Newbie Central: Communication and Houses

Communication is the most important thing in MUD2, even though it has no direct effect on the game itself - communication doesn't change the game in any tangible way. But without communication, you're an isolated, friendless figure, muddling through forlornly without a clue what to do or a shoulder to cry on. With communication, you can form relationships good and bad, you can find things out, you can help, you can feel a part of a community. Even the nastiest PKs need to communicate, if only to give their fragile egos the support they crave.

A player who doesn't learn to communicate (or who doesn't find people with whom to communicate) very swiftly becomes an ex-player.

How to Communicate

The actual commands you use for communicating are easy to learn. Here are all the ones that newbies ought to know something about, with their variable bits written in italics:

Command	Abbreviation	Variations	Example	Explanation of Example
shout	sh message	yell, cheer, howl, scream, wail, roar, shriek (and others)	sh help me, I'm a newbie	Everyone else in the game sees: A gender voice in the distance shouts "help me, I'm a newbie".
say	"message	ask, exclaim, quoth, declare, state (and others)	"please be nice, I'm a newbie	Everyone else in your room sees: your name says "please be nice, I'm a newbie".
tell	name message	(no main ones)	Lizzy so how often do you play?	Lizzy sees: your name tells you "so how often do you play?".
wish	wish message	(no main ones)	wish can someone help me please?	All wizards and witches playing are told that you have wished "can someone help me please?"
emotion	(specific to emotion)	laugh, cry, giggle, yawn, smile, frown, grin, nod, wave, shrug, blush (and others)	la	Everyone else in your room sees: your name laughs.
act	;action	;	;brushes the dust from her robes.	Everyone else in your room sees: your name brushes the dust from her robes.

Of these, you would use shout for general communications with everyone in the game. Sometimes there's a lot of shouting going on, for example people may be trying to accomplish things together or just bantering. say is for conversations in small groups; it is especially popular in the Elizabethan tearoom, where you can often overhear people telling each other (and therefore you!) interesting snippets of information. tell is for personal conversations that you don't want to be overheard (although it is possible that people can use spells and stuff to snoop on you, so don't assume that everything you tell will only be heard by one person). The wish command is used very rarely, except by newbies in need of help.

The emotion commands are quite extensive. But because people like to know these things, I'll list some of them in an appendix later. People do use these all the time - in fact it's hard to imagine not using them after a while!

I was in two minds whether or not to tell you about the act command, since it can't be used by complete novices. You can only use it when you get to level 1, i.e. your name is something like Oddbod the protector. However, you see these being done all the time and it can be confusing if you don't know what's happening. All that the command does is put your name followed by whatever you type after the ;. If I, as Lexley, did ;looks at her watch. then everyone in the same room as me would see Lexley looks at her watch. It does not actually cause anything to happen - I couldn't type ;takes all your treasure and scores oodles of points for it. and expect my score to go up, it's just words. That's why it counts as communication.

What's to stop me from typing something which could trick people, though, that the game really could generate on its own? If I did ;has given you the crown., how could you tell that I had really done it without typing inventory check? The answer is that if the game mentions people by name itself, it always gives their rank. If I had really given you a crown, the message would say Lexley the witch has given you the crown.. Because I'm only acting, it drops the rank bit; people in my room would see Lexley has given you the crown., which would tip them off that it was a spoof.

Sometimes, you communicate with people and they don't reply. There are a number of reasons this can happen, the main ones being these:

• Your message wasn't seen. They just didn't notice it on their screen because it was scrolling so much from everything else going on.
• Your message was never received. Characters who are deaf, for example, will not hear any shouts, says or tells until they're cured.
• They could be busy. If you're trying to beat off an attack from three enraged apes, you don't necessarily have the time even to dash of a quick "sorry, I'm busy, ask again later".
• They could be rude. Hey, not everyone is as polite as you!
• You could be taking liberties and annoying them. They're pretending not to notice you speaking in the hope that you'll go away.

Those are the main communication commands. There are others, of course (such as re and ply) but you don't really need to know them as a newbie. The main problems newbies face are how to communicate - and what to communicate.

What to Communicate

You might not believe this, but most newbies are shy. They know they're ignorant about the game, they think everyone else is part of a closely-knit world and they worry that if they say something then they'll be made to look a fool. They hang around hoping that people will take pity and talk to them, but often aren't keen at all to make the first move. Who wants to be made to feel small by an expert?

Unfortunately, this is at odds with what newbies are advised to do. Newbies are told in a number of places that if all else fails they should shout to other players. Many newbies - particularly girls - just won't want to do that.

