As if this blog couldn’t get any nerdier… join me in my exploration of MUDs in 2024.

In each section below I am going to talk about the 1 thing that stands out to me about a particular MUD. That means these are NOT comprehensive reviews, but they may be informative to the would-be-adventurer or of note to the game running staff.

I’d like to write some follow up articles to go deeper into each of these games and provide you with a clearer view into what all the hubub is about. Maybe even some techical deep diving, who knows. Stay tuned!

Table of contents

MUD Primer

If you’ve never played a MUD, it is an acronym and it stands for Multi-user Dungeon. Popularized in the late 80s and peaking in the late 90s, MUDs were the text-based predecessors to modern day MMORPGs. There are countless articles and videos on the internet that cover their development and evolution so I won’t repeat that here. If you’ve never even heard of a MUD I still think you should check them out, you may have missed out on the hay day but you can still enjoy them now, albeit at a smaller scale.

Brief personal history of MUDs

My first encounter with a MUD was Gemstone IV (more on this later) as a preteen first discovering the internet on AOL. You won’t be surprised to find out that most people still playing MUDs today had a similar experience, be it on AOL, Prodigy, GEnie, or CompuServe, etc. These nostalgic throwback references come up often in idle chat amongst players. I believe much of the enjoyment of MUDs for those of us who lived through that era is derived from nostalgia.

Pro-tip: Fire up a playlist of songs you listened to in the 80s and 90s while playing for the ultimate throwback.

It seems to me MUD players all (for the most part) have some variation of the $100 - $1000 💸 dialup internet bill incurred from our early 90s addiction to these fantasy worlds. For me, I was young enough that this meant a stern talking to and some form of grounding by my parents. Older generations that were playing had to deal with the financial fallout themselves of course 💰🔥.

I would guess the demographic of MUD players is likely split between GenX and Millenials. I don’t expect there is a sizable audience of players younger than that, though they do exist!

My time with Gemstone as a kid was incredible. As an avid (closeted) TTRPG (AD&D) player it was a magical thing to dive into these adventures of the imagination with dozens and even hundreds of others in real-time. That magic still exists today, there is something untouchable about the mystique of a MUD when compared to its contemporaries. It’s for this reason I’m taking the time to write this article. I hope to inspire any former MUD player, or better yet the uninitiated, to explore this tiny dinosaur of an internet subculture - today.

And of course there will be some technical bits because I couldn’t help myself. 🤓

Gemstone IV

https://www.play.net/gs4/

I have returned to this behemoth of a MUD every few years since my childhood exploits in Elanthia (the world of GSIV). Each time I had started anew, choosing a new role to play and experiencing the magic of newbie hood all over again. Most recently I returned in 2023 and again in 2024 after a brief hiatus, both times in earnest. I brought characters up to level 30 (of 100) which was something I was never able to accomplish as a young boy who didn’t understand the breadth of the game and its complex mechanics.

On Scripting

Today GSIV is largely “script assisted”, there are multiple forms of this type of play ranging from the fully sanctioned scripting that takes place on a special server called “Shattered” to the gray area of play assist scripts that help reduce the monotony of typing commands or navigating a world described with words and charted within your head. Full automation 🤖 of play is frowned upon on the main shard which is accessed in either a F2P model or Premium and Platinum offerings, each with their own benefits to the player.

The notion of scripting play isn’t new, nor is it relegated to MUDs, and it certainly adds a lot of QoL conveniences. Without it I suspect GSIV may be less relevant today than it is, impressively hosting hundreds of active players each day. It is however a double-edged sword.

Before I get into the pros and cons I should add a touch more context on MUDs. Generally speaking they are role playing games, with an emphasis on the role playing. That means much of the enjoyment comes from the social aspect of the experience, be it traveling to a dangerous area to slay monsters, or sitting around the local tavern swapping rumors and delving into the game’s rich lore. Scripting can somewhat detract from that experience, emphasizing the mechanics of achievement over the experience of play.

Good uses of scripting

Want to move quickly to the room in the game that is hosting an event, or sell a number of junk items to the pawnshop?

👍 Scripts have you covered and get you back into the meaningful action posthaste.

Potentially harmful uses of scripting

Want to perform the same action over and over? Such as picking locked chests provided by an automated NPC queueing them up from other adventurer’s while you sleep so your character gains experience?

