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Comment by mattowen_uk | Hacker News Reader

I used to mod /r/MUD on reddit - if you fancy getting back into MUDs that's a great place to start.

For my sins, I became very addicted to Shades on Prestel back in the day. Due to this, I prefer MUDs that are not deep on class progression, and just easy fun.

A lot of the still running MUDs have deep learning curves, due to some of them having been running for a good few decades. To the new or casual player, this makes them impregnable.

Whereas I don't think we need to change the beauty of the text based medium, I do think that the genre needs updating to make new MUDs more accessible.... Even D&D finally accepted it needed to simplify again to gain new players.

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Wow, Shades on Prestel (while using a BBC Micro). That brings back memories - especially of getting screamed at and grounded/penalised for racking up huge phone bills.

I remember two characters getting "married" on Shades. A scene that was usually described as a derelict church with a grim, cold interior, was for the occasion bedecked with flowers etc - and rather than being empty save for a random player perhaps wandering in when my character was there, it was full of people. Date/time for the ceremony had been widely disseminated.

Cracking game.

> getting screamed at and grounded/penalised for racking up huge phone bills.

Not just me then. XD

> I do think that the genre needs updating to make new MUDs more accessible

I know what you're saying. Iron Realms MUDs are a good example of a MUD with modern conveniences.

But on the topic of a different sort of accessibility, you can play MUDs with a screen reader. I was playing http://www.balzhur.org/ (Spanish) two years ago and found out most of the people I was meeting in it were blind. Just using a stock screen reader to read out the game at incredible speed.

Aside, playing a MUD in the foreign language you're learning is a fun way to get daily drill. Especially once you try to engage socially ingame. Having someone depend on you in real time in the game really makes your brain gain levels quickly.

Here I am, about 90% done with a completely custom approach to a classless system in a MUD, and you've got me worried that I'm overcomplicating things all of a sudden.

It's not a game, Roguelike made a MUD inspired online conference for their conference. I keep coming back to this. While they built it for a time-limited conference, I could see variations for long-running online communities, or even "modern" MUD games.

https://dev.to/lazerwalker/using-game-design-to-make-virtual...

Surprising the number of ex shades players on here - I used to play a bit but via the internal network (I worked for telecom gold back in the day)

Later on we had an ex phreaker working in TEC who had been busted for Prestel hacking, one day the Internal Security guy who had busted him - met him at work and almost had a heart attack.

I remember playing Shades an awful lot as a young teen. That was until my parents saw the phone bill!

3rd and path finder are a lot simpler to the complex method AnD 2nd became

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