Multi-User Dungeons, also called MUDs, are a form of online text-based roleplaying game. MUDs were typically played over telnet protocol and steadily grew in popularity until graphical MMORPGs began to take their place. Initially inspired by text based adventure games such as Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork, as well as early computer RPGs, MUDs most often follow a classic fantasy setting, though you can also find a pretty diverse range of world settings, systems, and playstyles with MUDs and various other related MU* virtual worlds. Some other types of MU* games under the MUD umbrella include:

• MUSH (Multi-User Shared Hallucination) which emphasized social interaction in a virtual world over actual gameplay (fun fact: The phrase “chatroom” supposedly comes from these types of games).

• MUCK (Multi-User… Chat Kingdom? Creation Kit? The origin isn’t entirely clear) also emphasizes social interaction, but with the addition of in-game tools that allow the players themselves to help with world building.

• MOO (MUD, Object Oriented) allows users to do programming directly within the game/world server.

The first official MUD was started by two students (first Roy Trubshaw, then Richard Bartle later took over) in 1978 at the University of Essex and was simply called “MUD”. This MUD was only accessible on the university network until 1980 when the university network was connected to ARPANET, introducing it to the wider world. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, MUDs grew in popularity, and over time a diverse range of worlds had been created primarily from a few widely replicated MUD codebases like TinyMUD, LPMUD, and DikuMUD. MUDs eventually reached the peak of their popularity in the mid-to-late 1990s just before the introduction of early MMORPGs like Everquest (created by a DikuMUD player and largely based on it). Since then, they’ve become a bit more obscure, but never faded away completely and there are still a large number of active MUDs in use today.

As to how to actually play MUDs, you can access them from anything with a telnet client. This means you can log in directly from a terminal window if you want, or you can use MUD clients that offer useful features such as custom add-on packs, scripting/aliasing, audio (including music), auto-mapping, and much more. Two of the more popular clients I’m familiar with are Mudlet and MUSHClient. One I saw recently that looks promising is QMud which is a full cross-platform Qt6 port of MUSHclient. It’s supposed to be compatible with existing MUSHClient add-ons, but I haven’t tried it yet myself.

If you’re new to MUDs and looking for a place to get started, here are three I’ve played at least somewhat recently and would recommend:

• AwakeMUD CE (telnet: play.awakemud.com port 4000): This is a cyberpunk MUD based on Shadowrun 3E that was started in 1994 and has seemingly been running continuously (for the most part) since 2000. This is one I’ve been playing daily lately and love it so far. The community seems good (and very queer-friendly as far as I can tell) and I’m really liking the Shadowrun 3E world/system. Right now I’m an Adept and have obtained some cool powers and bioware. Currently working on getting cyberfins and retractable shark teeth for new cyberware. AwakeMUD also has a decent UI add-on pack for Mudlet that I’d recommend (available here). If you join this one, let me know and we can join up and do some runs or just go exploring. I usually idle on there so if you’re online you can just do a “tell carcharodonna” or send me a message with the pocket secretary.

• Unofficial Squaresoft MUD (telnet: uossmud.sandwich.net port 9000): Running since 1997, this MUD is a combination of various worlds and systems taken from popular Squaresoft JRPGs of the 1990s. If you like NES/SNES JRPGs as much as I do, you’ll probably like this one. The devs for this MUD seem VERY active and are constantly updating and introducing new features. There’s also a very cool MUSHClient soundpack for this (available here) that adds all the wonderful SNES era Squaresoft sound effects and music.

• Aardwolf (telnet: aardwolf.org port 4000): Running since 1996, this is a full-featured fantasy MUD which (as far as I know) is currently the most popular traditional MUD going right now. The world of Aardwolf is massive and there’s an absurd amount of content to be found here. Aardwolf also has a VERY good MUSHclient package (available here) that includes UI, maps, audio, and lots of other stuff.

Having explained MUD basics above, I wanted to finish this post outlining why MUDs are (still) awesome and why more people should play them:

• Ease of access: Vast majority of MUDs are run by volunteers and 100% free (not just “free-to-play”), and can be run on anything with a telnet-enabled terminal. Also, since it’s text based, you could play MUDs on the shittiest of internet connections. If you wanted to, you could probably play MUDs on a smart toaster while sitting in a McDonalds bathroom and leaching off their wifi. If nuclear war happens and communication infrastructure gets wiped out, you could probably still play MUDs with something like ham radio packet switching or Meshtastic. Oh, many MUDs also offer screen reader compatibility for people who are vision impaired, which is extremely cool.

• Ease of development: Again, since it’s text-based, there’s much less of a learning curve (in some ways at least) and less of a need for certain skillsets or dev tools. There still is at least some learning curve, however, and the easiest way to get started making your own MUD would be to either use and modify an existing MUD codebase, or… you could use a tool like Evennia. Evennia is a pretty awesome MUD creation FOSS project that’s python based and relatively easy to learn. I haven’t made anything substantial with it myself, though I did once set up the example world and played around with the world building tools. The basics at least didn’t seem all that difficult, though I’m sure there’s a lot more you can do with it that requires much more time and skill. Like interesting game mechanics.

• Focus on quality of writing and worldbuilding: Without graphics, you’re more dependent on the quality of the writing and your own imagination, which in my view can often be a better experience. There’s also more freedom in making a MUD than you otherwise might have in making a graphical game, due to the lower barriers and relative obscurity of MUDs. You’re really only limited by knowing how to use the tools to make what you want. For example… If you wanted to make a virtual world where being cis is illegal and cis men are sent to forcefem gulags and used in “unethical” mpreg medical experiments, you could totally do that. No one is stopping you. The sky’s the limit, really.

• Better online communities: MUDs have historically been a refuge for queer folks, neurodiverse people, or just generally anyone who doesn’t feel like they fit well in mainstream society or is looking for a safe space to explore who they are. Maybe as an example, here’s a cool zine from 1993 about the zine author’s experience with a furry community known as FurryMuck. I can’t speak for every MUD out there, but in my experience MUDs generally tend to be more comfortable spaces for queer people than a lot of normal gaming communities typically are.

So that’s it. That’s the post. Thank you for letting me info dump on this topic and I hope it was at least somewhat informative.

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