NonGame MUDs

NON-GAME MUDLIST
by tyagi nagasiva yronwode
For more, see below for a listing of the gnostik/mud directory for your reference.

Introduction
In the 1990s, my interests in the internet blossomed and with it communication and study in a variety of venues reachable online via Internet Relay Channel (IRC), Usenet, and email. This was soon to be supplemented by Telnet and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) as i learned about data caches and Multi-User Dimensions (MUDs). I met Joseph Traub in IRC and discussed with him the construction of a non-game MUD whose focus would be esoteric study and experimentation with the TinyMUCK technology with which he was familiar. Several of those whom we knew were also interested in the experiment and some of them had UNIX and other technical knowledge which they shared generously with any of us interested in learning it.

As is my usual methodology, once i became aware of this single instance of phenomena (MUDs), i sought to familiarize myself with a large number of them, exploring via Telnet what i could and quickly began to understand that there were not only more than 1 type of command sets one needed to know to operate in any depth within them, but that they also had different themes, social groups, and general purposes. By far the greater majority were gaming MUDs, and my attention waned from them once i began to understand that Divination Web was fairly unique in the MUD, MUCK, and later MOO world.

After exploring the Divination Web TinyMUCK framework, determining with others how we were going to set things up, and suffering numerous database losses of our work, my attention turned to the subset of MUDs which i found compelling and of lasting interest: what i called 'Non-game MUDs', whose administrators and support systems were for other than gaming purposes and often had some kind of institutional support, academic sponsoring, and student user base. I explored these as i was able, communicated with the administrators using form letter inquiries, explored their contents and educational facilities as i was allowed, being a communard in non-gaming MUD technology, kept a brief list of those non-game MUDs of my interest, and occasionally issued brief questionnaires to those most solidly part of the project administration, a few of which were completed and are included in the data below.

As the worldwide web and the internet grew, my attention turned toward other projects and venues of research within occultism and technology. I was interviewed by Erik Davis* for his 'Techno-Paganism' writings featured in Wired Magazine and which now may be found online. My relationship with Joseph Traub remained friendly and he was able to keep the project online for years (until 2008) despite the fact that we seldom used the TinyMUCK for meetings or construction).

This year i was excited to see that interest in "cyber-magick" or occult activities utilizing computers (something we explored in several different dimensions within Divination Web) was receiving some attention in the academic community studying magic, so i set up this web page featuring all of the data from the 1990s that i had within my files to facilitate a deeper, more extended study. Some of the projects such as NOMICMUD have moved to other hosting technologies, some such as LAMBDAMOO have retained their social vibrancy and evolved along newer connection methods, and some, like MediaMOO or AstroVR, may well still exist as projects of their academic or institutional sponsors.

Feel free to contact me should you have any questions about the data below. I hope that it will be found enduringly useful.

NOTE: * - Technopagans: May the Astral Plane Be Reborn in Cyberspace by Erik Davis,
'Wired Magazine', July 1995, Vol. 3, Number 7. The entire original article may be found online.

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