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- Hacker News
- Author here -- really warmed to see so many fellow modern MUD enthusiasts gathering under this rather-old article. I've since built and torn apart a few MUD engines, but now mostly work on MOO and toastcore. MUDders unite!by azigler92
- We had a MUD at our university and many of us contributed to it as well as playing/hanging out there. The university was quite strict in terms of the use of central resources (mostly VAX VMS 6000 and 8000 series, already pretty long in tooth). I later learned that the faculty decided to permit the MUDs consumption of scarce resource because they considered the development work a valuable lesson in itself on maintenance of a large code base and division of labour.
- I thought it would be fun to do a modern reimplementation of LambdaMoo, but someone already did it in Rust! https://github.com/timbran-project/moorby zellyn
- Yep, that's me.
Join in the fun.
- People start talking to llms all day, suddenly text based games are interesting again...
- If anyone is interested, I launched a new mud client in 2026:
I had been working on it for a couple years, using it myself. I finally released it recently. A number of users are contributing feature requests, testing, etc on the discord as well.
by drakenot - I miss MUDs. My old MUD went through a rename, a fork, and what have you --- but it's limping on, though with few playing it. The cost of hosting these things are so cheap today that you can just let it sit and mind its own business.
Back in the 90s you needed a permanent internet connection (rare!) and fast enough to handle all the usually uncompressed text, so it had to be a - shocker - T1 or better. Then you needed a server.
My old MUD has a discord; turns out a lot of the people I knew 25 years ago were there and remembered the my nick if not a little about myself back then. That was a fun nostalgia trip.
MUDs will eventually see a resurgence, I think. Mobiles with little language models to give flavour text and quests, plus a little tool calling language behind it to make it happen? I can see it working; in fact, I might just myself...
by mickeyp - I think one of the very first public demos for GPT was a text adventure game?by flir
- I learned to code on an LP MUD back in the late 90s. It was a fun experience.
I did all my work in the MUD interface using ED. I didn't realize other people wrote their code offline and sh'd in to upload it. I got very good at writing and editing code on the command line.
by imzadi - i remember using ED in LPmuds. fun times. i had learned coding already so i can't claim that much, but when it came to web development i discovered the spinner webserver, written in uLPC, a GPL licensed rewrite of LPC (later renamed to roxen and pike). i could not believe my luck to discover a webserver written in a language that i was already familiar with from MUD coding.
nowadays i am using a web-platform for my websites that is not only written in pike but also implements a MUD like architecture.
by em-bee - MUDs are really cool, but for anyone looking for a narrative fantasy experience, my first recommendation is going to be The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, but more specifically the mod scene around that game as well as the OpenMW replacement game engine.
Bethesda’s game was a gem that was full of rich lore, plenty of readying, and very flexible RPG systems (although being a magical glass cannon does tend to be the best build). However, it was also a relatively flawed game (which Bethesda game isn’t?) that the community has expanded and fixed into a juggernaut.
I recommend picking up a mod pack from modding-openmw.com and checking it out. Tamriel Rebuilt is particularly impressive: fans have added a massive bank of new maps, quests, etc.
Something cool about the OpenMW engine is that it supports scripting that exceeds the original engine so that new quests are more rich and dynamic than original ones in the game. They are even starting to expand into custom spell effects (as the original game had a rigid list of spell effects that wasn’t malleable).
by Grombobulous - My favourite game, and I agree that the new content added by the Tamriel Rebuilt is incredible. It is lacking in multiplayer which I expect is a large part of what makes MUDs special. TES3MP is an attempt at multiplayer Morrowind, and claims to be playable, though I haven't tried it so not sure how smooth it is or what the community is like. https://tes3mp.com/by NoboruWataya
- I learned to touch-type by accident as a kid playing MUDs—no time to look at your hands while you’re under attack! I made friends, discovered things about myself, and even got brought on to start writing room descriptions. Totally formative for me in so many ways.
I logged back on a year or two ago, now in my late thirties, and the sense of community and a critical mass of others who were invested in the game and eager to have me join just wasn’t there. It’s a shame because I agree MUDs have so much unique value to offer. Maybe it’s too much to hope for their return to former glory but I hope at least some flavor of them can rise again as a new form of mostly text oriented multiplayer game.
- Between this and the previous MUD post about LLM MUDs I'd love to see a comeback.
A few months ago I tried out my old (1999-2004) hang, wocmud.org
Some of the quests were still sometimes broken. auto attacking mobs were still unfairly strong. But, there were a couple people more than willing to help me get my gear back from my corpse. They helped me remember the areas, quests, syntax, etc that I had BURNED into my memory when I was 14. We chatted and got caught up in the 20 years of updates. Oh, and I didn't get banned for being out-of-character. overall a 10/10 nostalgic experience
I started working on my own with Evennia and claude. I was hoping to hook up an LLM for MOBs but had to put it down when life got busy again.
by fusslo - I'm glad it sparked something. Really cool to see not just the nostalgia, but the active projects/games, and the feature requests. Original Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008538by Davisb135
- I'm sure you mean wotmud.org, and I always look for someone to mention this one in MUD threads, but rarely see it.
