What's a MUD?

A MUD is an acronym for Multi-User Dungeon, or Multi-User Domain. It is an all text MMO, with completely endless possibilities. They are almost always role-playing games, and they are typically player driven to a certain extent.

MUD's are played by issuing text commands to a text world, and then living the experience in your imagination. From my experience, they are extremely fast paced, but very difficult to learn. I see MUD's as the exact middle ground between tabletop gaming, and full blown 3D rendered worlds. The gameplay is automated, but real-time turn based. And the entirety of the world is in your imagination. All of the people you group with and encounter in the world will see things different than you, but they are all bound by the same rules. And at the same time, they are also able to contribute to and change the world that they are in. MUD's truly breed heroes of online gaming.

But there are flaws! MUD's are neither of the extremes, and can easily get tiresome when you know that there are better ways of fulfilling both gaming urges. I will delve deeper into some of the pros and cons of MUD'ing at the end of the week, when I do my review of Medievia.