MUD

MUD /muhd/ n.  [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 PD 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 have been 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 1991, over
   50% of MUD sites are of a third major variety, LPMUD, which
   synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems
   with the extensibility of TinyMud. 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.
   There is now (early 1991) a move afoot to deprecate the term
   {MUD} itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of
   names corresponding to the different simulation styles being
   explored.  See also {bonk/oif}, {FOD}, {link-dead},
   {mudhead}, {talk mode}.