The Search for Freedom: Our Repeated Petitions

Which one? Frank Gorshin? Jim Carrey? Paul Dano?

       

Guest post by AlphabeticalAnonymous: 

 

As we have finally defeated the evil wizard Macabath and lifted the curse he placed on Smythetown, the city gates open, and we are finally free to explore the wide world. Our goal in doing this remains the same: to somehow find and defeat Kamazol, or at least prevent him from conquering the living world from his home in the land of the dead. However, we have few clues on how to accomplish this; the best hint seems to be rumors of a confederacy of rebels, all adorned with viper tattoos. A member of this group cryptically told us that Arthur (who lives in a blue house) will rendezvous with us and give us further instructions. 

      

Emerging into the fresh air, at long last.

              

We emerge from the town onto Devor Isle on the world map, where we are greeted by a tinny rendition of "Greensleeves" and a small window depicting our surroundings. Like the rest of the game, the design is tile-based, and we can only see 7 x 7 tiles at a time. The documentation tells us that the whole world is only two 32 x 32 screens (and three continents). Our party is represented by a small person carrying a sword and wearing a jaunty green cap, which displays a few frames of walking animation as we begin to march around. As we go, we’re treated to the occasional pleasant sound effect, such as birds tweeting and ocean surf roaring. The manual helpfully describes what we can expect:

         

On the north-west tip is located Smythetown, the island's main community . . . South-east of town is Darkenwood Forest, where it is rumoured that vicious Ogres roam. To the south of this is Ugoomba Swamp, next to Lake Lzumba. Beware of the swamp, for many dangerous creatures lurk within, so avoid it if at all possible. On the south-eastern end of the isle are the North and South Carpalas Mountains, separated by the valley of Hsaktoth. Past the mountains, to the east, Gustav's bridge leads to Raksta Isle.

          
In towns or dungeons each step takes just one minute, but outside the time per square depends on the type of terrain we’re moving across. In the grassy fields near Smythetown, moving one square takes 25 minutes of game time. In the nearby forest of Darkenwood, one step is roughly 1.5 hours. So each tile in the world map is something like two kilometers, more or less. Nonetheless, it quickly becomes apparent that this island is on the smaller side. Only five steps from Smythetown is Darkenwood, and directly south of it Ugoomba Swamp is only seven by five tiles.

As in the catacombs (but unlike the town), random encounters with monsters frequently occur out in the world. Each region of the map seems to contain a few different combinations of adversaries (just as each dungeon level has its own unique set of monsters). Each encounter is a variation on a theme: they ambush us, or we detect an ambush, or we hear them coming and set our own ambush, or we’re all just tossed directly into combat. As we head into the swamp, a "Scuzzball" approaches. The manual describes these as "big, slow, powerful, yucky." This green blob has 26 HP, 2 armor points, and is indeed big; I think it’s the first enemy since the Insane Creature in the jail that occupies 2x2 tiles in combat. It only provides 3 XP per character. Soon thereafter we face five vipers (fast, easy to kill) and two crocodiles (slightly tougher, but no real challenge).

      

Fighting scuzzballs in Ugoomba Swamp. Despite the graphic, it takes up 2 x 2 spaces.

      

We’ve heard of Ugoomba Swamp before: scrawled on the wall of the Insane Creature’s jail cell was the message, "The cape is in Ugoomba Swamp." The world map only allows us to Move, Search, or Encamp, so clearly we need to search the swamp. This doesn’t take long: in the southwest corner of the swamp, we find a "Red Cape." It can be readied as can other usable inventory items, but there’s no clue as to what it does. At any rate, it does not seem to affect any visible character statistics.

    

RIP, Superman?

       

We continue on, and about ten steps past the swamp we find what can only be Gustav’s bridge. The bridge is guarded by some trolls who are also large, 2 x 2-tile enemies. I don’t seem to have taken any notes about that combat, so I presume they didn’t pose too much of a challenge. Past the bridge lie the green fields of Raksta Isle; we go north through a narrow mountain-lined pass, at the end of which is our second town: Hythenforge.
    

At least I remembered to take a screenshot of the bridge battle.

       

This port city has a different layout than Smythetown but many of the same amenities: Bob's Training Center, the Jolly Orc Tavern, Art's General Store, Omar's Magic Store, the Inn of the Fallen Leaves, the Temple of the Rising Sun, Joe's Weapons & Armor, and another town square. Directly west of the magic shop, we find the Hythenforge Weight Training Center. There, we are asked "Do you want to exercise now?" and when we say yes, "It will cost us 200 gold to train him." Agreeing turns out to result in a +2 permanent bonus to the character’s Strength: definitely worth the price! 

      

Son strong! Though I do admit it came on fast.

       

In Hythenforge we also find a number of other unique locations and encounters:
      

• "There is a gigantic boulder here blocking the entrance to a dark tunnel. Try as you might, you cannot do anything to even so much as budge it." As I write this, realize that I still don’t know what this boulder or tunnel are about.

• A "small, locked combination safe" behind a secret door. If we answer that we want to open the safe, we are prompted to "Please enter the combination." We have no idea what it might be.

• Not far away, behind another secret door: "How strange! In this secret little shoppe, there is a gnome selling Riddle Books—only 500 gold pieces." We hold off for now.

• A set of deserted docks, with a layout reminiscent of Phlan’s docks from Pool of Radiance.

• A small, empty guard post. This never amounts to anything.

• Another secret room warns us: "Beware the Riddler!!"

