After making up a name, you need to create a password.
To create passwords, make up one different than the one you use to
access computers. Although muds encrypt passwords for storage, nothing
prevents an unscrupulous mud admin from intercepting that password and
using it for unethical purposes. It is also recommended that you use a
password with numbers and mixed upper and lower case letters in it.
After that one of two things will happen. Either you will
be notified that you have answered a wrong password, meaning you have picked a name someone
else is using, or it will ask you to create a character, with the
appropriate characteristics (what race, haircolour, title, etc.) If the first thing happens, just try again with
another name. If the second happens, you are in good shape.
They told me I had to register!
Some muds require all their players to register before being allowed
to play. Also, it may be the case that someone from the same place as
you has been causing trouble, so the admins of the mud in question
have decided to require only people from that site to register. If
this is the case with the mud you wish to play, simply follow the
instructions they give. In most cases they will give you an email
address where you should send your registration.
This mud does not in question do this as yet.
Name and password set, what next?
This is where you get to see why there is so little in common among
Muds from the player's point of view. Some Mud's will ask you a
series of questions about who you are and what sort of character you
would like. Others ask nothing more. Among the questions you might be
asked are: what is your email address? what is your real name? what
gender would you like to play? what race would you like to be? what
class would you like to be? etc.
I don't want anyone knowing my email address!
MUD Administrators have a legitimate need to know your email address.
No one else does. If a mud requires you to give your email address it
should either offer you the option of keeping it private, or it should
automatically keep the email private. If they do not keep your email
private and you desire privacy, do not play the mud. Do not complain,
however, that they ask for it.
In some cases a email-address is not required to play the game. Then you may
just fill out nothing at that appropriate spot. The mud will signify if a
email-address is obligatory.
Is it asking me for my gender?
No. The game wants to know what gender you would like your
character
to be. This means you can play a character of the opposite gender,
your own gender, or one of the alternate gender types which might be
offered. The other side of the coin to this, however, is that you
should never count on other people in real life being the gender of
the character they play.
What does it mean by race?
Many Muds, if not all, have a feature called character races. The term "race" in
these instances is not the same as the term used in modern society. In
fact, the term race would more correctly be referred to as
species. In fantasy type Muds, you will often see a selection of
"races" like human, orc, artrell, gnome, etc. When you are asked to
choose a race, a list of possible races should be provided for you.
What is a class? What is a guild?
In general, a class is a grouping of players with common abilities. A
guild as well can be said to have the same definition. Many muds, if
they use either of these concepts at all, add some very individual
nuances. To muds which do not have classes or guilds, the concepts are
naturally irrelevant. Those which have one or the other are often
using the terms in an interchangeable fashion. Finally, those muds
which have both often define class in a more generic manner than
guild. For example, on Nightmare, a class is like a profession and the
guild like a particular job. You might have people in the fighter
class who are in the templars guild, and others who are in the rangers
guild. In short, the guild is a way of specializing your class
abilities.
Other muds allow "multi-classing", which may mean joining multiple
guilds, classes, or both. It is always best to check out the "help
guild" and "help class" command on any given mud to see how it defines
these terms.
I am in the mud, what do I do?
There is no one answer to this question, as the answer will vary from
mud to mud. No matter what, however, you should see if the mud has a
"faq" command to get a listing of that mud's frequently asked
questions. In addition, you should learn how to use the "help" command
as well as find out about the rules governing that mud.
What are some common commands?
The following commands exist on virtually all Muds. [] around part
of a command indicate that that part is optional. <> indicates that
the text should not be taken literally. These commands naturally are
not likely to be found on non-English muds.
- help [<topic>]
Gives you help. If you specify a topic, you get help on that
topic. If you just type help, you will either get help on where
to find other help, or you will be put into a help menu.
- tell <player> <message>
Sends the string <message> to the player whose name is <player>
anywhere on the mud. Some Muds do not allow players to tell
to one another as it is viewed unrealistic.