Or perhaps hunt an area killing monsters for experience while you eat your dinner with your family?

👎 Yep, scripting like this is commonplace.

The result of which is a number of zombie players 🧟‍♂️ logged in that aren’t there to participate in the roleplaying and are sucking up opportunities from others.

Mechanics vs. Roleplay

One of the motivating factors driving the abundance of players turning to scripting to improve their character’s strengths lies in the fact that the game is inherently driven by gameplay mechanics like levels, experience and in-game economies. To get ahead you need to invest substantial time into the game, so shortcuts emerge.

There are other types of MUDs, namely RPIs (Roleplaying Intensive) ones that strive to minimize any possibility of power leveling and focus the gameplay squarely on the story telling. More on this in the next two MUDs, below.

Before we get to strictly roleplaying enforced MUDs I want to be clear about Gemstone IV’s community. There are absolutely roleplayers doing their best to drive plot lines forward in as ”realistic” a way as possible. I have had the pleasure of being invited into a Meeting House Organization (MHO), which is like a guild in any other game, that is filled to the brim with some of the best roleplayers I have ever met. They are A+ writers and have a depth of knowledge of the game’s lore that honestly boggles the mind. When I talk about these games I am speaking in general terms, there are of course exceptions in almost every case.

Pros

• Large community in and out of game
• Vast world to explore
• Expansive item and creature list
• Game altering plotlines run by staff
• Seasonal events
• Ample QoL scripts
• Generally high quality writing

Cons

• Paid subscription (F2P is limiting)
• Prolific automation & scripting
• Emphasis on fluff items that are borderline anachronistic
• RP can be hit or miss and generally low quality
• Substantial level gap between new players and old
• Tries to be too many things
• PvP takes a distant backseat
• Perma-death has been removed (low stakes)

Armageddon MUD

https://www.armageddon.org

MURDER, CORRUPTION & BETRAYAL!

The community takes this tagline seriously and in more ways than you might think!

Note: No one has been murdered IRL… to my knowledge.

Ever heard of Dark Sun? Armageddon was derived from it. Think Dune + Mad Max but with no technology and powerful evil sorcery. I’m not doing it justice… This setting is awesome, that is just a fact, do not bother disputing it! 😈

I had never come across this game in all my years and only recently found it by asking ChatGPT for some MUD recommendations based on the theme I was interested in. Great use of AI right there by the way as trudging through the cobwebs of /r/MUD is depressing and most of the MUD aggregating websites are stale, defunct, or gone.

Roleplaying Intensive (RPI)

This was my first RPI and I was overwhelmed right off the jump. If you’ve never played an RPI before you might be as surprised as I was to find you have to submit an application to play! Not only that, but you have an extremely limited number of choices available to you in the kind of character you can play as a newbie. Most RPIs limit access to high-power species, classes, skills, and items for a number of reasons.

1. It keeps the game on theme. (Remember Star Wars Galaxies when Jedi were mysterious and rare?)
2. It limits the damage an ignorant new player like me can do to the delicate socioeconomics of the game.
3. It creates a meta-progression system.

Some may argue the gates and hierarchy imposed by such a system are actually much more nefarious; for now let’s just accept that these are some of the commonly accepted rationale. I wasn’t so sure about this at first, but after my first few moments in the game I was immediately thankful I wasn’t expected to play a meaningful part in the world and could largely coast through with training wheels on and enjoy the play happening all around me.

The foundation of this sub-genre of RPGs sits precariously upon one very important notion.

What happens in Vegas game, stays in-game.

Any information sharing, even what your in-game character name is, is not just frowned upon by players, but potentially punishable by staff. This leads to a lot of of interesting side effects, such as pockets of knowledge being closely guarded secrets, disputes between players and staff as to whether they are abusing knowledge, and tight moderation of the community channels leading to the emergence of a shadow board.

A community divided

If you search around for information on this MUD you’ll likely stumble across a few alarming things.

1. Reports of the game’s decline due to sexual harassment by staff and players. 🙅
2. The game is somewhat known for “ERP” - which I have since learned stands for Erotic Roleplay 💋.
3. There is a tenuous relationship between (some) players and (some) staff.

I had just started diving into the lore and character concepts when I stumbled on some of this information and I was pretty nervous I picked the wrong game. So I joined the Discord to ask around. Unlike GSIV’s Discord, there were only a handful of channels and not nearly as much chatter going on across them. The size of the game was becoming apparent, which turns out is roughly 40-60 simultaneous players on a given night.