• A series of locked and secret doors, ending in a larger room: "This is a torture chamber, hidden away in the corner of the city. Instruments of death line the walls, but it is otherwise empty. A piece of paper in the corner catches your eye. You pick it up and read it. It simply says: "PERSISTENCE IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS—perhaps the torturer's motto, you think to yourselves." Even now I’m not sure whether this meant something, or whether we were supposed to do something here.

• "In the corner of the town square is a statue of the city's mayor, Melvin B. Hythen.

• "On the wall is written: Riddle-de-dum, riddle-de-dee, Buy a riddle book, It's worth the fee."

        

Was this room here merely to provide atmosphere?

      

Examining the automap, I think it is clear that there are more hidden rooms north of the torture chamber. We find no secret doors from within that room, but from the main corridor in the city we find our way in. There: "A smoky face appears in the air before you. 'Welcome ignorant ones. I am the Riddler, and you have entered my lair. KEEP OUT!' It then disappears as it is dissipated by a weak gust of wind." We move forward a few squares. "The smoky face of the Riddler appears once more. He has a riddle for you: When is a wall not a wall?"

        

I'm surprised how much I like the pseudo-pointillist/digital airbrush style.

       

We think it over, and then (with a marked lack of confidence) answer WALRUS. Unfortunately, this seems to be incorrect: "You have failed to correctly answer one of the Riddler's riddles. The floor beneath your feet slides away revealing a pit. You fall several metres before being impaled on sharp, poison-tipped metal spikes. You are all killed upon impact. Your adventure ends here."
       
After reloading, we reconsider our options. We’re still roughly 400 XP from leveling up, but we can at least better equip the party. We have a lot of gold saved up, and with the new strength bonuses from the weight training center a number of the party members can equip better weapons and/or armor. We buy +1 armor, +1 shields, and +1 hammers for most of the party—only poor Becket, my cleric, is too weak to equip any worthwhile weapons (or most armor). We’re ultimately left tougher, and still with over 1000 gold in our pockets. 
     

Significantly better options than we had in Smythetown. Asterisks indicate items the current character can't equip.

     

We then continue systematically exploring the town. In the southeast corner is some sort of residential district. Through a door here, we find that:

         

An old lady ushers you into her home. You tell her briefly of your quest. She says, "Surely your quest will take you overseas to Shylyllia Isle. If you do me a favour, I will make sure you get across safely for a small, nominal fee. I have a friend who's a captain down at the harbour. Do this: go to the bottom of The Pit in the Forest of Shadows, and slay the Pitbeast. Then go to the docks and my friend the captain will be waiting. You'll need some viper tattoos to identify yourselves as allies, or he won't speak with you though. The Pitbeast has been terrorizing townsfolk for weeks now, and has forced us to temporarily close the harbour. It comes up out of the Pit every so often, taking back sacrifices to feed upon. We would all be grateful if you slay it. Good Luck!" As you leave, you notice a tattoo of a viper on her arm.

         
The next door is locked, "and you have no key that fits the lock." Isn't that the whole point of being able to pick locks? The next home we come to is deserted. And beyond that, we are told that south of us "stands a large blue house."     

        

The game tries to gaslight us: that house is green.

       

Regardless of color, this must be Arthur’s house. As instructed, we say WHITE KNIGHT SENT ME and are ushered into the house. Although he still says suspiciously little about Kamazol or the fate of the world, Arthur gives us our next set of instructions.

        

When you reach Birshada on Shylyllia Isle . . . seek out Dorf. You must first get a Viper Alliance tattoo. Search the Riddler's Den—he is rumoured to possess such tattoos . . . Dorf can also teach you the art of mountaineering . . . . recover the Red Sphere. Dorf can tell you about it . . . do not trust ANYONE without the mark of the Viper. Take these weapons and armor. There's no time to lose! Go find Dorf!

       
He then hands us a +2 hammer that I give to Durkon, a set of +2 chain armor that goes to Tyrion, and a +1 broadsword that Elphaba takes up. Our choices seem clear: to advance, we need to both (1) slay the Pitbeast, and (2) successfully visit the Riddler. Since we know that Riddlebooks are available for sale in town, the latter option seems quicker. 

        

I didn't have a better place to include this shot of the mountain pass to Hythenforge.

      

We head back to buy a Riddle-hintbook. "'Enjoy your purchase,' squeals the gnome, grabbing your money and running out the way you entered." We are slightly dismayed to find no new items in our inventory, but (hoping that the hintbook will invoke itself automatically) we head back to meet the Riddler. When we step into the riddling square and are asked a riddle, the following unexpected event occurs (as with most other encounters, this is all conveyed entirely via several short screens of text).

        

Your Riddle Book jumps out of your pack and begins to glow! It flips open to a page near the middle where one phrase seems to stand out from all the others. You ponder the word, then place the Riddle Book back in your pack. The book says "[whatever the riddle’s answer is]."

            

Let's hear your best alternate answers to this one in the comments.

        

The face says, "Very good" and vanishes. The process repeats as we cross through twelve different riddle squares. The process repeats as we cross through twelve different riddle squares. We see a few repeats, but the riddles we see (with answers provided here; highlight to read) are:

     

• What do you get when you cross an Orc with a Dragon? A: Fried Orc
• How long was the Hundred Years War" ? A: 121 years
• Who is the author of this game? A: Howard Feldman
• You don't get down off a horse, you get down off a? A: Duck
• What has hands and a face, but is neither human nor animal. A: Clock 
• When is a wall not a wall? A: When it is a secret door
• Why did the bird fly to Aegea for the winter? A: Too far to walk
• Why did the chicken enter the Portal? A: To get to The Other Side

         

A few of these riddles are funny, one or two I could guess the answer to on my own, but I don’t think anyone could figure these all out correctly on their own.
     
