MU*ing
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MU*ing Made Easy
MU*ing is simple. Even people with little to no computer experience can learn it quite easily! This page will go over the simplest things about it and will help new MUers to get started and playing as soon as possible, as well as go over some of the easiest rules of MU* etiquette. Metiquette!
First off, by now you should be at the login screen of KushielMUX, with a red ascii rose picture on the left and various words on the right. This is where you first think of a name and create a character you want to play. Let's get into what, exactly, a character is- there's a big, important difference between a "player" and a "character".
Role-playing, to those who are uncertain about the term, is when you take on the persona of someone different from you in Real Life (in this case, a character in the Kushiel's Legacy setting). You then use this persona to interact with the various other people in the same setting - for example, you might want to role-play as a Night Court courtesan, or a Prince of Aragonia, or anything else that fits into the theme. In this case, you are considered "In-Character" or IC, because you are keeping Real Life completely seperate from your character, as opposed to being "Out of Character" or OOC, in which case the game acts more like a chat room.
A character, thus, is the person you're becoming when you role-play. Often, people get fairly attached to their characters and create a long and elaborate backstory to them - this is quite encouraged within KushielMUX as it helps to flesh out and give life to your persona as well as help you role-play the character more easily. For example, you might decide that your character had a rough childhood as an orphan, so he or she acts mean and spiteful as an adult.
A player, on the other hand, is YOU - the person behind the screen, controlling the character (or multiple characters!) like a puppet. When you are OOC, what you type is essentially said by you, such as in an IRC chat room or instant messenger. When you are IC, what you type is being said and done by your character. There's a subtle, but very important difference there. When you are In-Character you can give brief OOC messages to the room you're in by using the 'ooc' command - when you are already set OOC you don't need to use this. Confusing? You'll understand what I mean later when I describe the commands.
In any case, the most important thing to understand is that you as a player and your character are two seperate entities. Your character will not know things that you as a player might -- for example, if you're chatting with someone in the OOC rooms about something that happened in the IC rooms, your character will not automatically know that information too. Keep things like that seperate and roleplay your character to the best of your ability. (of course, some people like to blur the line between OOC and IC a little bit by making their character similar to what they look/act like in real life.. but that's fairly rare)
So how does all this wonderful roleplay take place, you ask? (or don't ask, I'm not psychic here damnit) Easy - there are two sections of the game playing area, as said earlier - the In Character area and the Out of Character area. Almost all MU*'s have these two sections. There's also a third, smaller section called CharGen, which is short for Character Generation and is where you go when you first connect. This place lets you create and flesh out your character so you can use it, and goes through step-by-step instructions on how to set all the appropriate information.
But first! Let's go over a few of the most basic commands of MU*'ing. First, you have to log in from the main screen -- choose a character name that doesn't sound silly or unthematic (Steve would be unthematic, Stephan might not), and type create <name> <password> to log in. The name and password must generally be one-word, but the <name> CAN have two words if you surround them with quotes. Such as create "Jon Smith" mypassword. If you want to rename yourself later (such as if you accidently put a lower-case starting letter) just use @name me=<new name> after you've logged in.
Pages - to page someone, type "page <person's name>=<text>" in the bottom pane of your telnet client (where you input text). For example, if someone is named Joscelin, and you wanted to say hi to him, you would type: page Joscelin=Hi! and hit the enter key. Joscelin would then, on his screen, see "Jane pages: Hi!" assuming your name is Jane. This is a hidden message that only both of you can see - not even staff or game admin can see these personal messages. Remember however that pages are generally ALWAYS out of character - even if your character is in character. For example, if your character, Jane, has gotten into a sword fight with the character Rolande, and you need to leave in real life for work or something, you might do this: page rolande=Hey, thanks for the fun roleplaying but I really need to leave! Let's wrap this up okay? and Rolande would page back 'Rolande pages: Sure!'
Say - The 'say' command is the easiest (and most boring) way to communicate with people. It can be used either In Character or Out of Character (and is most commonly used, in fact, OOC). Anyone in the same room as you will see whatever you say, but people outside the room will not. (you can see who is in your current room using look by itself) To use the say command, just type this in: say <text> where <text>, unsurprisingly, is whatever you want to say. Such as: say Man, the Bruins really lost badly last night! if you were in the OOC rooms chatting with people, or say Zounds! The Skaldi have invaded! Sound the alarm! If you were In Character. Note that 'say' when In Character is considered quite lazy and few experienced roleplayers will ever use it. Instead, they will use...
Poses - A pose is a bunch of text shown to the people that are standing in the same place that you are. It's used both in IC and OOC areas, but the IC ones are far different from OOC! Since OOC is just a laid-back section where you can chat with people, there's no story that goes on and no roleplaying, so poses and says tend to be short and simple. However, there's still a certain amount of etiquette - unlike a chat room, MU*'s are generally not the place for smileys or complete lack of punctuation, capitalization, or grammar, especially in the IC rooms but also in the OOC rooms and on public chat channels as well.