I received a very friendly and warm welcome by a host of players, some of who were identified as ”Helpers”. These folks were so keen to help me understand the game that a few even DM’d me and offered support. So I hit’em with the tough questions! 🥊

They provided this alternate perspective:

Ignore the wikipedia article. It was heavily edited by a bunch of griefers.

Erotic RP is “allowed” in the game, but most of us prefer to “fade to black” - which means you just assume the action occurred, with a “consent denied” - and then the scene continues as if it already happened. Some people like to act it out.

So there you have it, a true internet drama, and that’s just scratching the surface. 🤷 I thought why not take a look and find out the truth.

The truth is… not for me to say. I don’t want to minimize anyone’s experience by making any assumptions as to the validity of any allegation. My guess, based on my experience with communities, is that there was in fact harassment, and there is in fact some ERP happening and the two are likely correlated.

My experience has been relatively positive. The roleplaying in the game is of better quality than GSIV and it feels more like playing D&D, with an emphasis on the character interactions. They call it shared storytelling and I buy into that description. Mechanics largely take a back seat, though they do exist, and they are highly obfuscated from the player. This leads to a deeper sense of mystery and reduces the perceived gap between the veterans and the newbies. I like it.

I never ran into any ERP, though your mileage may vary and you may or may not want to participate in it, who am I to judge? The players in-game are very welcoming, though their characters may not be overtly friendly. For instance, very early on I was pulled aside by a Templar, which is an in-world judge/jury/executioner that upholds the “laws”. He shook me down for selling a gem without a license and forced me to buy said license from him, eating up all my profit and then some. I felt immersed by the experience, that player created a sense of realism, on theme, and gave me a reason to go out and grind out more money.

I mention this because there isn’t any direction in the game, it is a literal sandbox. The plots and quests are entirely player created. Before you jump to tell me that grinding currency because a bully stole my lunch money isn’t fun, I’d ask that you evaluate what other RPGs have you do - this was the equivalent of a level 1 fetch quest.

There are a few in-game organizations that help bring people together and provide quest like activities but I was too shy to join any and instead wanted to roleplay as a bit of a loner. This forced me to meet people organically, which I did. One late afternoon I was sitting in the sand, licking my wounds beside the gates when two strangers approached to check in on me. Noticing my wounds they set to work on patching me up and pulling me back into the relative safety within the walls of the city. From there a wonderful friendship blossomed. That’s it, I have 2 friends in a game where maybe a few dozen are online at the same time, but that’s all I need. Most everything I did from then on became centered around furthering our shared story. Sheer numbers do not make a multiplayer game better. This fact is leveraged to great effect by the theme of the game and strength of its playerbase’s creativity. Everyone else blends in as highly intelligent NPCs from my perspective.

Pros

• Setting & theme
• Free to everyone
• High quality RP
• Interesting, unique, and mysterious mechanics
• Welcoming community in-game
• PvP conflict is a core part of the game
• Vivid and evocative writing
• Perma-death creates a high stakes gameplay loop

Cons

• Out of game community has some toxicity issues, some posters on the official forums and unofficial shadow board are absolute trolls 🧌
• Friction to enter could filter potential players
• Learning curve is a bit steep unless you have played a DikuMUD before
• Highly dangerous world may lead to frustration for newcomers looking for a more casual experience
• Lots of typing, no QoL scripting

Harshlands

http://harshlands.net/wordpress/

Admittedly I have spent the least amount of time in Harshlands and I expect that will translate to a very surface-level hot-take of the game. Please take everything I say here with a grain of 🧂.

So you want more mechanics in your RPI?

I came upon Harshlands through people suggesting it as an alternative to Armageddon. Immediately I see the similarities in the application process to create a character, the caste system gating access to certain archetypes, and low tolerance for OOC information sharing.

While Armageddon’s setting is unique, it was at least conceptually approachable for me due to my prior experience with Dark Sun. Harshlands however, was built around the Hârnworld setting and game rules which are infamous for being some of the densest in the industry and one I have no experience with. I won’t harp on this point because this very well could be considered a benefit, but as a reader you should know I had no prior exposure to it.