At the end of this passage, a single square is left unexplored. Entering this "hidden shack" reveals the Riddler in his home. Despite his deadly defenses I’m still expecting a civilized conversation, so I’m heartened when he tells us that "You are wise indeed, I grant you." Rather to my surprise, he goes on to say that "you shall never get my treasure! You shall now die." I hadn’t even realized that he had any treasure, aside from perhaps being the owner of some tattooing equipment. He flings a hidden knife at Elphaba, who dodges it (presumably after a dexterity check). We then enter combat.      

       

I knew the Riddler was a criminal, but I never thought of him as a common pickpocket.

       

The Riddler has 200 hit points and 5 armor points. I was hoping for a man in a green suit covered with question marks, but instead he looks just like one of the Smythetown Sentry guards. He is moderately tough, rarely misses, and hits hard. Each successful attack does 8-12 damage (even after our armor bonuses). A new game mechanic is also revealed: in addition to losing hit points, each of his attacks results in the theft of 20-40 gold. The thefts are more of a curiosity than a hindrance, since we have over 1000 gold. In any event, he isn’t a serious challenge and goes down without much trouble.

We’re rewarded with 84 experience each, a locked chest containing 900 gold, and then a second, unlocked chest "on the Riddler's lifeless corpse." It contains 837 more gold pieces (written as "GP" for perhaps the first time in the game), a speed potion, and a piece of paper with the number 3126 written on it. In a final amusing (but nonsensical) twist, we are told that "You all feel more Intelligent after successfully answering the Riddler's riddles. +2 intelligence and +2 wisdom for all!" To complete the Riddler quest, the number 3126 is of course the combination to open the safe we discovered earlier. It provides us with yet another 5000 gold, "and six self-adhesive tattoos of the Viper Alliance symbol. You each apply one to your upper forearm. Doesn't look half bad." My kids are always finding and bringing home self-adhesive temporary tattoos; if these viper tattoos stick on half as well, then we should be in no danger of them wearing off anytime soon.
         

The Vindow Viper? [Chet  here. I would have captioned this: "Dream about a reefer five feet long . . ."]

          

With no other obvious leads in town, it’s time to set out in search of the Pitbeast.

      

Time played: 25 hours. 6 party deaths. 2 reloads. 2 crashes. 

    

****

    

Previous entry in this series

 

Next entry in this series 

06/18/2026 

 

Game 579: Multi-User Dungeon (1978)

 

          

Multi-User Dungeon

AKA "MUD1" 

United Kingdom

Independently developed

Written in 1978 for a DEC PDP-10 at the University of Essex 

Date Started: 12 June 2026

      

*****

 

MUD Day is Saturday, 20 June 2026!   

 

Join me in the Multi-User Dungeon as hosted by British Legends.

    

I will be in the game from at least 18:00–22:00 UTC. 

 

See the bottom of this entry for further instructions and matters of etiquette.

 

****** 

     

In some ways, the entire history of CRPGs can be seen as an attempt to mimic the narrative flexibility of a tabletop RPG session. If we were to judge CRPGs solely against this aspiration, however, we must regard them as a dismal failure. Fifty-one years after the first "pedit5" player fought a goblin in a hallway, the average CPRG player still can't smash a window, light a fire as a distraction, or trick a bandit by pointing behind him. Not only can the most powerful character in Skyrim not make his own bid for the throne, he can't even speak his own dialogue to his wife. If he could, she wouldn't be able to respond.

      

CRPGs have always worked within these limitations by adapting only certain aspects of the tabletop experience. In the early days, some games focused on logistics and combat. They let the player imagine his own game world, motivations, and dialogue, stuck him in a wireframe dungeon, and simply tried to replicate the mechanics of tabletop combat. These games, for whatever reasons, are the ones that were affixed with the "RPG" label. A second effort, just as valid, involved minimizing the mechanical content and emphasizing the narrative content and flexible role-playing through verb-noun commands. Its flagship product was William Crowther's Adventure (1976), later called Colossal Cave Adventure, the inspiration for Zork (1977) and an entire line of adventure games, both text-based and graphical. Although we later regarded them as a different genre, the intention of the creators was no different than that of the creators of Wizardry or Ultima. Here's a quote from Dave Lebling, one of Zork's creators, in the December 2015 U.S. Gamer:

      

The kind of D&D I played was sort of a slight twist on regular D&D, which at that point was still in the boxes. It was the old, old, old D&D. The dungeon master who ran our group way downplayed the number parts. It was all about storytelling for him, because he loved to just talk and evoke the environment you were in and all that, instead of, oh, well, you have a +1 and he's got a -2 . . .

     

All that numeric stuff really pushes you away from the story and into the nerdiness, if nothing else. I mean, it's nerdy enough without the numbers, but it gets even nerdier with it. That was a good D&D sort of background in terms of trying to create a story, instead of trying to just be obsessive about the numbers.

       

If history had gone another way, we would regard Zork, Spellbreaker, and King's Quest as "CRPGs" and everything this blog has been covering for the last 16 years as something else. "Battle simulators," maybe. Quest for Glory would be regarded as an "RPG-battle simulator hybrid." This blog would be the "Battle Simulator Addict."

