MUSH Survival Guide: About MUSHing

Welcome to the MUSH Survival Guide! This guide is tailored around PersonaMush, but much of this advice can be applied for any MU* centered around roleplay, though many parts will be entirely subjective and would probably reward you with weird glances from your fellow players on other MU*s.

This guide also contains text and advice from many people, as this is something anyone can add advice or update. If you run across something that confused you that you wish to put in this guide to help others, put it in here!

Here's the chapters so you can skip ahead as necessary:

Chapter 1: Bare Bones Minimum- wherein Mushing is talked about in comparison to other mediums, and clients are listed. (That's this page.)

Chapter 2: How Do I Shot Mush?- wherein basic mechanics of communication are described.

Chapter 3: Can I Haz Character Nao?- Wherein you find how to be a good guest, survive the horrors(?) of the application process, and how to construct a well-rounded character for MUSHing purposes.

Chapter 4: Everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting with Headgods???- Getting your character ready for csys 2.0, combat RP advice, and other goodies.

Chapter 1: Bare Bones Minimum!

This is intended to get you from 'some guy keeps poking you about a MUSH thing god what is he even talking about' to 'connecting as a guest'. If you can connect, proceed to Chapter 2: How Do I Shot Mush?.

What th--

So some 'friend' of yours or other has repeatedly insisted you try this 'MUSH' thing, because it is full of awesome people and because you will totally enjoy reading white on black text for hours on end. However, they're blabbering about things like 'pose orders' and 'telnet clients' and you want to stab them in the gut to make them stop talking. This is an understandable reflex response, and this guide is here to ease you away from the violence and towards the wonderful world of /archaic roleplay mediums/.

What IS a MUSH?

So, what IS a MUSH, exactly? Well, let's try to frame it in terms based on your potential prior experience with roleplaying games!

IRC/Forums/AIM/etc:

If you're used to roleplaying via forums/bulletin boards or chatrooms, think of MUSHes as a midpoint between the two. You're roleplaying in a series of chatrooms, themed after specific rooms that would, in character, exist in the room. These tend to be laid out in a manner that from a 'physically moving' perspective are fairly rational.

So instead of a list of 'tavern, tavern(rafters), town fountain, jail', for instance, you might have the Town Square room, which links to the Tavern room, which links to the Tavern(Rafters) area, as an example. This is not nearly as cumbersome as it appears, because you aren't often moving between rooms in the middle of a roleplay. Also, many times, people will pick a room within the general area and just pretend it's whatever spot they want, so it's not as specific as it sounds. It's mostly just a way to keep scenes separate from each other.

MMORPGs/Second Life:

Let's say you're used to MMOs such as World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, or Second Life. MUSHes are text-based MMOs at their core, and spring from a thing called a 'MUD'. Imagine if WoW/CoH was all text-based and you entered commands to fight instead of clicking on buttons, and everything was visually described instead of graphical, and you have roughly the right idea. MUSHes, however, are more or less purely roleplaying, and generally have minor or no character progression systems, though exceptions exist.

While PersonaMUSH has a combat system, it's more a complex way to decide who gets hit by a fireball, taking into account each person's strengths and weaknesses and adding an element of randomness. It allows for strategy on some levels, but it also allows people a possible tool to help roleplay out how their character reacts to combat situations. It also organizes things like personas and how they affect your stats. Thus, unlike the game, you don't level up after beating a 'boss'.

If you're coming from Second Life, it's seriously just a text-based version of Second Life that's a little more specific.

Client? I'm not a Lawyer!

(Already have a telnet client? Click here!) So you want to connect and even see what the devil is going on. Well, you're going to need some kind of fancy client for that. It's okay, these are relatively painless to install and use. Now, since telnet clients are old hat, most of these haven't been updated in forever. This is okay; They do not NEED regular updates, so don't be alarmed if a client linked below hasn't seen work done on it since 2003 or whatever. It will work just fine. Thankfully, pretty much every OS in existence has at least a few clients.

Yes, you probably have a Telnet client already on your computer. No, you really don't want to use it for this.

Windows

• MUSHClient

MUSHClient Website
This is also a popular client, and it's probably one of the most regularly updated. Used to be a pay client, is completely free now, and has a variety of nifty features.

• BeipMU*

BeipMU Website
This is a popular client, though it doesn't have as many features as other clients. However, on the upside, it's not as complex and has many useful features, and many people use it and swear by it. Plus? It's free.

• SimpleMU*

SimpleMU Website
This is a relatively simple client to get used to. While it claims to be shareware, it will Mildly Nag at you for thirty days and then pretty much leave you alone. There are options to even turn off the nag screen. If you do obtain a full, legal copy of it, you get some additional features that are kind of handy, but hardly necessary to get the job done.

• MUCKclient

MUCKClient Website
This is a very simple client, and does not have a wide variety of features to it. If you're really seriously just looking to 'press button, receive MUSH', this is not a bad one to start.

• Pueblo

Pueblo Website
PersonaMUSH is set up to use a bunch of fancy things this particular client can handle. If you're feeling /sassy/, give it a try. It does not, by default, do a lot of the trickery regarding spacing of monospaced fonts Stuff will look weird until you futz with it.

• Mudlet

Mudlet Website
Simple to use and fast MUD client. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Give it a try to see what it can do.

• PotatoMUSH

PotatoMUSH Website
A graphical MUSH/MUD client for Windows and Linux.

Mac OS

• Atlantis

Atlantis Website
This is the one many Mac users swear by. As I don't /have/ a Mac, I can't tell you if it's really that great, but it's supposed to be, so give it a try?

• Savitar

Savitar Website
This is the other one I keep hearing about, so give it a try?

Huge List Here

A list of clients
I suspect this list is a little terrifying if you're new to MUSHes, so please try the top two first, and if they blow up, click these at random?

• Mudlet

Mudlet Website
Simple to use and fast MUD client. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Give it a try to see what it can do.

Linux

• Kmuddy

Kmuddy Website
Relatively simple client, comes with a binary so you don't have to compile it, all around good times. Has a variety of basic functions to make your life simpler and easier! :D!

Kildclient

Kildclient
Also a very userfriendly client, if you have troubles with KMuddy for some reason.

TinyFugue

TinyFugue Website
I'm only suggesting this because you already use Linux, so the concept of 'inordinate amounts of front end effort for maximum end-use benefit' doesn't particularly faze you. Requires ridiculous setup to get going in any rational sense, but can do basically anything once you get it running.

• Mudlet

Mudlet Website
Simple to use and fast MUD client. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Give it a try to see what it can do.

So... now what?

Now you're going to want to configure the darn thing to actually connect to PersonaMUSH. Unfortunately, EXACTLY how to do this changes per client, but it generally consists of something along the lines of:

File

> New Connection

> Name: PersonaMUSH

> Host: mysterymeep.net

> Port: 2012

> Type: (It will have some sort of option that says 'MUSH' somewhere, this is what you want. Not all clients have a type set thingy.)

Don't worry about password/name information just yet. You don't have a character yet, so leave these fields blank.

Alright, boot 'er up, by whatever means seem available. Ideally you have someone on hand to poke if things go wrong, but if all goes well, you should come across a /stylish/ ascii logo, and a bunch of words about logging in!

Type 'connect guest guest' and go to Chapter 2.

Kudos

Kudos to Banjooie (aka Shioriplayer) for writing out Chapter 1 & 2!