I believe the DNA of Hârnworld has influenced the MUD to focus more on mechanics, not to the same extent as GSIV in its achievement driven gameplay loop, but more so in what it expects of its player’s competence in understanding its wide array of commands and the culture of the world.

One of these commands is payday and I would say it’s probably one of the most defining characteristics of Harshlands as it comes up in many reviews and articles on the game. As I understand it, this is a system to provide some pocket change for players, perhaps in an effort to establish some realism around the feudal medieval setting. For the uninitiated like myself, I fear it is needlessly complex. I don’t mean to be unfair to the game, I expect as one spends more time in HL these systems and their concepts and syntax become second nature. It might be worth avoiding it in your first few days of play though.

Much of the chatter in the game’s Discord is on the subject of one mechanic or another. Specifically crafts stand out as something everyone seems to be interacting with to various extents and driving the in-game economy and thus their character’s progression. This is where Arm and HL diverge further, with staff and players being slightly more candid. This is likely necessary to some degree because of the interconnectedness of the game’s crafting systems across multiple professions and skills. Have a look here for an example of what I mean. The game will spit out some $variable names at you when you look at items that seem superfluous to me but are apparently helpful to people who understand the crafting system.

Despite it being an RPI, there is quite a lot of OOC information thrust upon the player which can be somewhat immersion breaking if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing.

Community

I feel the need to contrast the community of Harshlands with Armageddon, partly because they are both RPIs, and partly because so many former Arm players seem to direct people toward HL.

At first glance there is nothing questionable about the culture of the community. I don’t see ERP being talked about and I don’t see any staff vs. player OOC conflicts mentioned at the scale of Armageddon’s infamous reputation. Their Discord has more channels than Arm’s but the conversations seem to be dominated by the same few voices.

This tight-knit feel extends to the in-game world as well. There are somewhere between 10-30 simultaneous players online and they are about as welcoming as their counterparts in Arm. There are some mechanical differences to the social aspect of the game worth mentioning. Arm and GSIV both provide in-character telepathic messaging. In GSIV it used to be a power granted by an amulet (Amunet) and has evolved to an inexplicably inherent ability. In Arm psionics are a common trait in everyone, each character at least capable of remote messaging. There is no such mechanic in HL, leaving me to have to track people down again after first meeting them in a tavern.

This is another example of Harshland’s realism/fun pendulum swinging a bit too far toward simulation. It could very well be that there is a rhythm to the play that I have yet to fall into, where I can expect to meet the same faces in the same places and set out on some activity together from there, time will tell. HL does have a few ways to connect with players in an OOC manner via hchat (anonymous help), ochat (anonymous OOC chat), and notify (sends a global message that you are available for RP). These mechanisms in particular do help the playerbase stay connected, but is important to remember OOC knowledge is not to be mixed with IC actions and you’ll need to track eachother down to have a meaningful IC experience.

Pros

• Free to everyone
• High quality RP
• Helpful community & staff
• Impressive realism
• Hârnworld feels more serious than mainstream fantasy settings
• Perma-death creates a high stakes gameplay loop

Cons

• A bit crashy
• Small population
• Steep learning curve even if you’ve played a DikuMUD
• Overwhelming amount of lore and culture
• Somewhat sterile writing
• Lots of typing, no QoL scripting

My humble opinions

I am not a games journalist, nor am I an expert on MUDs. You just read some highlights of the only 3 MUDs I’ve ever played for more than a week. I do not claim to be unbiased or objective. Here’s an arbitrary matrix of my view of these MUDs based on my particular tastes.

My recommendation

MUD Clients

I felt like tinkering with some of the terminal native MUD clients.

Gemstone IV ProfanityFE Fork

Armageddon TinTin++ Scripts

Harshlands TinTin++ Scripts

Special thanks

I’d like to offer thanks to some stand out members of each community that helped me with the technical bits of making these MUDs more visually stimulating.

Horibu for his tireless contributions to the GSIV scripting project Elanthia Online, and all of the help he provides in the #scripting channel for players and developers alike.

MarshalDFX for their guidance toward TinTin++ and support in coming up to speed with Armageddon. Most especially the jumping off point that I forked my scripts from!

Shutsky & Blackhorde for their willingness to make code changes to Harshlands to enable a terse form of the profile command that powers the prompts you see above.

Scandum author of TinTin++ for building such a wonderfully flexible terminal client for MUD gaming and the support in helping me work around roadblocks as they emerged.