Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

Random lurking on IRC, overheard a conversation about this cool MUD based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I was maybe 10, and man did it take a long time to figure out at first. 20 some odd years later and I still find myself drawn back here and there. Being able to pop in via SSH or a command line client made it great for staying inconspicuous in places where I probably shouldn't have been playing a game.

I still have many good friends from it, and it connected me with great people from countries completely across the globe.

If you're into Tolkien and want to give it a go, check out http://t2tmud.org. Or just SSH towers@t2tmud.org.

I can say the same about Dota 2 and Path of Exile :)

Reminds me of James Carse's idea of Finite and Infinite Games - where the objective of a finite game is to win and the objective of an infinite game is to continue to play.

In the mid-90s, I took my bored then-girlfriend to the local University library computer lab and introduced her to MUDs. When they shut off the building lights late that night I had to pry her away from the computer terminal. (Neither of us were students, so getting caught there after closing might not have been good.)

A few years later, I would play up to 16 hours straight with a lady who lived 1000 miles away (and our band of MUD/IRC friends). We were in-game when she got the news that her best friend had died. But she didn't want to just sit in silence alone at home, so she stayed on the game and the group gathered round to comfort her and let her talk through her grief and her memories. MUDs can be intense! Some years later, we met in person and she became my wife. Years later we discovered Discworld and became fans. Sometimes we miss the MUDs. I'll have to tell her that there's a Discworld one, although it may suck us back in for countless hours.

I played the Discworld MUD a few years ago, and I actually found it underwhelming in some aspects.

I came from having played a few IF (interactive fiction) games where the puzzling element is important. I was expecting to find the same kind of elements in Discworld and was disappointed.

For example there is a quest where you have to make the rat king go away from a house(or something like that); being a mage I found out there was a spell to kill vermin, so I leveled it up a lot and cast it on the rat king, it did kill it and it exploded into tiny bugs, but it didn't complete the quest.

The magic system seemed very cool and like it could have been used as a mechanic to solve quests and puzzles, instead that gave me the impression it was only meant for combat. (or making stuff for other players)

Another issue is how stupid the NPC's were (compared to IF games), I recall that a street urchin or other npc's couldn't even give you directions to streets. (directly asking like 'where is street').

Having said that I liked how huge the game felt, and the events that could happen with the interaction of the other players. For example dying in a river, being resurrected, and having them dive to get my stuff. Or following around a weird mage only to enter a portal he created and get eaten by crocodiles (oops)

It seems there's so much underdeveloped potential with these kind of games, if someone knows of a MUD that has more IF inspired mechanics with more emphasis on the puzzling I'd be happy to know.