No Fragments Archive 10: Diskmags/nf_archive_10.iso/MAGS/SYNTAX/SPECIALPD1.MSA/MUGS.ART

Text File | 1994-10-26 | 8.6 KB | 161 lines

             My Life (and Death) In Multi User Games
                by Angelina the Dangerously Sane

My first ever visit to a Multi User Game was back in 1985 when I
was persuaded to log on to Richard Bartle's MUD which ran on Essex
University's JANET computer.  One night, with a great deal of
trepidation, I dialled the number and fumbled my way through the
login procedure.  I was faced with a rapidly scrolling screen and
yards of text which I just couldn't read quickly enough.  People
with strange names kept appearing and disappearing and I just sat
there wondering what to do.  I wandered around for a while, but it
was so confusing that in the end I quit in complete bewilderment,
not helped by shouted messages like ... What's that stupid novice
doing beside the cannon?

The friendly Arch Wizard who had persuaded me to try MUD talked me
into a second go and we arranged a time and date to meet there.
Everyone who plays a MUG has what's called a Persona - the name
you are known by on the game.  I thought long and hard about mine
and eventually chose Medusa...this was a serious mistake. As soon
as I arrived on the game, some Wizard or other took one look and
promptly blinded me!  My friendly Arch Wizard gave me back my
sight, but even with his help, I just couldn't get the hang of
things and I eventually left, swearing never to return.  I
didn't...to Essex MUD, but when MUD2 became available for Beta
testing some time later, I tried again.

This time, instead of screens whipping past, it was all very slow
- you'd hit a key and wait for ages for something to happen and
just as I couldn't cope with the speed of MUD, I couldn't cope
with the slowness of MUD2. However, I did go on from time to time
and gradually got used to the way things happen on MUGs. As MUD2
improved, I started to play more and that's when my addiction
started.  I raced with the other players to get to the T
(treasure) first and to pick up weapons.  I solved the puzzles and
saw myself going from Novice up through the ranks.  Finally I got
to the point where I could choose to be either a Warrior or a
Magic User.  There was a dangerous deed to do to become a Magic
User, but I did it and was able to use spells like JOIN and
SUMMON.

The one thing I didn't like about MUGs was DEATH.  You can die
because of a variety of reasons from ineptitude to sheer bad luck.
If you die in a fight, you are DEAD DEAD, which means your score
goes back to Zero and you are faced with starting all over again
as a novice. This is a truly traumatic event if you are a high
level player.  It's not so bad lower down the ranks, experience
helps you get back up quickly but it takes a lot of playing hours
to reach the high levels.  The Goat killed a high level persona of
mine one night - I still don't know how it happened, I'd killed it
often before - and that put me off MUD2.

In January 1986, a new MUG called GODS came on-line.  DEAD DEAD
was not there!  If you died in a fight, you only lost 50% of your
points and there were two sorts of players, Fighters and Non-
Fighters, so that attacking or being attacked by other players if
you chose to be a Non-Fighter, just didn't happen. This seemed to
me to be much more my sort of thing.  Solving puzzles and
interacting with the other players was more fun, I started to play
GODS and I've been playing it ever since.

So, what's the fascination which has kept me and my MUG friends
playing practically every night for all this time? After all, you
wouldn't play the same adventure every night for four years, and
basically MUGs are text adventures played in real time with other
people.  For me, it's playing with and talking to the others. For
some, it's the role-playing side that's important, others simply
play to amass as many points as possible and get the highest
score.

