Hawumph's Agony Column

(OR a problem shared is a problem laughed at)

Dear Hawumph,

Please help me; I'm fed up with being the only female in The Land! I'm at the end of my tether. My (male) peers pick on me mercilessly, they bully me into clearing up after them and cleaning up the blood after they have been out on a hunt is no fun!!

To make matters worse they refuse to discuss important issues in front of me telling me that I should leave all of the decision making to the men!

I'm only a poor, defenceless girl. I don't have what it takes to stand up the bullish regime of the wizards. I've been hanging on and hoping that one-day I'll be joined by another female and together we can break down their sexist pig ways but there aren't even any potentials on the horizon!

Please tell me what I should do,

A. Witch

Dear Witch

There are several answers to your dilemma. In the first place, you should encourage as many female players as possible, that way ensuring you will one day have a soul mate. Next time you are dancing around your handbags, try encouraging them to play mud!

Secondly, sex is an arbitrary issue in MUD, a simple spell can fix all that. Perhaps you could convince a wiz to try a day of role-reversal, for example. Whilst you go out pk'ing and interfering with people, he (or she for the day) could sit at home ironing the robes and mending the odd tear made from a lucky blow by some mortal.

And of course your plea may convince some of the more militant feminists to join you, to fight the good fight and teach the MCP's [that's male chauvinist pigs, acronym fans - ed] a thing or two.

Here's hoping. In the meantime, don't forget to polish my boots please.

Thanks,

Hawumph

Dear Hawumph

I have this problem. I've been playing MUD on and off for years. I've played for points. I've played for kills. I think I know lots about the game. I haven't tried for wiz in years. Now that I'm all grown up, I don't think I have the time to play regularly enough.

So how am I ever going to make wiz?

Can you give me some sort of rough measure of how many hours a day and for how many weeks I'd need in order to take, say, three good shots at wiz? Or failing that, can you tell me the Internet connection details of each and every moderate-to-good player, so that I can sabotage them all for a month or so?

thx

Havoc the not-played-in-ages superhero

Dear Havoc

Your ambition is admirable; making wiz definitely is the way to go. Unfortunately, it can be a long hard slog.

The glimmer of hope is that you claim to know a lot about the game. This is of course a big help. The key is consistent point scoring. It is really a very simple mathematical exercise.

A fair player can probably score 15k or so in a reset. Allow for flees, nerves, and plain human error. So let's go for an average of 10k a reset. This equates to 30k a day if you play 3 resets a day, and so, wiz in a week. Easy really.

So for 3 good shots at wiz you'd be looking at 37.45 hours a week for 3 weeks on that basis, more if you die of course. However, don't waste time building up lots of mages, stick to the one persona and really go for it.

As to connection details, why worry about that when Foddy can be bought for the price of ... oops. You'll have to ask him how many bottles of cider, its probably gone up since my day.

Good luck, oh and if you could make it as a witch you'd be doing us a favour. Seems we don't have enough of those!

Hawumph.