A MUD (Multi User Dungeon) is a game played over the Internet which is a text based adventure game (or kill-dwarf game) with the exception that some of the other characters in the world are real people who are also sitting at computer screens just like you.

In the game you get to solve puzzles and battle monsters while at the same time meeting people from all over the world. AberMUDs tend to be a bit more social than other MUDs in that players will stop to talk to each other about what they do in real life.

Rooms, or locations, is what the MUD world is made up of. Wherever you in the MUD, you are in a room. Each room includes a room description, which you will see on entry. Most rooms it will tell you about where you are standing. At the bottom of every description is a list of exits telling you which other rooms you can go to.

If you type look (l for short) then the MUD will display the room description again.

Objects in the MUD behave much like objects in real life; some you can take and some you can't. You can take an object by typing get objectname.

When you have an object it shows up in your inventory, which can be viewed by typing i. You can drop an object again by typing drop objectname.

If you have an object or it is in the same room you can examine it by typing examine objectname or just ex objectname for short.

Note: you can also type, get all and drop all.

Mobiles in the MUD world are non-player characters. They are computer controlled and may interact in many different ways with you. Some may help you and many will try to kill you. You can, of course, fight back but we'll cover that later.

You can examine mobiles in the same way as objects using the ex mobilename command. You will notice that at the end of the description you are given an idea of how much damage the mobile has taken and how good a warrior they are.

You may or may not already know that this is a multi-user game which anyone on the Internet can connect to. They all have their own names.

You can see a list of the players currently connected by using the users command. The time beside their name shows how long it has been since they last typed a command. If this time is long then they may not be looking at their screen, so may not respond right away if you try to talk to them.

You can usually talk to most of the people on the users list. The main way to talk to someone is to type their name then a message. For example, if there was someone called bob connected you could type bob Hi there.

You can talk to everyone in the game by using the gossip command. For example, gossip Hello everyone. You can talk to everyone in the same room as you using the say command in the same way.

The mobiles in the world can be killed. You start a fight by typing kill mobilename. Combat will then begin and end when either you or the mobile dies or flees.

Some mobiles are aggressive and may attack you even if you don't try to start a fight with them.

If you lose a fight and a mobile kills you then you lose half your points and are disconnected from the MUD, but you can reconnect straight away.

If you think you are going to die before the mobile then you can run away by typing flee direction. Fleeing makes you lose 3% of your score, but this is much better than dying and losing half.

You can also be killed by traps and dangerous rooms. Dying in this manner does not reduce your score, but you are disconnected from the MUD. This is more of an inconvenience than anything else but you do lose any objects you were carrying.

Since dying in fights is quite bad it is in you best interests to turn the odds in your favour. You can do this by collecting weapons and armour.

These are just objects so you can use get, drop etc. But in addition you can wear armour and wield weapons. If you are wielding a weapon you will use this instead of your bare hands and if you are wearing armour you will suffer less damage when hit. If you want to wear all your armour you can type wear all or wearall.

You can score points in two ways: killing mobiles and dropping items in one of sacrificial pits. As you get more and more points you level will increase and you will become a stronger warrior.

You can see how many points you have by typing score. This also gives you an idea of how good your weapon and armour are. If you manage to score 200,000 points then you become a wizard which is a highly privileged player.

As you score points and advance through the game you can pick which class of player you wish to be. These include Adventurer, Warrior, Mage, etc. The default class is Adventurer, and is a good one to start with until you know your way around. For a list of classes and the points you need for each one type levels.

Wizards are players in the game who have managed to score 200,000 points. They have a vast range of things that they can do and will be able to help you out if you have any problems. The level of each player is on the users list so if you see a Wizard there then they you could ask them to help you out.

Powers are players in the game who actually run the game. Some make up new rooms for you to explore, some are programmers who are continually making the game better for everyone by adding new features.

Powers are listed on the users list as either Archwizard, Avatar, Demigod or god and they will be more than happy to talk to you about any aspect of the game.

Other useful commands include help which will give you help on commands - help alone will give a list of commands, while help name of command gives help on a specific command.

Also, you might want to type info, which will give you some information about the game.