     

Although later commercialized by Infocom, Zork began as a team effort on the PDP-10 mainframe system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before TSR, owners of Dungeons & Dragons, threatened the creators with legal action, there was a period in which the game was called Dungeon. It was this version that made its way over ARPANET and various other file-sharing networks to University of Essex student Roy Trubshaw. An instant fan, he started building his own adventure game in 1978. Because he envisioned it as a game in which multiple players could interact in a Dungeon-style game world, he called it Multi-User Dungeon (MUD, later MUD1 to differentiate it from other games of the same style). He was joined in 1979 by Richard Bartle, who took over as the primary developer of the game when Trubshaw graduated in 1980. That same year, the University of Essex connected directly to ARPANET, and Multi-User Dungeon was playable by a global audience (for more on the birth of MUD, I recommend Jimmy Maher's excellent article on the subject).

     

MUD retained Zork's well-written and evocative descriptions of places, inventory puzzles, and a general "main quest" to collect as much treasure as possible (oddly dumped into a swamp instead of stored carefully in a trophy case). But it also added elements more suited to CRPGs, including experience and leveling. The multi-player aspect ensured that each player faced a world of human-controlled NPCs whom he could fight, engage in alliances, and rob.

        

Starting out in MUD.

       

The official MUD changed hands several times in subsequent years, from the University of Essex (1979-1983) to the Dundee College of Technology (1984-1987), to CompuServe (1987-1999). CompuServe renamed the game British Legends, which was subsequently adopted by Viktor Toth when he rewrote the game in C++ and made it available online starting in 2000. (During this time, "MUD" changed from a single game to a genre with many descendants; we'll cover that next time.) That brings us to the present.

    

The game begins with a quick character creation process. The player gives himself a name and designates a sex, and then the modern incarnation, at least, emails a password that will work until the player does something to kill his character permanently. The character has attributes (strength, stamina, and dexterity), and the game tracks a score based on his various accomplishments.

      

My mess of a partial map.

       

Exploration in MUD takes place in a world called The Land, not as interesting as Zork, but realistic in its general design—except that dozens of adventurers are for some reason tromping through its fields and forests. Every player begins in the safety of the Elizabethan Tearoom but is flung into the world when he exits the room to the west. From wherever he lands, he can explore a world bounded by dense forest to the north, a wall to the east, more dense forest to the south, and an ocean to the west (the ocean is not actually a boundary, as we'll see). Within this world are a mine, a railway connecting the mine to a jetty, a crumbling ruin, a mausoleum, a misty graveyard, a cottage with almost 20 rooms, a hut, a cave, and various other features. Because the scale is inconsistent and directionality is not always reciprocal (i.e., you may leave one area to the east and arrive at the next via the north) or even two-way, the game is difficult to map. I did it (using Trizbort), but the resulting mess makes me think that the map is better thought of in figurative terms than literal ones. Indeed, if you Google MULTI-USER DUNGEON and MAP, you are less likely to find a neat arrangement of blocks a la Shay Addams's Quest for Clues and more likely to find the conceptual map created by Trubshaw and Bartle and published by Bartle in the September 1984 Micro Adventurer. It was this map that alerted me to additional explorable space beyond the western jetty.

    

The map referred to in the preceding paragraph.

       

Descriptions of these locations are generally well-written and evocative, which is slightly ironic because when many people are playing, so many messages are flying by that it's hard to remember where you are at all, let alone read the description. Some examples:

    

• Study: This is the old study used by the gravedigger who once owned this cottage, where he read up on his craft. It is decorated in sombre colours, and the windows are small and dirty. On the south wall is a large bookcase reaching up to the ceiling, made of an enchanted oak.

• Sundial in pine forest: This is part of  a large pine forest. To the northeast, the forest opens up onto a magical glade, but in the other directions is more forest, some of it too dense to allow passage. Before you stands an old, stone sundial, overgrown with ivy. The sundial has no gnomon, so cannot tell the time.

• Waterfall: Before you is an awe-inspiring sight; a waterfall plummets over a cliff and explodes in a dazzling crescendo of rainbow colour on the menacing rocks below. 

             

To the west is more game to explore.

        

Navigation in this world is with commands of a few words. Directions are simple: N, E, W, S, NE, NW, etc. If you get lost, OUT will move you, screen by screen, back to the Elizabethan Tearoom. SWAMP will move you, screen by screen, to the swamp. Other commands will be familiar to players of text adventures: GET, DROP, INVENTORY, LOOK, OPEN, UNLOCK, and so forth. The game deliberately hides some commands for puzzle-related reasons. For most commands, you only have to type as many letters as are necessary to distinguish a unique keyword: DR(op), L(ook), I(nventory), and so forth.

       

Of course, many of the commands are used to solve puzzles. Twenty years ago, on a blog called "kfsone's pittance," Richard Bartle offered: "The mausoleum is the only place in MUD1 (or MUD2) that has actual puzzles in it. I put it in specifically because people wanted puzzles and I didn't, so I showed them what a pain the world would be if it were all puzzles by giving them the mausoleum." There are indeed a bunch of puzzles—or perhaps, more properly, "riddles"—in the Mausoleum, each one written on the wall next to a tomb:

   

• MUD's rats reproduce fast! They reach sexual maturity in 35 days and give birth to 14 pups every 21 days. If you took one newborn rat home with you, how many rats would you have after 98 days?

• In what year was the following phrase first documented: tent all all all all tent (& / pospos)?

• K rymsramo vkx k uajcan dkcmocmf tcov ovuaa xvadvauqx dycmocmf ko k oyrw. Wamakov co kua acfvo jaooaux. Tvko kua ovaz?

• Find Milne [NDDL XKXAYB DX NK TAH JIWCO RZBS AZ B JASVKUFH JL VD] [ZLNZ HELAMH NN ZS TOB DIUGM LBHS AL B FAQNGQXT HZ RZ]

• Leave the Mausoleum by way of the cricket chirps: 19.64/s, 0.36/s, 19.64/s, 19.64/s, 0.36/s, 3.57/s. Where are we?