GODS has its share of wacky role-players. There's the WRAITH of a
little boy lost - he's been dead for years. He wanders around the
game with his dead friend HERMANN, who was a German Air Ace until
his plane crashed in the forest.  WRAITH stays completely in
character on the game - he's one of the very few GODS players who
never turns up to Meetings because he feels it would completely
spoil the illusion.  He's right of course, it's a bit of a shock
when you meet, for example, SWEETPEA who plays a baby girl and you
see an 18-year old male!  There's LOCOMAN the proof-reader, always
concerned with spelling mistakes and continually aghast at TARIM
who is responsible for TARIM-SPEKE which murders the English
language and, on first sight, is completely incomprehensible.
Faced with text like ......  sNt (sent), rLevNt (relevant), l8r
(later), 4tun8ly (fortunately), 4 (for), h& (hand), most novice
players give up and ask for a translation and TARIM with a cold is
beyond belief! Young WOLFCUB has taken TARIM-SPEKE a stage further
with his baby version!

PIDDLY PADDLY the Space Wizard who lives (he says) on Sirius 3
bounces in with mysterious utterances and bounces back off again.
MUMAKIL the Oliphant roams the land collecting all the junk he can
find.  ANGELINA spends a lot of her time intervening in the
squabbles between WRAITH and SWEETPEA - he will pull her hair and
she has a nasty tendency to kick him when he does.  We do have
fighter-players, but on GODS they are more likely to kill the
Mobiles than other fighters, although it happens from time to
time.  SHARK INFECTED CUSTARD is well-known as a fighter to keep
away from, while RANKBAJIN, PARTIES CATERED FOR has never killed a
player, he reckons that some of the mobiles are dangerous enough.
I think he's an arrant coward, despite the seeming bravery of his
name! (Translation for non-Scottish readers ...  RANKBAJIN,
PARTIES CATERED FOR = Terribly Evil Person who will fight anyone
in sight).

So there's no single answer to 'WHY?'.  It's playing, chatting,
having lots of laughs with like-minded people, the excitement of
competing with them for Treasure and points and the role-playing
part of it which lets you be anyone (or anything) your imagination
can create.  There's the rise of adrenaline when you beat another
player to a valuable piece of T, or when you do something
dangerous and only escape by the skin of your teeth.  All these
together make a really addictive MUG.

MUGs have proliferated since the early days and now there are all
sorts of MUG to play.  Some are free (except for the cost of your
telephone call), others charge various fees per hour or per month
to play them. The MUGS which charge are MUD2, SHADES, GODS, ZONE
and FEDERATION 2.  The most important of the free MUGs is
MIRRORWORLD which also has other MUGs at the same number.  It
seems that a new MUG appears practically every month. Anyone with
a modem and a Prestel account can get all the details on
ClubSpot's ARENA on page 81052.

A final word about MUG,THE FAITHFUL SLAVE.  This is the brain-
child of PIDDLY PADDLY, Space Wizard and although it was designed
as a MUG, for the moment it is single-user. Played as an on-line
adventure it's a very exciting role-playing game where sudden
death can happen at any time.  (Not DEAD DEAD - only 50% DEAD).
It's populated by a whole host of DEMONS and lots of other
characters, the puzzles are many and range from the relatively
easy to the very hard, but listening to what the mobiles are
saying gives lots of helpful clues and there are lots more
scattered around in the game.  The aim is to kill all the DEMONS,
as opposed to the other mobiles, solve the puzzles and collect
Treasure. The mobiles talk a lot and if you linger too long, will
sometimes try to steal things from you and sometimes succeed.
It's full of PIDDLY's quirky humour and is very exciting to play.
I've been totally absorbed by it since he put it on-line.  You do
tend to die at lot, but there's a large amount of points to be
gained each time you play, so you soon get back up again.

It's located in Portsmouth, and for me, that means a pretty hefty
telephone bill, but soon it will be on the GODS board in London.
When it gets there it will be multi-user which will change the way
it plays, so anyone with a modem and local(ish) to Portsmouth
should try it there first.

Well .. that's some of my life and death in MUGs, if I've tempted
you to try, please do remember that it can be an expensive hobby.
When you're engrossed in a game, you can completely forget that BT
is ticking the minutes away and adding them to your telephone
bill.

@~ClubSpot has gone since this article was first written, so have
@~some of the MUGS mentioned. Shades is still going strong - see
@~the article on it elsewhere in this section.



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