A pose can be written one of two ways: either pose <text> or :<text> written in the bottom pane of your telnet program (like MUSHclient or simpleMU). The quality of a pose depends entirely on the person's personal preferences -- some players like long, detailed, elaborate, multiparagraph poses that take 10 minutes to write, while others prefer short, quick, terse ones that keep the action flowing faster. Here are two examples of In Character poses:
#1. Franklin pauses at the window of the Royal Court and peeks in at the nobles down below through a broken section. He then promptly loses his balance and smashes forward through the window.
#2. Jonas de Aragon glances at the window for a moment, frowning thoughtfully with a hand on his chin. "How odd," he says aloud to the Royal Court, brow furrowed in brief confusion. "For a moment there I thought I saw a shape on the window-sill." After his words he goes silent for a while as the Queen continues her long and dreadfully boring speech; when Franklin the Assassin finally bursts in through the window he's not quite as surprised as everyone else and has just enough time to roll under the table and try not to pee himself in fear.
Neither are "better" than the other - quality is subjective and one person might be fond of the first while others might be fond of the second. Just find a style you enjoy most and stick with it.
Note: There are two other types of poses that do nearly the same thing ;<text> and @emit <text>. The first one does what "pose <text>" does, but it does not add the space in between the person's name and their text -- for example, ;dances. will show Janedances. to the room if your name is Jane, and :dances. will show Jane dances. The semicolon is used generally to add extra characters to your name in a pose -- such as ;'s expression goes puzzled would show: Jane's expression goes puzzled, whereas :'s expression goes puzzled would show: Jane 's expression goes puzzled. Notice the space in between? @emit, on the other hand (which can also be shortened to \\), lets you do a pose to the room without your name prefixing it at all, like Pose and Page do. This lets you be much more creative with your poses -- such as @emit With a ululating battle cry, Jonas de Aragon leaps at Franklin in an attempt to throttle him! Remember though that it's considered good form to put your name in there somewhere to identify yourself or else nobody will know where the darned @emit came from. For example, that @emit above would be fine, but @emit With a ululating cry, the man leaps at Franklin! would not be because nobody knows who "the man" is.
The only thing really essential to know about poses is that that's how roleplaying on a MU* works -- people pose their character's actions and reactions to each other to form a coherent story and interact with each other on an In Character level. You can find more detail about poses on this page.
Who/+who/+where/+staff - These handy commands let you see who is currently on the game. They each do slightly different things -- "who" by itself lets you see everyone in a fairly drab, uninformative list and +who and +where sort them out nicely. +staff lets you see the current game admin -- if you need any help at all, just use your newfound paging skills to flag one down for help!
Help/+help/news - Speaking of help, these three commands are your best friend. "Help" shows commands that are built-into the MUX - you will largely recognize these by the prefix @ in front of the command, such as @emit. That's exactly how you type them in, too -- with the @ and everything. Anything that is not in +help is found in regular help. +help, on the other hand, shows all kinds of game-specific commands that the staff of KushielMUX have written to help you roleplay, find people to roleplay with, etc. It's seperated into IC and OOC commands for ease of use - the commands can be used at any time, however. To read topics, just type in +help <name>, such as +help news or +help background. Easy!
News is slightly different - rather than actual commands, the news files explain, in glorious detail, all kinds of information about the game setting and the game rules. This is where you can find anything you need to know about specific details about the theme -- everything from the geographical location of Terre d'Ange to what clothing they wear in Caerdicca Unitas. Even if you have never read the books - or even heard of them! - you can browse through the news files and learn all you need to know. To read them, simply type news which shows the broadest categories, then news <name> to browse through them (such as "news countries", which shows details about each country).
A related command is +beginner which will display a list of the basic MU* commands and what they do. Use it!
Wow, that was easy. With the commands above you should be ready to play in no time. When you first log in you will be in Character Generation, called CharGen or chargen for short. This is where you will go through a series of rooms, setting up the data and details for your character's persona. While you're in chargen you can page other people and do generally any other command that a person who is already set up can do -- you just can't roleplay yet. When in doubt about anything at all, ask a staffer via page or use the newbie channel (nn <text>, such as nn Help! How do I move on to the next room in Chargen??) and if there are people around they will try to help you. If nobody does help you, just be patient! Sometimes people are busy. If you ask a second time and nobody answers, then.. well.. I don't know. That's never happened before!
In any case, once you get the hang of MUSHing and have seen some people posing, you'll do fine. It's very easy, and nobody will feel bad at all if you need help on something. We've all been there at one point! (Except me, of course. I was born MU*ing.)
The next page can be found here. It will describe the specific stuff about KushielMUX you might want to know.
