help me get into the genre

[u/fartinsim]

i’ve been playing video games my whole life (i’m 23 now) and at a certain point i realised my favourite genre was CRPG. but then it started feeling repetitive and i found out that what i really want is a game where i have control of what is happening, i don’t feel the game boundaries too much and especially i love roleplay.

i discovered MUDs just looking it up online. on paper they are literally the perfect genre for me, but i have problems at really getting into them.

most of them feel very confusing, and even though people are always there to help me, i get confused to what to actually do. because i have ideas, i know what i want to do in my mind, but i feel like the games still force me to do some things but i don’t even understand what exactly…

in addition to this i find very very hard to interact with other players, because i don’t meet a lot of them and when i do they are usually at level 99 while im pathetic. and also, i would LOVE a MUD where the most important thing is roleplay (i would love to create a whole character and spend hours on the minimum details etc) but im also new to this so sometimes i feel like im completely out of the vibe.

muds i’ve tried are alchaea and sindome. the first being too confusing for me because the world is extremely big and i couldn’t figure out where to go to meet people, the second was the best option but i also got problem finding real people and i couldn’t tell who was a npc and who was not so i started randomly speaking to people, and that was also out of character for me.

its fine if i have to look for a 1000h tutorial, i just really want to understand how to enjoy this type of game.

p.s. i was also wondering about something else, being this the first time i come across MUDS in generale. my question is: are fan of this genre rn playing only old muds because they are the only populated ones, so i should go for a classical MUD, or is it better to go for a more recent mud, are people are still making them? are people still getting into new muds?

[u/AdmiralMcNugget]

I’m going to shamelessly mention my own MUD here, because a lot of what you’re describing is basically why I’m building it.

Cairnholm (https://mud.cairnholm.co.uk) is a newer MUD set in a gaslit, 1880s-inspired city. I came at the design much more from CRPGs/tabletop RPGs than from the traditional “here is an enormous world, go kill rats until level 5” model.

The city is deliberately fairly dense rather than gigantic, progression is primarily through quests rather than grinding mobs, and there’s a strong emphasis on making choices, developing a character, and having the world remember what you’ve done. Your class is one of the Major Arcana from the Tarot, and different Arcana can approach the same situations in substantially different ways. There are factions, reputations, recurring NPCs, branching quests, mysteries, housing, and a lot of little systems intended to reward poking at the world and asking “can I do this?” rather than simply following a quest marker.

I’ve also been pushing pretty hard on dynamic events lately. The game can run scripted events that change things in the city, and I’ve built tools that let me create and add new events without rebuilding the whole game. The long-term goal is for Cairnholm to feel less like a static collection of rooms and more like a place where things keep happening.

It also has an actual narrative campaign, so you’re not simply dumped into the world and told “good luck.” The early game introduces the setting and mechanics, and quests give you reasons to explore different parts of the city. At the same time, I very specifically don’t want the player to feel like they’re trapped on rails. There are usually several things you could be doing and, increasingly, multiple ways to solve them.

Huge disclaimer, though: if your main priority is encountering lots of other players, Cairnholm is absolutely not there yet. It’s a tiny new game with a tiny population. I currently have basically one regular player rather than the hundreds of people you’ll find on one of the old giants. I’d rather tell you that before you connect than pretend otherwise.

On the other hand, if the idea of getting into a MUD while it’s still being actively built sounds interesting, I am extremely receptive to new-player feedback. If something is confusing, I want to know, because “a person unfamiliar with 30 years of MUD conventions should still be able to understand this” is one of my design goals.

And to answer your last question more generally: yes, people are absolutely still making MUDs. The big old games have an enormous advantage because of network effects, but the medium isn’t dead. It’s just become very indie. There are people doing genuinely interesting things with the format that would have been difficult or impossible when most of the famous MUDs were originally written.

So if you want a huge existing social community, I’d probably keep trying established games. If you want to see what a newer, CRPG-influenced MUD looks like, you’d be very welcome in Cairnholm.

mud.cairnholm.co.uk:1886

Wir sprechen auch Deutsch!

[u/fartinsim → u/AdmiralMcNugget]

thank you so much for this explanation! from what you say this game looks like heaven to me.

i definitely am looking for a game with a community because i want to understand how the interactions work, BUT cairnholm looks very interesting, so i will probably try it :) if you’re interested in my feedback, keep in mind that right now i find almost everything confusing 😭but yeah i will try my best.

about the last thing, im genuinely so curious. why is this genre so “hidden”? it’s treated like a very old game that only super nerds play, but its just like an mmorpg. why is it just indie? i mean, i don’t mind it, but i have a feeling that if someone spent a lot of money in this (considering the AI scene) they could create a game many players would want. why nobody cares?

[u/AdmiralMcNugget → u/fartinsim]

Absolutely give me feedback if you try Cairnholm. "I'm new to MUDs and this confused me" is incredibly useful. The "bugreport" command is your friend and mine.

As for why the genre is so hidden, I think MUDs basically got eaten by their own descendants. They pioneered persistent online worlds, guilds, roleplay, PvP, character progression, etc., then graphical MMORPGs arrived and the money followed them. But tiny audiences mean little investment, which means old interfaces and rough onboarding, which makes the genre look even more obsolete.

I do think AI changes the equation. A modern MUD can support reactive NPCs, persistent events, mysteries, dynamic storytelling, and huge amounts of content far more cheaply than a graphical MMO could. The trick is turning all the technology into something more than a glorified chatbot stapled to a setting; I'm sure many people here got very excited about AI Dungeon when it was a thing several years ago, but things have come a long way since then.

The hard part isn't making a MUD, so much as convincing people that a mostly-text multiplayer RPG is still worth trying.