[Nymeria]

The thread discussing the differences between MUSHes and MUDs have made me ponder something. Namely how to better help out new players who show up at a MUSH and have played MUDs before but not MUSHes. The assumption would be that they fall into one of these two categories:

1) they logged onto a MUSH without specifically looking for a MUSH and/or without knowing its different from a MUD
2) they came looking specifically for a MUSH to try it out

What sort of information do they need? If a FAQ is added specifically for MUD players, what things are they likely to want to know? Are there any commands are common to most MUDs that it would be good to make a MUSH alias for, or at least have a coded response when they try the command to tell them what else to try?

On the whole, I guess the information would mainly be useful for those who fall into the second group, as my impression is that those from the first group rarely find that MUSHes sound interesting to them. Still, its good to know what sort of things to point out to help them make their decision.

For the purpose of this discussion, I am lumping together TinyMUSH, TinyMUX and PennMUSH in the MUSH category, and considering everything else other than MUCK and MOO as MUDs.

[Jazuela]

Maybe this thread will help both sides have a better understanding of the vast differences between the two.

Here's some questions that a typical "MUDder" might ask, when first checking out a mush. This for a typical RP-encouraged/enforced level-based diku-esque mud:

1. Where's my levels?
1a. No levels? Well then what happens when you gain exp points?
1b. No exp points? Then how do I measure getting older/more influential/more Lordly/gain my Master title?
2. How do I put on my eq? Where do you buy armor and weapons?
2a. No eq? Am I supposed to walk around naked and/or defenseless? No armor/weapons? How do I defend myself or kill people then?
3 Do you have a map of the land so I can figure out where I want to go hunting?
3a. No hunting? Then how am I supposed to get better and train ranks in skills?
3b. No ranks in skills? No coded skills? Then how do I know if I'm getting better at doing something?
3c. Well how does anyone ELSE know I'm getting better at doing something? What if I -want- to go adventuring the world that your game has created? Don't I need to have some protection against the elements, against raiders, against exhaustion? What about food and water? How does the game accommodate for all of these situations?
3d. No game world? A grid? What does that MEAN exactly? How do I navigate it, how would I roleplay spending half a day trudging up the mountains to the peak and camping out to gaze at the sky, without coded mountains, peaks, skies, and wood to make a campfire?
4. So you're saying we pose all this? What's to stop anyone from posing that they kill you all and win all your loot, if none of it is coded and everything is posed? How do you know that I -didn't- kill your character? How do you know that I -didn't- just break into your un-coded apartment and steal your furniture and sell it at the furniture pawn shop? And where's all my coins for my efforts?

[KaVir]

The problem is there's a great deal of variation between different types of mud, so you'd really need to be more specific in order to provide any meaningful detail. Even Jazuela's comparison of Diku vs MUSH doesn't hold true for all Diku derivatives (many are levelless, etc - I've even seen a couple that handled combat through emotes/poses).

Such an FAQ would be pretty useful, but I'm not sure how you could best go about it. Perhaps it might be better handled as a list of features, broken down into subsections describing which approaches are taken by different codebases?

[Nymeria]

Thanks, Jazuela.

Its a good point, KaVir. I guess one would either have to try to find broader categories/questions to use for the comparisons, or structure it more. And, as you say, structuring wouldn't be easy.

So the differences between codebases are large enough that there's not much in the way of common commands that someone would try when they first come onto a new game?

[KaVir]

Well you'll find most muds have certain basic commands - "who" to show who's online, "quit" to leave the game, "help" to view help topics, etc. The output can vary, but the general functionality is usually fairly consistant. But when you start moving into the more game-specific commands, there tends to be more variation.

Most Diku muds usually have a very similar command set to each other, although even then the similarity depends on how closely related the codebases are (eg ROM and Envy are very similar, but SMAUG and Silly have quite a few differences).

But when you compare Diku with LP, for example, you'll find the differences much more noticable - to the point that the players of one frequently dislike the other because it feels so unfamiliar. Likewise, comparing Diku or LP with Morder (which was actually inspired by Scepter of Goth, rather than the original MUD that inspired Diku, LP and MUSH) would also reveal a lot of differences. The same would hold true with many custom muds.

[Nymeria]

Do those commands tend to be lower case, or case optional? Because WHO, QUIT and LOGOUT are case sensitive on MUSH. Though if anyone types "who", we do have it telling them to use WHO instead.

[KaVir]

Commands aren't usually case-sensitive, at least not in the muds I'm familiar with.

[Ide]

Many mushes don't make quit and who case sensitive, though I'm not sure if this is compiled in the codebase or added once the game is running.

The standard commands across all muds seem to be help, quit, who, and say.