- say <message>
Sends <message> to everyone who is in the same mud room as you.
This command is almost always aliased to "'", such that "'hi!"
is the same thing as typing "say hi!".
- who
Gives you a list of everyone connected to that mud.
- look around
Gives you a description of the mud room in which you are in.
- look at <object>
Gives you a description of the object in question.
Why is the mud admin ignoring me?
Admins in particular are prone to a mud disease called "idling". This
means that the lights are on, but nobody is home. An idle person is
simply someone logged in to the game, but who is perhaps not actually
at their computer terminal. That person is thus not really ignoring
your question, since the person is never actually seeing it.
If the admin is not idling, chances are that person is being
overwhelmed with questions or is actually coding online. Many LPMuds
will tell you that the person to whom you are talking is "idle" or
"editing". If you get that response to a tell, do not expect an answer
back right away. In addition, if it says the admin is editing (or
anyone else for that matter), then it is generally considered rude to
continue telling to that person as it makes it difficult for the
person to edit.
Many people these days have the ability to be on several muds at the
same time. It is therefore entirely possible that the person to whom
you are trying to talk is in fact looking at another window. To get
that person's attention, it may be ok to "beep" them (by sending a
control-G in a say or tell). Some people do not like others to do this
to them, however, so be careful about doing it too much.
The admins are being unfair, don't I have rights?
The short answer is yes, you have the right not to play the game. The
long answer is much more complex. First off, any reasonable set of
admins who wish to create a game which people will enjoy will
enumerate the sorts of behaviour you can expect from them. In other
words, admins on fun muds will state the rules of the game ahead of
time and will not deviate from those rules. That way you know what to
expect. In addition, if you do not like the rules, you don't get
involved with playing the game.
What prevents an admin from breaking their own rules? Absolutely
nothing. In one sense, a mud is like someone else's swimming pool. You
have absolutely no right to swim there, and they have the right to
throw you out just because you talk funny or say things they don't
like. Fortunately, there are plenty of muds out there with civil
administrations to make this nothing more than a passing nuisance.
A common misconception is that mud admins administrate muds for power,
and that arbitrary behaviour is a way of exercising that power. Though
there may be a few misguided individuals out there who do in fact
administrate muds for the sake of power, the fact is that no mud
administrator has any power over you. Remember, the worst thing any
admin can do to you is make you go play somewhere else.
A final thing to remember is that muds evolve and rules evolve with
the mud. Just because rules change does not mean the admins are being
arbitrary. Arbitrariness is reflected in sometimes applying rules and
sometimes ignoring them, not in creating new rules to fit unforseen
situations.
What about freedom of speech?
No, not even freedom of speech. Again, reasonable admins will clarify
in publically available rules what sort of speech (hate speech,
offensive language, or whatever) is not acceptable on that mud. You
may or may not agree with those rules or the political beliefs those
rules represent, but at least you do know where you stand on the mud.
It is thus up to you to decide if you can play under those rules or
not. In the event you encounter an unreasonable mud, there is nothing
much you can do but decide to leave. If it is a commercial mud,
however, deciding to leave can be some sort of leverage.
A common source of friction between players and admins is where
players decide to criticize admins. Most often, the players are not
really trying to criticize the admins so much as inspire positive
changes to make a game they love even better. In those cases, it is
always good to remember that the admin is a real human who is closely
involved with what the mud is. If you keep that in mind, you can often
help bring positive changes to the mud you play without
unintentionally striking a hidden chord in a sensitive admin.
What else is there?
Explore the mud! Most gaming muds have places called "newbie" areas
which are simplistic places for people new to the game to go and get
the hang of things. When you first log in to a new mud, you should ask
the others where the newbie area is. Also, read the login screen and
news which scrolls across your screen at login time, as they contain
important information about characteristics unique to the mud you are
playing.
Ask people questions. Just make sure you have read the help files
first, or you will be sure to annoy someone. In addition, try not to
choose a single person for your queries. Constantly being asked
questions by the same person can often annoy people as easily as
stupid questions.
