MUSH Survival Guide: MUSH Basics

Welcome to Chapter 2. If you're looking at /this/, you should be in the following situation.

1: You should have a telnet client running, and know what that even means.

2: You should have an open connection to PersonaMUSH running.

3: You should have just typed 'connect guest guest', and a bunch of text should have just scrolled at you.

If this doesn't describe your situation, please go back to Chapter 1 now, or nothing after this will make sense.

What just happened

Alright, what you just saw was a metric boatload of text, a staggeringly small amount of it is important right now. Ignore the babbling about yelling at gods personalizing files, and there being no place like home.

Let's look at a sample of what the 'OOC Lounge' might look like. This text looks like this.

Velvet Room - OOC Lounge

        The Velvet Room is a comfortable, yet strange place outside space and time...     

That above us is a snippet of the 'description' of the room. Basically, it's what the room would look like were you in it. While roleplaying, presumably your character is inside the room, so act accordingly. Of course, this is an out of character room, so it's not too important, but it's nice flavor text.

Ryotaro Dojima [U] <None>              Suggestion Box <SB>                    
Deidra Doyle [SEES] <Xuanzang>         Fortune Teller                         
Maki Sonomura [NWO] <Matsu>            Anzu Momonoki [NWO] <Ailuros>          
Mitsuru Kirijo [SEES] <Penthesilea>    Shinjiro Aragaki [DS] <Castor>         
Will Dent [KDA] <None>                 Yosuke Hanamura [KDA] <Jiraiya>        
Shiori Hibiki [SEES] <Pheme>           Naoya Toudou [DS] <Seimen Kongo>       
Ran Itoh [SEES] <Verthandi>            Yuzuriha Hatsumi [KDA] <Hattori Hanzo> 
Natsuko Choukawa [S] <Ofnir>           Eriko Kirishima [KDA] <Nike>           
William Blazer [NWO] <Golem of Prague> Baofu [DS] <Odysseus>                  

This is a list of the people currently in the room, plus a couple 'Objects'. We'll get into objects later. For now, let's examine, at random...

Yosuke Hanamura [KDA] <Jiraiya>

Yosuke Hanamura is this dashing fellow's name, he is in the KDA faction, and his current 'Persona' is Jiraiya. The last part isn't too important to remember right now.

<W>est:                   Demon Artist's Gallery - Meeting Room
<N>orth:                  Nameless' Piano - Quiet Room
<E>ast:                   Elizabeth's Corner - Free Code Room

These are examples of where you can 'move' to, by typing 'n', 'w', or 'e'. You can also type north, west, or east, if you enjoy writing words.

Can I do things now?

Now, let's teach you how to hit buttons and influence people!

The absolute last thing you should have seen looks sorta like this, right?

<Guests> Guest has connected.

<Guests> is a 'channel'. To you WoW players, it is similar to General, or Trade. To you IRC users, consider it a global IRC room people can choose to listen in on. Depending on when you connected, people may be frantically greeting you or some such enthusiasm. To reply, consider one of the following:

+g Hello! or +g :waves hello!

The difference between these two is pretty slight, and hinges entirely on the presence of that colon. Without the colon, the top line looks like this:

<Guests> Guest says, "Hello!"

And with the colon, the second line looks like this:

<Guests> Guest waves hello!

Along the same lines, people in the room will likely be interested in interacting with you as well, and doing so is a fairly simple process as well! Consider one of the following:

" Hello! or :waves hello!

This does precisely the same thing as the previous commands, but only displays it to people in the same 'room' as you. That being, in this case, the OOC lounge. (If you're interested, type 'who' to see who is connected to the MUSH as a whole.)

By the way, I typed 'help' for help, and...

You may have typed in an incorrect command somewhere along the line, and received a message that says:

Huh? (Type "help" for help.)

This message means the MUSH did not understand what you just typed in. As a complete MUSH newbie, I would highly recommend you not attempt to navigate the default help menus. They are coded primarily to teach the PennMUSH coding language, and are a little arcane and obtuse for the first time user. We'll be explaining enough to get you going, fear not!

Advanced Communication Techniques

Paging

During the course of your guesthood, you may find that 'say' and 'pose' just don't have the functionality you want and desire. For instance; private communication between two or more people. Try the following command, with our completely randomly picked brave, heroic friend, Yosuke Hanamura:

page Yosuke=Hello! or page Yosuke=:waves hello!

Just like say, pose, and the channel commands, this will alternate between:

You page Yosuke Hanamura with 'Hello!

Long distance to Yosuke Hanamura: Guest waves hello!

This can only be seen by the intended target of the page. If you are solely paging one person at a time, you only need to indicate their name once. For instance:

page Yosuke=Hey!

page Hey, are you listening to me?

page :prods until you awaken.

This will continue to send to Yosuke Hanamura until you specify another person. A word of advice, though; The MUSH recalls who you last paged on a character-basis. This means that if you disconnect, and reconnect, it is highly suggested you specify a target on your first page, or you might accidentally be talking to the wrong person!

Now, when you get incoming pages, for instance:

Yosuke Hanamura (Yosuke) pages: What's up?

You'll notice the word (Yosuke) in brackets. This is an 'alias', which effectively just means you can type 'page Yosuke' instead of 'page "Yosuke Hanamura"' which is just a pain in the neck. Most people on the MUSH--including you, incidentally, right now--have aliases set for easier paging.

Global Bulletin Board

---------------- Unread Postings on the Global Bulletin Board ----------------
Public (#1): 13 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) 
Announcements (#7): 26 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)  
Character Announcements (#10): 2 unread (1, 2) 
Scene Announcements (#11): 11 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) 
Vacations (#12): 13 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) 
Code/TP/Other Suggestions (#13): 6 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) 
Code Changes/Bugs (#14): 2 unread (1, 2)  
Daily Spotlight (#17): 8 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) 
IC News (#19): 15 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) 
IC Rumors (#20): 35 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35) 
Cutscenes, Etc. (#27): 5 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 
Character Information (#28): 12 unread (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) 
School News (#29): 1 unread (1)
--------------------------- BBS at 13.3\% capacity ---------------------------

Now, what the heck did any of that mean?

What you just saw there is an example of what the Global Bulletin Board, or 'bboard' of the MUSH, might look like when you connect. As a guest, the MUSH assumes you haven't read a single post, so will show you every post on the board. Let's read a post now. Try the following, in order!