While it's true that not all muds (excluding mushes) are the same, I think in general muds (meaning DIKU, LP, and even custom muds that are similar in features or goals), and mushes each have their own feel.

For example, even though God Wars 2 and 4 Dimensions are totally different, they have a similar 'feel' in my opinion, and you could say the same for Firan MUX and MPUG (one a code-heavy RP mush and one a social mush). However those two sets of muds/mushes would also feel very different from each other, so I think a general mud/mush FAQ has value.

I think the danger of a FAQ like that is it intends to reinforce the notion that you only can make a certain kind of game in a certain kind of codebase. So some acknowledgement of that issue would be good to include in such a FAQ.

[Jazuela]

HUGE differences. I mean enormous. Big enough that if you don't know of them, it's very clear that you've never played any game outside your own codebase.

As KaVir suggests, even different games -within- the same codebase can have remarkably different syntax/commands.

However, there are some things that are "typical" and are likely to be known across a good variety of games. If you want to help mudders get used to mush-style, it'll probably be helpful to know what you're dealing with. So without further ado, here's a few common commands. Most of them do what they sound like they do:

kill (critter)
inv(entory)
eq(uipment)
exp(erience)
stat(us)
skills
score
look (in some games you can look in the exit directions and see coded results, eg. look east, shortened to l e)
emote (aka "act" or em or
craft
prep/cast (magic spells)
forage
train
parry
talk*
tell*
ooc
hide
sneak (walking silently)
hunt (for footprints)
search (for hidden items/exits)

These two can be either IC devices, or OOC "channels" depending on the mud. In Armageddon and Shadows of Isildur, talk is the command you use to have a conversation at a table, with other people sitting at the same table. In this way, people who are standing up, or sitting somewhere else in the room, won't hear the conversation unless they are actively "listening" - which is a coded skill that gives them a chance of overhearing/eavesdropping. Tell is how you talk to someone specific. As in, "tell sue Hello"

[Nymeria]

PennMUSH (which is what I run) has no option for making those commands other than case sensitive, though yes, I seem to recall that TinyMUSH and/or TinyMUX may have added it. Probably also some of the other derivates, like Rhost.

Good point, yeah.

Heh, yeah, not since 95, when I played a couple of muds for two months before finding MUSHes. Don't remember at all what they were.

Thanks, that's a good list to work from to make some dummy commands that point people to what they should be using. Talk and tell in particular probably cause a lot o issues, since its a common problem that people don't figure out how to speak on the channels or contact a person.

[KaVir]

Some good suggestions from Jazuela, alhough once again, when adding them to an FAQ I'd stress that they don't apply to all muds (for example of the 21 commands she listed, my mud has only 8).

Here are some other commands that are often (but certainly not always) found in muds:

north/south/east/west/up/down (movement)
chat or gossip (communication)
commands (list all commands)
get/drop/give (transfer equipment)
wear/wield/remove (use equipment)
eat/drink (for muds with food and drink)

[misao]

I'm not sure about BoD, Nymeria, but in the very first MUSH that I played, virtually every damn command had to be prefixed by some symbol, usually + or @ (I think that was part of the TinyMUX codebase). I found that extremely boggling, especially when we were expected to use +help, as the conventional 'help' yielded a boggling lot of building commands instead of real game help files!

Other than the obvious code-based things that the rest pointed out (and which I'm not very well-versed in), I think an explanation of the culture would be very useful (sadly I've never seen it in any FAQ). If someone mainly plays MUDs they probably would not even think to page someone to schedule RP, or about the possibility of discussing plots OOCly before heading into them. Also, they should be encouraged to read the logs to better understand the RP style of the MUSH. And... I find that more MUD players than MUSH players tend to powerpose; perhaps it's due to the thinking that if the code allows them to do it, it should be fair to do it. It might also be due to the abundance of preset emotes in MUDs such as 'slap', 'hug', etc. Regardless, I think that's an area that should be explained clearly.

[Nymeria]

Yes, this is standard. @ is used for most built-in commands (i.e, hardcoded). They are documented with "help". + is used for commands added in what MUSH calls softcode, and those are generally documented with "+help". Relatively few MUSH admin mess with the hardcode, so those commands are pretty much always left as-is. The + for softcode is such a standard that most everyone uses it.

This is a good way of looking at it, talking about the differences in cultures. That's probably more crucial than code, apart from the basic commands for actually communicating with someone.

