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.