What does LOK mean?
LOK means Land of Karchan. Next!
What does GHEP/WIC mean?
I have heard the term just once as I have
never heard it before. GHEP/WIC appears to be an acronym for Grand High Exalted
Pubah/Who's In Charge.
What does MIF mean?
MIF means Magicians of the Inner Flame.
When did this MUD first come on line?
Well, I first became a member of InternetUsersAssociation Interlink
in March 1994. I made my first HomePage approx. a month later. Somewhere in
the beginning of June 1994 I created the mud and made it available for play to the
Internet. (See for more information question 37)
How do I play the game?
First you have to register.
How do I register?
In order to register, proceed to
the following page: The LogonScreen
(http://www.karchan.org/karchan/enter.html)
Type in your (new, imaginary, fantasy) name (and make it a little
original) and a (imaginary) password and press Submit.
Please remember your name and password correctly, as each time you want to
start playing you need to provide these at the exact same page as above.
There are a few possibilities, once you have entered a name and password:
- The game will tell you that either your name or your password is
invalid. There are rules for entering a name and password, all of which
will be displayed along with the error message.
- The game will tell you that the password is wrong. This means this
name is already occupied by another player. Please press the Back button
and fill out a different name.
- The game proclaims you as being banned from the game. This means that
someone in your domain has done some evil things and your domain is
banned. Please send me an email and I will exclude you from the ban.
- Everything's cool, no error message, and you receive a big page called
"The room of Lost Souls" (see further)
In this room you are free to add details to the character you are about to
create. It is not necessary to provide all the details.
Once you press the Submit button on the bottom of this page, your
character will be created and be put in "The Cave". This is the room in
which all newbies start. See for more information in playing the game the
"help"command which you can type into the entry field.
Do not forget to press Quit once you are done, otherwise your character
will remain active and your game will not be saved.
What does MUD mean?
MUD Means Multi-User Dungeon, despite what
anyone says.
Is this game for free or do you have to pay?
No, you don't have to
pay anything and you can play whenever you like. However, if you decide to
send me money I won't stop you. *grin*
Do you require extra software to play the game?
No, just a
WWW-Browser (a good one) like Mozilla will do.
I am unable to reach your HomePage! Now what!
Possible, due to really bad
connection or my computer is down again as usual.
Whenever I type an already used command, I get an old page
back.
Hmmm, this depends on the Preferences of your browser. It means
the browser uses the page in the cache of the computer, instead of sending
the information off. Try to find some switch to turn the Verification
every time on or something like that. If you are using Lynx as
browser, then in stead of pressing Enter when you have selected the Submit
button, press 'x'. In case this all doesn't work, try something really
dirty, like putting the Cache space of the Browser to 0.
What is the use of the Chronicles and all?
I am trying
to get some story into the game and this is one of my imperfect
attempts.
What's a husky?
A husky is someone who has killed or deactivated
his browser without typing the command Quit first. He stays active and gets
killed automatically by the server in something like 1 or 2 hours. Please do
not do this! It pollutes the game. You can identify huskies by the fact that
they do not answer you, and if you look at them you will see that they have
been inactive from something like, 45 minutes or so.
What does the abbreviation BRB stand for?
BRB stands for Be
Right Back.
What's the goal of the game?
The game is to find a magic book
called Kyragem. If you find this you will be able to become an operator of
the game with unlimited powers. Unfortunately, due to my lagging behind in
my programming it is not possible to reach this yet.
In which programming language is the game written?
The server accepting connections is written in Java, the client is basically
an apache daemon with php support that you connect to using your browser.
The old version was written in
Ansi C, with
the use of a library from Thomas Boutell for the CGI-Interface, but as time
progressed this was more and more a hassle to maintain.
Where is the game-server located?
This used to be Europe, The Netherlands,
Eindhoven, Eindhoven Institute of Technology when I was still studying
there.