[Jazuela]

Also, I would definitely recommend mentioning about what it -means- to organize RP events in advance. To the typical RP-mud type person, it would be considered cheating to talk OOCly with people to discuss how a scene is going to be played out, and how the results will effect everything else, all before the RP starts. The whole point of roleplay, in a non-MUSH-style RP mud, is to discover what happens, when it happens. You don't tell Sue oocly, that your character Amos is gonna murder her character. You just log in, and do it. It is cooperative storytelling, but much more like live-action and much less like tabletop. You tell the story WHILE the story is being told. You don't talk about how you will tell the story. That kinda negates the purpose of telling the story. If you've already determined what's gonna happen, and how it will happen, then there's really no need for it to happen at all. It's like reading the last chapter of murder mystery.

In most RP MUD type games, organizing the scenes OOCly in advance of the actual scene is considered cheating, and could get you in trouble with the staff if it was discovered you were doing it.

You'd also want to explain about turn-based roleplay - because this is a phenomena not normally seen in RP-MUD type games.

And, you'll want to explain about the time of things. I've heard of mushes where someone will log on and type out a scene..then log out for supper..and an hour later, someone else will type out a scene..and the first guy comes back the next day and discovers that 3 more people have added to his story. In other words, actual real-time interaction is completely optional, there doesn't ever have to be any interaction at all.

That's in some of those games; I know this isn't typical. But it really is one of those things that people who play only RP MUD type games probably would never have even heard of and give you funny looks if you mentioned it. If you compared it to BBS games they -might- be familiar.

[misao]

Oh yes, do emphasize on the '+help', that would be the most important command by far. And probably no MUD players would even think of using +help; I know I wasted quite a bit of time wondering wtf 'help' was talking about!

[Jazuela]

People who have played MOOs might be familiar with using @ symbol; people who have been "builders" for MOOs definitely would be familiar with it.

help, with no symbol, is the "typical" method of accessing help menus in muds, as a player. In some games, gmhelp or @help would give access to staff-only help files, and on occasion, a mud would even have it set up so that @help opens up a help-file creation process for staff members who need to add new help files to the list.

But from the player perspective, you'd think - well this guy is already at a disadvantage, since he's looking for help in the first place. Why make it more complex than it needs to be? Just make help be the syntax to access help files.


So you might see the player type:
help
and he would get this:

What would you like help on? You can type >help subject or help complex_subject. You can also find help files categorized as follows:

combat movement communication skills crafting
wholist credits gameworld flora_fauna

and the player might already know he's trying to find out how to kill something and he'd type
help kill

or maybe he is trying to find out the syntax, because kill isn't working, so he'd type
help combat

which would give him a list of various combat help files, including attack.

and then he'd type
help attack
and see the actual file, including the syntax and how it's used, with cross-references to related help files.

At any point during this, he could just type
help attack
and get the attack file.

But if he's not sure what the file is called, then he has the opportunity to check different categories which are provided to him by typing help with no for-or-aft arguments.

[misao]

Now that you mention this, I think that it would be nice for MUDs (which are mainly nonconsensual) to put up a FAQ about this for those of us who come from MUSHes or consent MU*s as well! When I returned from over a year of playing consent MUSHes to a nonconsensual MUD, and played a thief character for the first time, it took me a while to get used to /not/ informing the person oocly before thieving from them. It took even longer for me to not feel guilty about not emoting any hints as to what is going on; it just felt like oocly cheating someone for your character to chat happily with them while feeling for their pockets (even though there was a coded chance of them discovering you, of course).

[Jazuela]

Erm, what you are describing *is* consensual. By playing the game, you consent to the roleplay. By logging in, you consent to whatever your character will experience. It is consented to by virtue of the fact that you have chosen to play. There are certain caveats - in some games, torture scenes must be consented to OOCly. In some games, the players (not the characters) must consent oocly to sexual roleplay. In Armageddon, both torture and sexual RP need consent, however if consent is -not- given, the enactor can "fade to black" and assume that the situation has taken place, without the detailed roleplay. Rape is the only exception - if someone does -not- consent to that, then the enactor must let go and accept that the rape never happened. These are all OOC devices though, exceptions to the rule. The rule is, when you log in, you are your character, and you are expected to accept whatever happens to your character. Any exceptions to this rule are notated in the game docs.

[Nymeria]

Big difference here, I see. On a MUSH, consent is generally understood as something that has to be explicitly given for each situation. Consent by logging in would be considered a non-consent environment for a MUSHer.

There's been lots of good suggestion, I really appreciate that. Some way of making the existence of +help more evident is clearly needed, and also some discussion of how OOC communication generally is a much bigger part of MUSHes. Not always, though. There are those that run pretty strict IC/OOC separation and never plan out scenes, though they still have active OOC channels and will schedule things.

[misao]

Yes. I am saying that this should be explained if ever a MUSH-to-MUD faq is coined up, because it's just not how MUSH players look at it. In fact, the paragraph above would be perfect for a help file.