• For your birthday, I can make you the 52607th Duke, the 31870th Queen, the 1835th King, or what numbered prince?

          

The mausoleum riddles.

         

Typing the literal answer gets the associated tomb to open up, with some kind of treasure or encounter on the other side. I solved three of these but have no idea on the rest. 

   

But of course there are other puzzles in the game—those that involve the intuitive use of objects and the parser to produce results, just as in any text adventure. Some of the many that I annotated while exploring the land:

   

• How can I see in the dark, for all the many places that require you to see in the dark? 
• How do I get across the ocean to the other island or to the shipwreck seen from the shore?
• How can I pry up the golden bolt in the railway track? 
• How can I get a piece of valuable ore out of the mine's walls? 
• How can I survive the trip to the bottom of the cliff at Lover's Leap? 
• How can I unchain a sacrificial blade from an altar?
• How do I get the ruby out from the eye socket of an idol?

    

And this is in addition to all of the "what am I supposed to do at the . . . " questions that could be ended with a variety of locations (e.g., "sundial," "shrine," "badger's sett") and "what am I supposed to do with the . . ." questions that could be ended with a variety of objects and creatures. 

          

I have solved a number of these puzzles, and more besides, but I guess I won't be offering the solutions in my blog entries. It's against the etiquette of the game. While I normally don't shy away from spoilers for old games, here for the first time I'm entering a shared space, and I feel I must bow to the old adage of "When in Rome . . . " I suspect that somewhere out there in Internetland is a detailed spoiler site, but if so, it's not on the surface web. It's somewhat impressive that this information hasn't been widely spoiled on some GameFAQs site after nearly 50 years.

       

It was worth a try.

       

While we're talking about shared space, I should make it clear that these puzzles exist for every person simultaneously, and most of them can only be solved by one person. If someone else gets to the Mausoleum before you and opens all the doors, tough luck. If you need the axe to break down the door to the Royal Bedchamber but someone else got to it first, you'd better find some other place to explore. Resets of the game world do happen, specifically:

  

• When enough treasure has been dumped into the swamp that there's hardly any left.
• When someone with administrative power commands it.
• When nobody has logged in for a few minutes.

   

The third stipulation means that they happen relatively often these days, but it might be that they don't happen at all during the Saturday afternoon that many of us are playing.

   

For these reasons, many players eschew the puzzles and focus on the social interaction and player-versus-player combat. Talking with other players is a bit like having a conversation in the early days of chat rooms. Everyone is talking at once, some of them sending direct messages, some shouting to everyone playing the game. You talk to a particular person with the syntax:

 

TELL Chester, Hello! How are you?

   

Or you can just shout to everyone:

   

SHOUT I don't know how to play this game!

   

You can FOLLOW a specific user if you want to see how they do things. You can HUG, KISS, and TICKLE people, which seems to confer points to their score. You can GIVE them things and also try to STEAL from them. Of course, you can also ATTACK or KILL them. I'm told that it's against etiquette to attack anyone more than two levels below yours, but I don't think anything in the game prohibits it.

                 

A brief conversation with another player. She probably would have been creeped out if I'd TICKLED her.

        

Other players aren't the only ones you can attack. There are a handful of monsters in the game, including a zombie, an ogre, a dryad, a giant spider, one or more vipers, and a bunch of rats. Most of these enemies won't attack unless you instigate it. I had more success when I started combat than when the enemy did; I think it may be because when the player starts it, he can specify a weapon (ATTACK RAT WITH AXE), whereas the game doesn't always seem to assume the player is using a chosen weapon when he's just defending himself. I'm not entirely sure.

       

Once combat begins, it proceeds in rounds, sometimes dozens of them, as the game describes the action: "You narrowly side-step a limp slash by the zombie"; "You hit out at the rat with a mighty punch!"; "The savageness of a blow by the ogre sends you sideways." The underlying rolls aren't really transparent, but they seem to take into consideration your weapon, level, strength, and dexterity. Your stamina is your hit point reservoir, and you die if it reaches 0. You can FLEE combat to avoid this, but the action causes you to leave your entire inventory behind, and you lose points. To recover your stamina, you need to SLEEP and hope no one kills you in your slumber or leave the world entirely and don't log in for a while (you restore one stamina point per minute).

       

A very long, and ultimately fruitless, battle with an eagle.

          

Equipment-wise, you don't have much to help you in this game. There are sticks all over the place, and that's the best weapon that most players will get. Once you reach the third level, you can use an axe in combat, but as far as I know, there's only one of these in the game. I never found anything that seemed like a traditional RPG weapon or piece of armor, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. 

        

The overall goal of the game is to amass as many points as possible—or, more specifically, to amass as many points as necessary to reach the rank of wizard (i.e., "make wiz"), which essentially makes you invisible and gives you some administrative control over the game world. The three major ways to gain points are:

 

• Drop treasures into the swamp; the value of this is commensurate with the value of the treasure. I think the most I got was around 100 points, but there could be more valuable treasures than I've found. You can check the value of your carried treasure with the VALUE command.

• Kill Enemies, which give you a handful of points (e.g., 8 for the rats).

• Kill other players, which gives you 1/24 of their score.

• Solve certain puzzles.

         

I gain points, and level up, by setting a dryad  on fire.

