[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt.: Multi-User Dimension]
1. A class of {virtual reality} experiments accessible via the
Internet. These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have
multiple `locations' like an adventure game, and may include combat,
traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability
for characters to build more structure onto the database that
represents the existing world.
2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often lowercased and/or
verbed; thus, one may speak of going mudding, etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU-
form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the
University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of that
game still exist today and are sometimes generically called
BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by
earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name MUD was trademarked
to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto:
"You haven't lived 'til you've died on MUD!"); however, this is false
-- Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD' in the public domain in
1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark
claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the
myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the
MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many
of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social
interaction. Because these had an image as `research' they often
survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together
with the fact that Usenet feeds were often spotty and difficult to
get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish social
interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and
quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large
hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom
(some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early
1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to
emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building
as opposed to combat and competition (in writing, these social MUDs
are sometimes referred to as `MU*', with `MUD' implicitly reserved
for the more game-oriented ones). By 1991, over 50% of MUD sites were
of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle
aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of
TinyMud. In 1996 the cutting edge of the technology is Pavel Curtis's
MOO, even more extensible using a built-in object-oriented language.
The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will
doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with
new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. Around 1991
there was an unsuccessful movement to deprecate the term {MUD}
itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names
corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. It
survived. See also {bonk/oif}, {FOD}, {link-dead}, {mudhead}, {talk
mode}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {avatar}{bamf}{bonk/oif}{bot}{FOD}{frob}{IRC}{jack in}{link-dead}{MUD}{mudhead}{netlag}{spod}{talk mode}{teledildonics}{toad}{virtual reality}]