Playing Muds on the Internet

Rating:
Summary: Good, atmospheric overview of MUDs.
Review: This book certainly took me back to my days as a University student, idly whisting away some time gathering gold and slaying semi-human creatures while swapping idle banter and tales of daring-do with fellow students halfway across the world. For those "not in the know", MUDs - or multi-user dungeons - are a form of text-based adventure game where the play is not limited to a sole user, but rather may consist of combatants from around the world via the internet. The game is not confined to a pre-designed and static "world", but is rather constantly in a state of upheaval and reconstruction with enhancements and new areas always under development.

The authors are both survivors of the early days of MUDding and have written this book to share their combined experience and knowledge with the ordinary public. Indeed the book is most engrossing as the MUD equivalent of "case studies" are given, both in terms of how various MUDs developed and in terms of previous exploits the authors have had. Useful tips gleaned only from years of experience abound, such as interacting with other characters, soaring the ranks, how to best utilise the set of commands on the MUD, to even such things as assigning macros to programmable function keys to perform useful functions at high speed.

For those who do not have access to a MUD but whose taste is whetted by the prose, a list of anonymous ftp sites is given whereby one may obtain their very own MUD for their own system.

The book is most atmospheric, suiting its topic well, from even the very physical dimensions of the book to the tense and sweaty text contained inside. Any MUD fan or fanatic would do well to obtain this book - not for the bookshelf, but for alongside the very next MUDding session !

David Williams