Although most players will talk to newbies if they notice them, they don't always notice them. Newbies therefore do, on occasion, have to initiate communication. This can be a nerve-wracking experience, made all the worse by the fact that there are some not-very-tolerant people around who will tell shouters to shut up. These are mainly people who haven't learned to sleep in bedrooms if they don't want to be woken up by loud noises - in other words, they've probably only recently ceased being newbies themselves. Ignore these people. If you, a newbie, wish to shout to find someone who'll talk to you, then do so! They can't tell who you are to do anything about it anyway :-) .

But what should you shout? Well you can increase your chances of getting a reply if you obey the following rules:

1. Be polite. You don't have a right to expect people to take time out to help you, so don't treat people like servants. Use "please" and "thank you".
2. Let people know who you are, so they can reply using tell and not make everyone have to listen to you being told things they already know. Do it like this: sh can someone help me please? ta (your name). People will see your name and be able to use that to reply to you directly.
3. Be specific. If you shout hello then you'll get lots of people shouting hello back, but that doesn't really do you a lot of good, does it? If you want help, ask for it. If you want information, ask for it. sh hi! can someone tell me what to do, please? will garner you far more useful responses (although in that particular example, they'd all be asking you what your name is!).

When people help, at first they'll just tell you everything you want to know. This is so you can actually play a functioning part in the game. As you gain more experience, and want to know more advanced things, people will start asking you to try and work it out for yourself. They'll give hints, but they won't come outright and tell you. Part of the fun of the game is in finding things out on your own. If you just ask people stuff, you're basically confessing to having either a lazy streak or a lack of imagination, and who wants friends like that? So it's always a good idea when you ask someone something to tell them what you've already done to try find the answer yourself. That way, they know you've put in some effort and they know what point to start their explanation from.

Don't be afraid to talk. Remember, in MUD2 you're anonymous. No-one knows who you are in real life. No-one cares who you are in real life. If you screw up and annoy people, just quit and come back a few minutes later with a new name and there you are, a new person starting with a clean sheet. If you feel nervous about communicating, ask yourself why you feel nervous. You'll probably realise that a lot of your anxiety is unfounded. When I first started playing MUDs I hardly dared say a word to anyone, yet look at me now - I'm writing a magazine! Just bite the bullet and speak. Always remember, you can stop playing at any time. You're the one in control.

A word of warning: the wizzes do not like players giving out non-general knowledge willy-nilly. If you try to pressurise someone into telling you something and it becomes clear they'd rather not, respect that decision. You could be getting them into trouble if you get them to tell you too much.

And while I'm giving warnings, here's another one. If people communicate with one another in real life while playing MUD2, that's regarded as cheating. You don't have to be sitting next to each other one two computers to be doing this - ICQ or a phone call count as out-of-game communication, too. Why is it cheating? Well it's hard to explain to newbies, but basically there is a high-level spell which lets people watch what you're typing. If you think someone is out to kill you, you can snoop on them to see what they're doing. You should therefore be able to see if they're getting friends to help them, because their requests for assistance will show up. Only they won't show up if they're talking to one another in RL and not the game. People don't multi-line very often, but it's as well to know it's outlawed in case you get the urge to try it.

Houses

When you reach the mighty rank of warrior, at a whopping 800 points, you can join a "house". What's a house? Well it's like what in other games would be called a "clan" or "guild". It's a grouping of players who can communicate with one another using their own house channel - and that's all it is. There are no special game-maintained powers for houses other than that.

Houses are either public or private. If they're public, they will show up under the houses command. If you type the name of a house, it will list its description. This is set up by the mage who created the house and is a sort of advertisement to try to tell people what the house is all about. There's usually one dominant house in the game and a few other houses waxing and waning. It's your choice which one you ask to join, though (yes, I said "ask" - you have to be accepted into membership formally by one of the house's leaders).

When you're in a house, you can communicate with all members of the house by using the house's name as a command. If you were in a house called "pals", for example, then you could type pals help at cottage! and all members of house "pals" would see: your name tells all members of PALS "help at cottage!". Hopefully, you'd then receive some sort of aid before it's too late!

It's up to you whether to join a house or not. I never did when I was a mortal. They can be quite rewarding, though. The chat that goes on in them is usually far more relaxed than shouts and you'll find that people are much more likely to give away information on a house channel than in public. But the trouble is, you can't join until you're a warrior, which doesn't help you much as a brand-new player. Maybe they should lower the minimum entrance level some.

