Threads of Pern MUSH Guide


The URL for this page is http://www.spundreams.net/threadsofpern/guide.html
Page created: 09 July 2016
Last Updated: 09 February 2016


MUSH stands for "Multi-User Shared Hallucination SHell". It is a variant of MUDs, which are text-based multi-user games that existed for decades before the first MMOs were a twinkle in their creators' eyes (And quite possibly before some of those MMO creators were even born). MUDs tend to be more like hack and slash D&D, whereas MUSHes are roleplay or socially oriented. Threads of Pern is a roleplay-based MUSH with a significant social aspect.

Way back in the mists of time, more accurately in 1991, a MUSH called PernMUSH was started. At its height there were more than 100 characters connected at any one time. Since the advent of MMOs, it has been in decline. Many unfortunate incidents such as lightning striking the server on which it was hosted caused PernMUSH to be down for long stretches -- three years at one point. The current administrators of Threads of Pern tried to revive PernMUSH, but it went down again and has not been restarted. We decided to start fresh, and Threads of Pern was born. It is set in the late Third Pass (The Fourth Pass will be happening in about 5 turns game time), and people can play the ancestors of characters they played on the original PernMUSH, which was set after the events in All the Weyrs of Pern.

You will need to get a MUSH client. There are many out there, and they're pretty interchangeable. The one exception is Tinyfugue (tf), but that can only be run on shell accounts. If you've never heard of a shell account, don't worry; just get a web-based client. Even if you have access to a shell account you may want to use a web-based client, as they're more user-friendly. At some point we may come up with a guide to Tinyfugue, but that is necessarily low on our list of priorities.

Once the client is set up, point it to whitestar.spundreams.net on port 4201.

MUSHes are completely text-based -- no graphics. Because of that they're accessible to almost anyone. Blind people can use voice software to interact, and people on the oldest computers with even the slowest dialup connections can still play. However, because they're text-based you can't point and click; you will need to tell the MUSH what you want to do. Here are some of the commands which you will probably use often. It is common on MUSHes to not type single quotes (') when a command is shown. Thus, if something says to read 'news theme', what you will actually type is just:
news theme

On the other hand with brackets (< and >), you would not type the thing within the brackets, but a substitution. For instance, if it says <color>, you might type:
purple

There are tons of shortcuts which you will pick up as you get more used to the MUSH. The six above, however, are what you need to learn, to see, and to intereact with others.