, but even that doesn't quite sound right somehow.
Years ago, I tried to use VIPMud but got nowhere, then was told that it
wasn't supported so I should go use this other thing (which was apparently
better anyway). My teacher then Enthusiastically got me to press loads of
buttons, only to discover that I got a whole screenload of errors, and then
they didn't know what to do with themselves and clicked off. So bang went
that idea.
That was the last I heard about muds for a while, up to now.
So I'd be interested to know how they work, how I might go about trying one
without embarrassing myself, which client I should try, which game I should
try, etc etc.
Even better, if someone has any free time and would be willing to actually
sit and go through it with me step by step privately on a call or
something, that would be amazing. Especially since the one lesson I learned
from my disaster of a session is that it's not a case of download, launch,
play, like most audiogames are.
It'll probably turn out to be one of those things that sounds overly
complicated now, but in a year I'll be a whiz at it. Hopefully.
Cheers.
