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I was 11 or 12 visiting my dad, some 15 years ago, in Utah where he had a new job. He lived in an apartment complex adjacent to the driving range on the golf course (figures). A co-worker of his had a son my same age and while I was out there I just ended up hanging out with him 'cuz he loved video games like I did and dad was working anyway during the day. Half the time we'd play mortal kombat 2, the other half we would play a mud (multi-user dungeon).
The mud was awesome. It was my first encounter with a desktop and the guy's dad had built it himself, so it was evidently top of the line. Whatever. The mud let you pick from about 4 different characters. I only remember the one I picked, the sage. You could also pick your gender. Apparently, since you're never going to see your character anyway, the only way gender affected game play at all was that some certain tavern or something only allowed women to enter. I chose female. I never saw the tavern.
You only got one turn per day. I can't remember what determined the end of your turn except that you couldn't do anything else. One of the things you could do was enter the dungeon. You could gain, I believe, one level per day, or perhaps you could just go into the dungeon once per day and could stay until you died. I don't remember. I managed to find a grass collar in a dungeon that dropped off a giant spider. It was the first piece of armor I had ever gotten. Well, I should've left it on the ground because it was cursed and I couldn't take it off without paying a hefty sum of money to someone in town.
One of the coolest things about this game was after you explored the dungeon for your turn, you got to equip/spend your fat loots in town. For, I think, the price of the components, you could go to the tavern and buy a drink with anything from bat's wing to horse blood in it. If you chose bad components, you might simply die (end of turn for the day), or you could gain a huge stat boost (cha ching!). I did that every chance I got, and that's how I know it could kill you :/
If that was one of the coolest, then the coolest was the ability and way to interact with other people. The difference with this ancient "mmorpg" and its new variants is that in this game, you couldn't interact (besides messaging or sending money for newbie help) in real-time as far as I know. So, as you might expect, the only way to run in to someone was when they were asleep (this was my only experience)! And this led to interesting results. I was so poor that I slept on the ground  But I once traveled to a person's house that was much better off than me evidently, because they were in a castle guarded by gargoyles, ya! One time I found someone not guarded by gargoyles. He did, however, sleep in some nice and shiny armor. Shiny enough to make me want to take it. I tried stabbing him in the neck while he was sleeping but all I managed to do was wake him up. He killed me. I lost my turn.
My vacation was soon over and I never played that game again.
And att this point, you're probably like, "Ya, great, you ever going to get around to telling us the name of the game?" Well, that's the point of this blog entry, for you guys to tell me the name of that mud. I've search all over the internets with as clever a search I could muster on google, but I still haven't found it. I'm hoping that someone here is as old as I am and has also played it. I'm not above begging. Please, if anyone even has a good guess, then let me know. I really want to see if anyone still has a server of that game running. 'Was so awesome.
 
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United States626 Posts
sounds a little like Seth Robinson's "Legend of the Red Dragon" with some extra mods installed
there is a modern equivalent that runs on php (i.e. web-based)
Legend of the Green Dragon
technically, I think you're talking about BBS "Door" games, which were popular in the late 80s, early 90s, a little before MUDs, which were run off telnet
before SCBW, I logged 5000+ hours on this one MUD...totally raged when my mom accidentally picked up the phone
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Thanks for all the info. I just made a character on lotgd.net, hehe. Definitely a different game, but I'm gonna check it out.
I remember when we had dial-up... I was playing Ultima Online at the time. Those poor people never realized why calling someone's house was so enraging.
edit: I see on the "about" page where the game pays homage to the original/its inspiration. Don't think that was it either, but lotgd seems cool so far nonetheless 
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United States24751 Posts
I've never played a MUD. My sister's friend used to play Ruins Mud and told me all about it. Of course this was a long time ago and I barely remember it :p
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United States626 Posts
yeah we're about the same age, I remember playing these types of games and they were so fun for me when I was in my early teens
you can check out http://www.bbscorner.com/doorgames/doorgamedescriptions.htm which has a list of the most popular games --> your description also sounds a little like arrowbridge
LOTGD is a lot of fun, especially if you play against friends / people you know
I wonder if there's any interest in starting a TL league, especially since there's a limit on how much you can do per day so skill/intelligent play matters more than hours spent
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I never even saw MUDs until nerdy anime girls were playing them in high school.
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i used to play a few muds several years ago. now i just log on occasionally so my characters don't get deleted.
good thing about muds is that they are quick/easy to play, barely affect your computer performance or internet speed at all, and good for killing any extra time you may have (like 10 minutes or so).
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Wow this is awesome, I'd never heard of BBS games. I played a MUD called Medievia for many years and got a lot of fun out of it. These look appealing because of the slow pace. I'm giving LotGD a try.
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i used to play discworld mud. so much better than modern mmos and i didn't even read discworld. ^_^
still login to not get deleted every year or so.
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I used to play Darkpawns MUD, but they closed it like 7 months ago
I had so much fun playing MUDS. There is something about them that makes them awesome. I also think it really improved my vocabulary as a young kid
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My MUD = t2tmud.org. 10 years and going strong.
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I still play a few MUDs, and have been for nearly ten years. Good times.
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Thanks for the replies guys. A good MUD is like a good book. There's probably a movie, but your own imagination is better. A good MUD doesn't lag, cuz it takes less than a tenth of a second to load the page, your computer can run it on max while streaming (lol), and there's just enough human interaction to avoid being alone, and just enough solitude to avoid raging at all the noobs.
Ya, it's sad that so many have never experienced them.
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EPT
