1. Introduction

GNOME-Mud is an specialized telnet client to play Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs.

Multi-User Dungeons are imaginary worlds and realms that exist on the Internet, where people connect and can perform a variety of actions. A MUD can be thought of a chat forum with a space dimension, as the users can move around and interact with other users and the artifacts they find in each location. In a typical mud, players can communicate and fight each other, use magic, trade, travel to new zones, resolve quizzes (also called quests), and become part of communities like guilds, orders, etc. The environment also varies between MUDs, but the most common are ambiented in fantasy worlds, similar to those described by Tolkien's `Lord of the Rings' or Dungeons and Dragons. Classic MUDs are text-based, and can be accessed through a simple `telnet' connection; the user inputs orders to the MUD server, and the server replies with the result of the action.

There are hundreds of MUDs available on the Internet, but there are some sites that classify them and provide with detailed MUD lists, often provided by the MUD maintainers. MudConnect.com is one of them, and GNOME-Mud has native support for their mudlist format.

GNOME-Mud provides the user with a series of functionality that makes mudding somewhat easier. Most notably, the ability to define `triggers', `aliases' and `character profiles', or the MUD lists support help making usual tasks like connecting to different MUDs and typing common names or commands more effective and fast.

To run GNOME-Mud, select Games->GNOME-Mud from the Main Menu, or type gnome-mud on the command line.