After I graduated, there was the problem of what to do with my server. I
hired a server together with one of my friends in the US at one time (this
was the first time that www.karchan.org became registered) but it was too
expensive. After a year I switched to WideXS, an ISP in Hoofddorp (near
Amsterdam) in the Netherlands. Right now this little server is in a 19" rack
with a lot of other servers, in a server room in Hoofddorp, quietly chugging
away at your websiterequests.
Was this game a school project?
No, it was my personal project and
I am still wondering why everyone keeps asking me this. Possibly because the
entire project started in college, where bandwith was cheap.
What's Lag?
Lag just means that you are having very long response
times, which means that your connection with the game-server and the
Internet in general isn't one of the quickest.
What's a morphy
Somebody who can change his (or her) sex.
I get a message that for some reason or other I am kicked out of the
game. What happened?
Sometimes the game does that if you are inactive
too long, if you have been kicked out by an operator for behaving badly, or
because the mud has found an error. You should be able to log back
on.
I get a message that I am already connected. What should I do?
It
is sometimes possible that you weren't able to type quit due to
circumstances beyond your control. In that case, when you log back on, the
server will notice that you are already playing. In that case you can choose
(with the checkboxed) wether you want to continue where you left off, or
don't want to play the game.
How do I build a mud?
I get these questions in my
mail in a regular and frequent way. I usually point them on their way. For
myself, I used Java for the server and HTML/Javascript/PHP for the client
connections. And a database called MySQL and
some other even less known stuff. The old way was in Ansi C, but that has
gone the way of the dodo. There's a description below.
I build the entire thing from scratch, without looking at source code from
other muds. Perhaps you outta check that out, though. I find I'm doing a
lot of things that people already have implemented somewhere else.
Development Process
- September 1994 - became a student at the Fontys Institute of Technology Eindhoven (which,
back then, was called Eindhoven Polytechnic)
- February 1995 - became a member of the InternetUsersAssociation Interlink (Interlink at http://www.il.fontys.nl) at
my school. This, basically, is the turning point in my carreer. (!)
- created my own Little HomePage (Maarten's HomePage, at
http://www.il.fontys.nl/~maartenl) (using JOE (Joe's Own Editor) to edit the
HTML files, and FreeBSD I used as the Operating System)
- played lots of Telnet Muds
- Created my First Guestbook in Perl for on my HomePage (swiped it from
the Internet and adapted it to my own needs)
- first implementation of mud (version 0), picked up the idea of creating a mud with WWW, my first implementation
was a "mud" created only using lots and lots of HTML pages all Linked
together (based on
CyberMUD,
http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/r/e/rei/WWW/GAME/intro.html)
- second implementation of mud (version 1), written a bunch of
Perl-programs as CGIs which processed information sent to them by Forms in
WWW Browser. (used lib. Perl Routines to
Manipulate CGI input, http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~mengwong/forms/)
- third implementation of mud (version 2), rewrote the entire thing in
common C, due to performance and memory reasons (used c-library found at Thomas Boutell at http://www.boutell.com)
- had to move mud to a friend's server, because the program was becoming
too much of a burden on the original server (where some 200 people has their
homepages and guestbooks) The friend's server was running Linux instead of
FreeBSD. (Linux at www.linux.org)
- decided to buy my own server, and installed Slackware Linux on it, and
ran my mud there.
- decided to upgrade to RedHat Linux for ease of use reasons (their
package manager was way ahead of Slackware) (RedHat Linux, at www.redhat.com)
- fourth implementation of mud (version 3), the entire thing stayed in C,
however I decided to upgrade the mud into making use of a Database.
Different databases were available to Linux. I choose MySQL (MySQL, at www.mysql.com) for speed. Had to adapt
entire C code into working with SQL statements (SQL=Standard Query Language)
MySQL came along with C-libraries I could use in my program to access the
database properly.
- Had finished with school for about a year, was working, and had to
relocate my mud to a commercial server and requested an appropriate domain
name called http://www.karchan.org.