MUD2 mail

When you connect to MUD2, you come out at the Option (H for help): prompt. Typing m there will take you to the MAIL system. This is a way to send messages to players that they can read out of the game, like regular email (except it uses character names, has no attachments and is restricted in length to 8k). Once in MAIL, use the l command to leave a message. To read an unread message, just hit enter. The r command will reply to the last message you read.

You're told when you log on if there's mail waiting for you; you're also told if mail arrives while you're playing.

But the best thing about MAIL is that it's private. The wizzes - even the archwizzes - can't read it unless you (or the recipient) forwards it to them. So if you do want to communicate in secret with people, MAIL is a good way to do it. Another good way to communicate privately is using CHAT (ch from the Option (H for help): prompt), but that's beyond the scope of this article to explain.

Appendix

Here is a list of most of the emotion commands in the game. It does not include ones which you have to do to someone, like nag player; I do have a list of those but they're not really the kind of thing newbies should be bothering with.

MUD2 understands "emoticons", by the way, e.g. :-) for a smile. Some of these translate into emotions and some into acts. I won't give the act ones here - see the smileys command for a full list - but I'll do the others. These are my claim to fame, by the way: the reason I'm "Lexley the lovely witch" is because I was given the prefix "lovely" as a reward for suggesting putting smileys into MUD2 when I was a mortal :-) .

agree	applaud	babble	bawl
beam	beckon	beg	blanch
bleat	bleed	blink	blub
blush	boast	boggle	bonk
boo	bow	breathe	buzz
cackle	cartwheel	cavort	chatter
chirp	choke	chortle	chuckle
clap	cling	cluck	commiserate
confess	consider	cough	cower
crease up	cringe	cry	curtsey
daydream	despair	disagree	dissent
dribble	drool (also :-)' and :-)~)	droop	duck
enthuse	exercise	fiddle	fidget
flex	flinch	flirt	flop
flounce	foam	fold up	freak
fret	frolic	froth	frown
fume	fuss	gape	gargle
gasp (also :-O)	gawp	genuflect	gesticulate
gibber	giggle	glare	gloat
glower	goggle	grimace	grin (also :-G)
groan	grovel	growl	grumble
grunt	guffaw	gulp	gurgle
gurn	handstand	hic	hiccough
hiccup	hide	hiss	honk
hoot	hope	huff	hum
hunger	hurry	interrupt	itch
jeer	jest	joke	lag
laugh (also :-D)	lean	leer (also :-})	lofr
lol	lurch	lurk	mellow
meow	miaow	moan	model
moonwalk	mope	mourn	nod
pale	pant	perspire	plead
ponder	pose	pounce	pout
prance	prattle	preach	pucker (also :-* :-# and :-X)
puff	purr	puzzle	quake
quiver	rant	rave	recoil
reel	revolt	rofl	romp
sag	salivate	salute	scowl
scrape	scratch	scritch	seethe
shiver	shrug	shudder	sigh
simper	slobber	slump	smile (also :) :-) :-)) (a lot) :-> (devilishly) and :-7 (wryly))
smirk	snarl	sneer	sneeze
snicker	snif	sniffle	snigger
snivel	snore	snort	sob
somersault	spit	squawk	squeak
squeal	squint	squirm	start
starve	stop	stretch	submit
sulk	swagger	sway	sweat
sympathise	think	titter	totter
tremble	trill	tsk	tut
tweet	twiddle	twinkle	twitch
understand	volunteer	waffle	wait
wallow	warble	weep	wheeze
whinge	wiggle	wilt	wince
wink (also ;) and ;-))	wonder	worry	wriggle
writhe	yawn	yelp

Exercises

These are some things you might like to try. If you're a little embarrassed about talking to people out of the blue, do it using a brand new character (just type a different name at the By what name shall I call you? prompt - you can have up to three).

1. shout that you're a newbie and you want some help, in such a way that people will be able to reply to you directly.
2. Reply to people who reply to your shouts directly, using their character name.
3. Join in a conversation at the Elizabethan tearoom - even if it's only to ask "can anyone join in this conversation?".
4. wave to another player.
5. wish to speak to Lexley if she's around. Don't get upset if I don't reply - I may very well be not around :-) .
6. Find a way for everyone in your room to see the message your name looks confused..
7. Acquire a set of directions that will take you to the spring.
8. Locate the parrot and teach it your name.

Next Time

Making a map.

This article orginally appeared in the April 1999 edition of Witch?