My Name Is MUD

Like millions of PC owners worldwide, I spend my quiet evenings brutally slaughtering innocent peasants, looting corpses, and fending off fearsome creatures of the night.

Hi, my name is Jamie Barraclough and I am a Giant Warrior.
Nightly, I join the rest of the Dark One's minions between the Rivers of Blood, and wreck havoc with my electrum sword, dark dagger and, yes, my keyboard.

Before you call the police, let me explain. The raping and pillaging that I partake in is purely on the Internet, and the world I live in from nine to eleven is in fact Sanctuary, a role playing game with hundreds of people playing worldwide.

The name of the game in this case is MUD (not to be mistaken with wet soil) and it stands for Multi User Dimension. MUDs are the next generation of role playing, kind of like a computerised Dungeons and Dragons.

A MUD is a fully interactive international role playing game, accessible to anyone with Internet access. MUDS have no graphics, relying on text descriptions and the user's imagination to create scenery. There are Muds in almost every major language, and even a few in more than one.

A MUD player creates and maintains a character, building his or her personality along with their physical attributes and statistics. Each character has a password, which allows the player to log-on from anywhere in the world.

A popular feature is that MUDs allow the player to converse and interact with people from around the world in a virtual environment of their choice. Friendships can be cultivated nightly, without even knowing the person's real name.

Some people tend to worry about the effects role-playing games may have on youth (the same people who find "messages" when they play there Bangles 8 track backwards). Collin "Ebhard the Nifty" Trudel, says "I think that when people take any game to seriously, they are at risk: role playing or not." He does not believe that MUDs pose any type of threat to the player's mental state.
"MrPink", from Burning MUD, says "I think that there is a certain type of person who is just naturally unstable; they'll go insane whether or not they role play. Who knows, maybe a few MUD players are budding Paul Bernardos; That doesn't have anything to do with the game."

There are thousands of different MUD types, ranging from Elizabethan England to the world of the Road Warrior. The most popular types are Sci-Fi and Fantasy, due, no doubt to the involvement of renowned authors such as Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks and Pierce Anthony in the creation and maintenance of the different worlds, as well as the setting of different MUDs in worlds borrowed from such books as the Foundation and the Dragon Lance series.

Simon "Vincent" Stachniak of Sanctuary MUD says that MUDs create an atmosphere of reality that is indescribable to those who haven't experienced it themselves. "If you want to explore the world, but don't want to lose brain cells, or get caught by the police... Then try a MUD, it's the next best thing." says "Vincent".
"Clayman the dark", also a player of Sanctuary Mud, says, "Some things transcend physical limitations, they let the mind take over, and the harshness of reality dull momentarily. A good MUD develops and moulds the player's mind to create a Zen-like state of enthralment. The lack of pictures makes it seem more realistic. Let the sheep and the bar codes play their Street fighter crap, the people who still retain their right frontal lobe need something better. I sometimes come away feeling enlightened, sometimes angry, but I always feel something. Very few things left in the world are worth doing. Sanctuary is appropriately named, it creates something that feels real, even if it is only for an hour or so each day. "

By: Jamie Barraclough, aka, Sushi the Hunting.