         

Certain point thresholds are accompanied by title upgrades: "novice" to "warrior" at 400, to "hero" at 800, to "champion" at 1,600, and so forth. Leveling up is accompanied by increases in the game's attributes. "Wizard" or "witch" (for female characters) is at a distant 102,400 points. I managed to achieve about 1/100 of that score in a few hours of gameplay in which I explored mostly alone and wasn't attacked by any other players. I think a truly dedicated player, creeping online in the dead of night like me, taking advantage of frequent resets when no one else is online, and just dropping treasure after treasure in the swamp, might be able to make it to the top in a week or two of furtive playing. Obviously, it would have been much harder when players were always attacking and the treasure wasn't all yours.

 

My best score as of this entry. Shortly after this, I had to flee from a dwarf and got knocked down to about 1,260 points.

        

There are spells in the game, but not in the traditional RPG sense. They're all focused on interaction with other players. Each has a percentage chance of working based on the character level. SUMMON, when successful, will make a player drop his entire inventory and teleport to you. FORCE makes another player do a particular command. WHERE tells you a player's location. You can change a player's sex with CHANGE, put him to sleep with SLEEP, and DEAFEN, DUMB, BLIND, CRIPPLE, and (mercifully) CURE him. WISH, which works 100% of the time, lets you ask a boon from any player with the rank of wizard. That doesn't mean they'll grant it 100% of the time.

   

There are a lot of things I don't understand. Rules seem to change on the fly, I suppose based on a wizard who activates one of the game's switches. Creatures go from docile to hostile. Fighting between players is disallowed and then suddenly allowed. A B-52 bomber flies overhead and drops a payload (not kidding). You occasionally run into a beggar; sometimes KICKing him gets you points, and sometimes it provokes a tough combat.

      

There are two types of death in the game: One from battle, which is permanent (you have to create a new character), and one from environmental damage, which is temporary (you have to leave the game for a while). Environmental deaths include jumping off a cliff without a parachute, slipping on rocks, entering the gassy marsh with a lit torch, and a variety of other mishaps.  

      

Having played for about six hours now, and having mapped a decent portion of the game, I can't help but feel there are depths to it that the casual player doesn't experience. There are strange messages, entrances to the underworld where dangerous enemies await, and an entire continent across the sea that I still don't know how to get to. I feel a bit like the Man in Black in Westworld, insisting that there's a deeper level, a greater meaning. The distressing thing is, I'm not sure experienced MUD players will even tell me whether I'm right or wrong.

      

What is this "emerald and red" message about?

                

That will suffice for a long introduction. I'll have more after "MUD Day" on Saturday, 20 June, when I will be playing the game at least between 18:00 and 22:00 UTC (14:00–18:00 EDT, 11:00-15:00 PDT, 20:00–00:00 CEST, etc.). I hope many of you will join me to help me experience the game in proper multi-player mode. If you do decide to join.

 

• There are instructions here.
• To abide by game etiquette, no attacking players more than two levels beneath you.
• I'm told it's against the rules to play two characters simultaneously.
• And no verbal abuse.

   

Whether online or for my next entry, I'll see you soon!

   

****

   

Next entry in this series.

   

06/15/2026 

 

Yendorian Tales: Here There Be Dragons

 

I spent a lot of this session watching dragons fly overhead.

       

The land of Yendor is in trouble. Monsters have been invading the mines, threatening the production of Nuore, the reagent necessary to fuel all magic. The great wizard Zamora was struck down by a shadowy figure during a public address; the orb that was supposed to banish all evil was stolen. Our only clues to restoring order are to be found in Zamora's journal, which only members of the Society of Wizards can translate. The first one, the Hermit, told us to seek out the Diplomat. The Diplomat, who turned out to be the governor's advisor in Port Hope, asked us to retrieve a Grapnel Arrow and then use it to grab the Great Red Gem in a particular mine.

   

I ended the last session wondering what mine would contain the gem. Fortunately, I found it almost immediately. It was in the cave network northwest of Port Hope, and probably the reason I didn't note it during my first circuit of the cave is that I didn't register it as important. High on the cave wall, one square between it and the the party, it was out of reach except for the Grapnel Arrow. The only annoying part was having to flee from dozens of parties of bats on the way.

        

Grabbing the gem.

       

Using the Key of Port Hope to warp immediately to the city (hell, yeah!), I gave the gem to Paundor. He crushed it into a powder and then said to go to Moloch, where we'd find someone to help us further. He also increased our dexterity by 4.

      

As his dialogue closed, an apparition of the orb appeared, and Zamora's voice said: "Half of 'W' is sixth." This goes with our previous clues that:

   

• The first of last is third.
• The third of first is last.

 

"Half of W" probably doesn't refer to its position in the alphabet, since it's at an odd number (23). It probably means either V or U. We still don't know how many letters there are between "sixth" and "last"; if half of W is V, it's at least one, since no word ends in VR. So possible patterns are:

  

_ _ L _ _ V _ R

    

_ _ L _ _ UR

 

My crossword mind sees BELIEVER in the first case and SULFUR in the second, but there are of course many other possibilities, especially if we increase the number of spaces after the sixth position. For all I know, it's FILIBUSTER. 

    

We used the Key of Stachus to get most of the way to Moloch. You might recall that we learned last session that there is an island in the southeast quadrant of the game map, but it's surrounded by fog. I wanted to walk along the water to see if I could see the fog. It turns out that I couldn't, but while walking, I found a buried treasure chest that had the Key of Saccate, the starting city. That's great. Saccate has almost all the game's services, and it's close to the other starting cities, where I know I can pay for training, sell excess goods, sell gems and Ancient Scrolls, and get healed.  

        

I wipe out three parties of mages.