Man I was hooked on that game in high school. Joined the Lion Wardens, multiple high level characters, knew the zones. Nothing has come close since then.
That feeling of leveling in a safe zone when your screen fills with red names of opposing faction characters and you just get deleted and lose all your gear and a level... so good.
by ervine - Every time another nostalgia post comes along for MUDs people start replying with the name of a small MUD they enjoyed but I’m surprised how rare it is to see Iron Realms MUDs mentioned.
I’m almost certain they are the largest MUD development company to exist.
I played two of their MUDs — Achaea and Lusternia. The sheer imaginative scale of these worlds and engines are unmatched by even today’s standards. (And they still exist!)
PVP is a battle of engineering. The best PvPers build elaborate trigger systems that watch the terminal for specific maladies and conditions and counter them with herbs, potions, and skills.
The RP is similar to D&D but so much deeper. Where D&D is mostly storytelling by a DM, RP in huge commercial MUDs involve gods, physics, deeply entrenched politics, money, fame, and power spanning thousands of players.
Entirely player-driven economy. If you wanted a sword you could buy one from a player run market or commission a unique piece from a blacksmith. And boy it was truly unique. A blacksmith in Lusternia is really a wordsmith. A steel sword can be described as “honed to an obsidian finish”.
Peak human imagination, but sadly in a medium too many people can’t get into.
by jeromechoo - I also always look for the IRE MUDs :) I played Achaea about 15 years ago; the community of players really makes the game what it is. (If anybody remembers Soludra, that's me!)by Twisol
- You just reminded me of Star Wars Roleplaying on Habbo Hotel when I was a preteen circa 2006. Habbo Hotel was basically an IRC and MUD with user-created hotel rooms. The Sith and Jedi orders were popular "rooms" in Habbo, and would often rise to the top and bring an influx of users– mostly teenagers.
But they were clearly gated, like a nightclub. There were those who were "in" the Jedi Temple or Sith academy, and those who were out. This creates a sort of exclusivity, and people would naturally want to join the Jedi Temple or Sith Academy. They'd have to agree to a set of rules written on a sticky note on the room's wall, and dress the part.
Sometimes all hell would break loose when a Sith Warrior or Inquisitor would come and attack the Jedi Temple. They were legally allowed to do this, as long as people were online to witness it.
It was really interesting how they battled each other with just text chat. They had specified rules where you'd have to type out five action lines (minimum of 5 words) after an attack in order to maime or kill someone. At any point in those five lines, the defender could use 2 lines to repel the attack. To add a complication, the actions had to be coherent with each other.
So it ended up being a lot of;
Sith: Jedi filth! Hiding in your temple, while the universe suffers. I will free them of you!
Jedi: Your oppression ends here, Sith!
Sith: swings lightsaber towards your body
Sith: it connects with your neck
Sith: it cuts through the muscle
Jedi: swings lightsaber at lightsaber (illegal: 4 words)
Jedi: it parries your lightsaber away
Sith: it connects through the bone (illegal: parried)
Of course, these would often devolve into long OOC (out of character) arguments, and this drama would bring in even more of a crowd. It was chaotic, and a whole bunch of fun.
It wasn't just RP fighting though. They would have all the Jedi initiates wear "robes" and hang out in rooms decorated like a Jedi temple. Then the Jedi Masters would conduct lessons and we'd have to memorise the Jedi code.
I still remember the Sith code. I had to memorise it and recite it at random times to the Sith Lords. When I graduated from that, I ended up teaching it myself to several acolytes.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me."
Pretty fun times.
by devilsdata - Building a MUD engine is quite an endeavour in itself. Let alone the game! A good way to test your skills in networking, parsing, databases, and data structures.
I’ve been chipping away at one on my stream using Haskell. Experimenting with Lua integration, parsing, networking, STM and concurrency… currently hacking on Entity Component Systems and unboxed vectors and all kinds of stuff.
Thing is you can start small. Start with a chat server. Add character registration. Add a mob. Add some commands to interact with the mob. Just keep adding things on.
There’s a community for mud coders too. There are dozens of us.
by agentultra - Thank you for posting this! I just finished a MUD engine and I was looking for a way to expose it to a small community of technically minded folks.by Qworg
- I’m a huge fan of UO which MUDs inspired.
Curious if in the spirit of
"Show me your [code] and conceal your [data structures], and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your [data structures], and I won’t usually need your [code]; it’ll be obvious."
If you would share your data structures for your MUD?
by mentos