Kevin's Watch - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

AndrewHickey.net

email: andrew - AT - andrewhickey.net

Just in case you got here and are not sure what a MUD is, it stands for Multi User Dungeon (or Dimension, or Domain, depending on who you ask). Essentially they are telnet based online roleplying game, the predeccesors to the current generation of MMORPGs. Not all MUDs are games, and not all are exculsively text based, but the ones I am interested in are both of these. Alternatively they may also be called a MOO or a MUSH, however the core idea is generally the same, to allow a group of people to congregate online and interact, whether it is in the form of a simple chatroom setup, or a massive world full of people and things that view you as food.

Beginning to play a MUD is a simple matter of finding the address and connecting to it using a telnet client of some description. Windows has a poor quality built in telnet client, but I prefer ZMUD by zuggsoft pictured to the right, it provides a simple interface and a very usefull mapper, while also providing a powerfull scripting language, aliases, triggers and macros for use by more advanced users (well any user who want to make their life easier, it's not hard to figure out).
zMUD sample screenshot
zMUD sample screenshot

If I am unable to use zMUD for some reason, I can always fall back on a telnet client like PuTTY pictured to the left. This extremely useful tool is worth having as a substitute for the bare bones one in windows anyway, always assume you actually want to telnet to somewhere.

It's not enough to have a client, you also need a MUD to connect to. MUDs come in many flavours, based on many themes from books, movies, games and even an occasional and rare original one. The simplest way to find a MUD of the theme you're looking for is via one of the sites explicitly set up for the purpose, such as The MUD Connector, Top MUD Sites or MUD Lists.

Being a fan of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, I've reduced myself to two MUDs, and one of them only when the other is for some reason unavailable.


Firstly there is the Mirrors of the Wheel MUD. Based in the Wheel of Time setting, set before the events of the books, MirrorsMUD has one of the most realised worlds I have ever seen (read?) it has a 100% original world (no stock rooms, zones, object or mobs), multilpe races, a large skill tree, no classes and some of the best RP while still being a pk MUD.


The second MUD is the first one that I played