     

Even better, there was a second chest with a Scroll of Death. That sounded awesome, but it doesn't work in combat. Instead, it wipes all enemy parties off of the game map, which is a nice way to avoid having to fight or flee from all of them when I'm just trying to get somewhere. On the other hand, it can only be used once per rest, and the enemy parties repopulate fast. I tended to save it for when I saw parties of mages. It's hard to flee from mages (if you want to flee), as the final character to flee is the target of all attacks and is often killed.

        

Speaking of combats, my characters got some very powerful, almost game-breaking spells at Level 8. The two clerics got "Critical Wounds" and my wizard got "Spontaneous Combustion." Both damage all enemies on the screen (except those immune to fire, in the case of the wizard) for about 10-20 points. Very few enemies can stand up to a single round in which all three spellcasters unleash. The only thing stopping me from just spamming these spells is the cost in Nuore and the fact that I have limited spell points, but both increasingly ceased to be much of a concern during this session. Even if I wasn't finding processed Nuore (needed for spellcasting) and purple potions (which fully restore spell points) fairly plentiful, the economy has become so generous that I could just buy heaps of them.

      

Casting "Spontaneous Combustion" at mummies and zombies.

        

Before hitting Moloch again, I went to Mine 8 to its southeast. The lucrative mine had a lot of platinum, gold, and silver plus a large treasure chamber with plenty of gray (moderate healing) and white (full healing) potions. Enemies were demons and devils, but I mostly just ran from them. There were fixed battles with demons and mummies, plus a memorable one that combined swamp trolls, ghosts, and alligators.  

   

In Moloch, I had already met the person who would help me: Bysette. Last time, he demanded to know who had "sent me," and I had no answer. This time I did: PAUNDOR. "You will need to return a ring I lost before I can assist you anymore," he said. Where did he lose it? On a ship called Blackmane. He couldn't tell me anything else, so now BLACKMANE is one of the keywords I feed to all NPCs. When I get done exploring the cities I haven't explored, I'll return to the original ones and prompt those NPCs, too, I guess.

    

I kept working my way counter-clockwise around the world. As I approached the mountains to the northeast, dragons and wyverns started appearing overhead. When they fly by, which they do frequently, the game pauses for the animation. As long as the party isn't in their direct path, they just continue off-screen and I can move again. If the party is even slightly clipped by a wing, however, we enter combat. I can kill a wyvern—I did it back on Level 3, you may recall—but the red and green dragons are something else. Like demons and devils, they have an ungodly armor class. I can barely touch them. Still, I'm sure with a concerted spell-based effort, I could make it happen. I just wasn't in the mood to put in that kind of effort yet.

     

This wyvern is about to get me.

      

There are some caves depicted in the mountains that are only accessible from the desert side, so I couldn't explore them yet. I was able to enter one cave southeast of Devon and Duomin. It had a couple of treasure chambers with lots of ore and mining tools, which was ironic because there was nothing to be found in the cave's walls. Fixed combats were with thieves and mages.

   

Devon, which I reached next, was a dead city, like Magincia in Ultima IV. Set in the middle of a creepy swamp, it was swarming with skeletons, ghosts, and other undead. There were only a couple of NPCs. The first, a ghost named Paltivar, was haunting his own shop, moving crates, hoping his assistant Joseph would return. He reacted to JOURNAL and said that he'd help me if I found his assistant. More on that in a bit.

        

Devon's cemetery.

        

The second NPC was Joan, attending the grave of her husband, Winze, and somehow not getting attacked by all the undead in the area. She confirmed that Winze was a member of the Society of Wizards, but I couldn't get anything else from her.

    

Finally, a wizard named Alcott was holed up in the temple. He admitted quite freely that he was the one who had raised all the undead and sent the townsfolk fleeing. After a few bits of dialogue, he attacked me with an army of zombies, mummies, and ghosts. I destroyed them with mass-damage spells, but Alcott himself was stubborn. He finally fell to my blades, drank a potion, and disappeared.

     

Littering!

        

My notes said that Joseph was the NPC permanently in the drunk tank in Mantov. I assaulted someone to get a quick trip to the Mantov jail. Joseph wanted a bottle of Sweet Wine for his cooperation. The tavern didn't know what I was talking about. So that's another thing on my list of keywords.

       

How far in the past? Devon has been a ghost town long enough for a brand-new city (New Devon) to be built.

           

In Duomin, a mining town, everyone was abuzz because a kid had been kidnapped by a dragon. His mother, Whitney, begged for his return. The city had an armor shop, a mine shop, a tavern, a fighter trainer, and, surprisingly, a jail. I thought all arrestees went to Mantov, but apparently not, because Keith and Humphrey were in there for horse theft and drunk and disorderly, respectively. 

      

I think Victor was one of the guards.

          

I got another hit on JOURNAL with Prezlin, the owner of the alchemist's shop in New Devon. "Please find out how my old friend Winze is doing and let me know." When told that his friend was DEAD, he suggested that we meet at his shop in New Devon.

    

All the rumors said the dragon flew east after kidnapping the boy, so we went directly to the mine visible from Duomin, which I labeled Mine 9. Despite circling it three times, I couldn't find any sign of a red dragon or a kidnapped boy. What I did find, aside from a bunch of random battles with gnolls and mine trolls, were eight treasure caves. I came out of the mine pockets spilling with weapons, armor, ore, potions, scrolls, and processed Nuore. I don't know why the game got so generous when it had already been pretty generous.

       

I would pay real-world money for an "open all chests" spell.

                 

Further up the mountain range, I found a path into the mountains. Exploring was a pain in the neck, having to stop frequently for the dragon animations, flee from the occasional attack, and reload every time someone got frozen by a wyvern.

