How to play on a MUD

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In order to play on a MUD, you must have three things, the DNS name or IP of the MUD, the port to connect to, and a telnet client. As an example, Wilderness MUD can be connected to at "sammy.st.hmc.edu", and at port 7878 using the standard Windows95/98 telnet client.

For the telnet client, even the standard Windows95/98 client will do, although you will not be able to see color. For a free and very excellent client for Win32 systems, try ZMud client v3.62 (536 kb) made by Zuggsoft. ZMud supports several client side features such as aliasing and scripting. There is a smaller client that rivals ZMud in popularity. Free, and containing all of the features that make ZMud popular, Mud-Master v2.52 (208 kb) is another good client choice.

Aliases are strings of text that are substitutions for more complex strings (usually commands). For example, a user who aliases the string "sac" to "sacrifice" will have the game receive the command "sacrifice" every time the user types in "sac". Aliases are a useful way to enter complex commands with a small amount of keystrokes. A player may merely type in "at" and have it alias to "attack all". Aliasing can be done both client side (where the telnet client will receive user input, and send the new form to the server instead), or server side (where the server receives the text, realizes it is an alias for the user, and executes the aliased commands).

Scripting is when the client interprets incoming text from the MUD and automatically sends commands to the MUD in response to input. For example, I could have my ZMud client send the command "eat bread" every time I get the message "You are hungry." from the MUD. Scripting is a powerful way to automate some functions of the MUD, and it is often disallowed by the MUD admins in certain cases.