From: joe@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (Joe Judge)
Subject: Re: VR Worlds better than Reality Summary: 
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1991 18:10:55 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories



	Ah ... mudders in this group ... I was wondering if I was the
	only one!

	Adam - yes, there are mudders in this group .. anyone else here too?
	Wher edo you MUD?

	Howard - LPmud is just one of a set of popular MUD programs. 
	
	Different MUD's have different flavors (characteristics?) ... 
	so one MUD is good for player adventuring (lots of areas with lots 
	of descriptions and  wandering monsters, etc) where another is more 
	social (lots of environmental commands ('smile', 'smirk', etc...))
	- to the point where there is something called TinySex in the
	TinyMUD MUD "reality". 

	There have been major discussions about privacy in these muds when
	this TinySex has been captured in a file and posted on the net, etc.

	People meet, form friendships, make enemies, fall in love, etc 
	through these MUDs - for real and for "not-real". People meet and
	form allies/friends that they adventure with (to solve quests) or
	to tackle those nasty monsters or solve various puzzling stopping
	points in the VR. Sort of like the Gibson "decking" experience.
	Also, it's sort of like what Dodger was doing with that one AI
	in the ShadowRun series. Of course, this is all textual.

	Some let the newbie (new player) build and extend the virtual
	reality immediately where others require more experience in the 
	mudder before they can extend it. 

	I don't quite understand what you are looking for in your questions.
	Maybe you would like to telnet into a MUD and wander around some?
	I can send you a couple of addresses you can telnet into.


	- Joseph Judge		postmaster@att.com
				joe@cblpf.att.com

>____ hlr@well.sf.ca.us (Howard Rheingold) says:
>
>beeman%cats.UCSC.EDU@ucscc.ucsc.edu (Adam D Beeman) writes:
>
>>By the way, I'm rather curious if many VR people are LPmud people...
>>there are many similarities even though LPmud is text based.
>
>Can you tell us about LPmud in a way that is consistent with living in
>a kind of VR world? And something about the scope of LPmud as a
>subculture? Do you think this world will be enthralled with VR
>frontends, or is the text format essential to the illusion?