Retro Gaming Hacks

Get Covered in MUDs

Discover massively multiplayer online text adventures.

Over the past several years, the electronic gaming community has been aglow over the advent of graphical Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). From Ultima Online and Everquest to World of Warcraft, these games have been renowned for their ability to draw their players into playing them for days on end. All of these modern graphical MMORPGs owe a huge debt of gratitude to those little games spawned on a college campus back in 1978, the simple MUDs, the predecessors to every MMORPG on the market today. These MUDs and their immediate progeny are still available even now, appealing to a niche market of enthusiasts.

About MUDs

So what is a MUD? The acronym typically stands for multi-user dungeon, but you may also hear some people refer to the D as meaning dimension, diversion, domain, or even delusion. Regardless, a MUD simply refers to a text-based environment where players create their own characters and interact with others. While there are non-game MUDs out there, we’re going to ignore them—most MUDs are games. Many MUDs are done in the fantasy genre and focus on powering up your character via hacking-and-slashing, but those are not defining traits for these games. Science-fiction genre games are also enormously popular, and there are even some games rooted in historical events. One sub-genre of MUDs, MUSHs (Multi-User Shared Hallucinations), focuses more on social interaction rather than ...