- fifth implementation of mud (version 4), the entire thing was rewritten
from C into Java, because of the expertise I had gotten in java and ease of
use.
And that's the current situation for now.
Status of the Current Situation:
I've got my own little server connected to the Internet. It's running
Linux, with Apache as WWW Daemon. The client side
of the mud is basic HTML and PHP with a little Java Script for some extra
functionality. The server side is Java, along with the MySQL Database.
A friendly word of warning, though it's a challenge to start with, and
it's exciting to do, it will either consume a large amount of your (spare)
time or won't become full-grown. It took me approx. 3 years to come where
I am now. (But then again, I had to study and stuff, too)
I've recently started research into porting the game over to java because of
its portability, ease of use, plethora of documentation, and the fact that
it not suffers from memory leaks (due to bad programming on my part, I must
confess) like C does.
How do I contact the powers that be?
The powers that be on this mud are a bunch of people who are reliable MOST
of the time. There currently is one email address that you can use:
deputy@karchan.org
However, if you want to get in contact with me directly, you can also use:
karn@karchan.org
Help! My Browser self-terminated, taking my system and
modem connection down with it, and I was just playing
your game and couldn't type "Quit", like I should.
Yeah, well, Netscape or some
other Browser do that sometimes, don't they.
Join the club.
You can reconnect to the mud simply by logging in again. You get an
"Already Active" page and a question if you want to continue where you
left off. Just say yes, you should get your last page back.
Then you can type/press "Quit" like you should.
What does LL mean?
LL means Long Live. It's most commonly used as LL
Karchan (Long Live Karchan). *Grin*
How do I become a Deputy?
There are a number of requirements that need to be fulfilled even before you become a deputy.
The exact requirements can be obtained by mailing deputy@karchan.org.
Know however, that, among these requirements there is money involved!
Yes, you have to pay money to be a deputy. It is not only a means for me to
keep the server alive, but also some form of compensation of having to
administrate these special users. (And yes, they do require lots of
maintenance, especially if they do something wrong in the database!) The
money is as follows:
- 10$ administration fees
- 20$ per month membership fee
- Right now, the only thing that I accept is PayPal. Compared to
conventional banking PayPal has much cheaper rates.
Well, some other requirements are, since people keep asking:
- experience (been a player for at least a year)
- acceptance by other deps
- user-friendly
- doesn't get annoyed by bad-mouthed, nasty, rotten,
irresponsible, illiterate or insulting users
- knowledge of Linux, Databases, SQL, HTML,
Javascript, C, programming in general is a plus. Although, I must admit,
that the new administration facilities I have setup will allow you to get by
without knowing all this stuff.
- a firm grasp of English
- teamplayer
- strong sense of responsibility
- patience
This game has a soundtrack? WTF?
That is correct. The Game now has a Land of Karchan -
Main Soundtrack. The full mp3 version is available here, but a small wav version
of the first thirty seconds is available here. Ofcourse, the mp3 has much better
quality.
Where did I get this? At my place of work I know a
person who calls himself Redheat, who makes
Synthesizer music. He was kind enough to license two of his tracks to me for
free distribution on my karchan.org website. You can find his website at
http://www.red-heat.com. He has
more scrumptious music to be downloaded there.
Bear in mind that I have licensed his music so I am allowed to
distribute these two tracks through my website. If you wish to use these
sound tracks as well, you will have to contact him yourself.
I hope you all like the music.
I'm stuck on the bridge with no money!
Muuhahahahaaa!!! Sorry, had to laugh. Yep, it is one of the problems
with that bridge. It's a 'toll' bridge, but most newbies don't read the sign.
You need a silver coin to leave. If you do not have a silver coin, you can
check who is online ('who') and 'tell' them if they have a
silver coin and if you could borrow it, because you are stuck on the
bridge.Fun, isn't it? But don't worry, you were not the first and you
certainly will not be the last to fall for this one. And yes, it's unfair and
no, I am not removing the bridge.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Land of Karchan