   

I eventually found my way to another cave, entered, and was almost immediately greeted by a red dragon blocking the path. Individual red dragons aren't that hard. One strategy I use for tough enemies is to toss a silver potion on them early, which poisons them and makes them take damage every round. If I can't seem to hit them, I toss gold potions on them every round, which reliably do 15 points of acid damage. My clerics heal characters as needed while my mage, taking a purple potion when he needs to recharge, blasts away with "Beam of Death" and "Ball of Power."

   

When the dragon was dead, I got a message that a young boy went running out of the cave. I warped back to Duomin with the key, talked to Whitney, and got 5,000 gold pieces and enough experience points for Level 9.

      

Nothing ever explained what the dragon wanted with the kid.

        

I warped back to Staccate and the surrounding cities to level everyone up, which cost almost 50,000 gold pieces, but I had about 300,000 by then. I was feeding the new keywords to everyone I encountered in both towns. In Helsingor, I got a hit on BLACKMANE with a Captain Chigon, who I must have missed the first time. He admitted to being a pirate and said that he disguised Blackmane as a passenger ship, then robbed the passengers during the first night at sea. He insisted on fighting for Bysette's ring.

   

When battle began, he was accompanied by about two dozen assassins, rogues, and harriers. Assassins have a chance of one-shotting characters during their attacks, so the battle took me a few tries. When it was over, I had Bysette's ring.

   

Before returning to Moloch, I decided to spend some of my money on enhancements. The guy in the Athaneum can add +1 to non-magical items and +2 to magical items. The cost was only a few hundred gold pieces per enhancement, not the tens of thousands I assumed. I'm not sure why I didn't do this earlier. I thought I could go immediately to Port Hope and get the same items enhanced up to +4, but it turns out that the guy there only works with items already at +3, so I have to find an intermediate enhancer.

       

Alcala's equipment after our visit to the enhancers.

       

I brought the ring back to Bysette, who gave me a "magic branch" and told me to seek out the Merchant. If it's not clear, I think these titles—Hermit, Diplomat, Merchant—all belong to members of the Society of Wizards. (I wonder if the Merchant isn't Prezlin, who I've already met, given that he owns a shop.) Again, a floating orb appeared with Zamora's voice: "It is in the middle backwards." This suggests, if taken literally, that the letters TI appear in the middle of the word. Putting that together with our previous hints, the options are now:

    

_ _ L T I V _ R

    

_ _ L T I U _ R

    

This assumes that "middle" is literal, and there thus must be an equal number of letters to the left and right of the TI. It also assumes the word isn't ridiculously long. I suppose it could be. It could be:

   

_ _ L _ _ V T I _ _ _ _ _ _ R 

   

But it's probably not. On the other hand, I can't get any real words out of the first two options, so either it's a proper name or a nonsense word.

         

Hmph. I'll bet it's just a regular branch.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• The game won't let you carry more than 50,000 lose gold pieces at a time. Once you hit that number, you have to store the excess in a chest. If you get the excess from trading in shops, I guess you get a free chest with it, because that's never been a problem. You can also occasionally find empty chests in dungeons and such. But if you don't have an empty chest and you hit the cap while exploring out in the world, you're out of luck. The game is inconsistent as to whether, when you don't have any "loose" gold, it will deduct from a chest. Sometimes it just says you don't have enough. 

      

Here, I have 269,472 gold pieces

        

• My thief has gotten a lot better with his lockpicks. He only springs about one trap in ten. Unfortunately, one of the traps that started showing up this session can curse multiple players. That status means that the character misses most attacks. It can only be healed at healers, as far as I can tell. It's not worth the risk. My spellcasters now open all chests. I wish I'd put a second wizard in the thief's spot. 

• Speaking of healers, you can donate money to their temples. I'm not sure whether there's any benefit to doing so. Nothing ever seems to happen. 

      

"Surplaying."

      

• The city keys subvert the crime and punishment system. You can get drunk in Saccate, and instead of leaving town by the main gate, just teleport somewhere (even right back to Saccate). Your crimes are wiped away.

    

I ended this session in the far north of the map, first by visiting what I labeled "Mine 10." It had Nuore, nickel, and iron. The centerpiece was a fixed battle with a unique creature called a paleoscinus, which looked sort of like a giant armadillo. He shot spikes at us, but he thankfully wasn't hard to hit.

      

I felt bad about killing him. He looks like a pet turtle I used to have.

             

Behind him was an exit to the desert—which I don't think I'm ready for yet—and a chest with the Key of Anatolay.

   

The town near Mine 10 turned out to be a town of giants—ogres, cyclopes, stone giants, and forest giants—with giant-sized buildings and a giant-sized jail. A human NPC is in one of the jail cells, but if I talk to him, he just says: "Since I have given you my map of the desert there is nothing else to tell you." I don't know what he's talking about, and I assume it's a bug. If this was my only way to get a map of the desert, that's too bad.

   

Most of the other encounters in the city were hostile. Giants have a "stomp" attack that does damage to everyone, so I avoided as many battles as possible. I was able to talk with Koleman, King of the Giants, in his throne room. He didn't have much to say, just that he resented the "little people" invading his space. 

       

Forest giants apparently wear animal skins inside modern, pristine buildings.

       

I'm almost done with my primary exploration of the main world, and I'm hoping things move quickly after that. This game is fun enough, but it's not a 40-hour game, and most of the things that I liked about it 10 hours ago are starting to wear a bit. 

    

Time so far: 26 hours 

     

****

 

Please remember that this Saturday, 20 June, is MUD Day! More information is found here.  

 

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