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Fabrico r/drama :marseyeldritch:

My profile and flair color is 28bca3 :!marseycatcus:

28d ago (text post) Edited 28d ago 2,964 thread views #260395

EFFORTPOST Fallout TV show season 1 has dropped, it sucks. Unmarked spoilers inside.

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So the show has released, and as expected by anyone with a brain, it sucks. However it seems to have sucked more than anyone could have predicted. This might legitimately darn Bethesda lmao.

First, here is a comment from this thread explaining how they absolutely butchered world building (this show is canon btw):

So, in summary, if I understand correctly, these are the major changes:

- Shady Sands got cratered in 2277

- NCR vertibird downed on the strip

- The Strip barricades are gone

- Vault Tec seemed to have caused the Great War

- The Boneyard is no longer a thing

- Shady Sands is in place of the Boneyard

- NCR Rangers are gone

- Aradesh is no longer the founder of Shady Sands (more speculatory)

- Somehow the Brotherhood seemed to have overran the NCR in 2277

What I can't believe is that they actually retconned the original two Fallout games and that nobody won New Vegas. Even more egregious is the lore change with the BoS-NCR war, which retcons THE ENTIRETY OF F:NV. This has to be a new timeline at this point.

TL:DR is they literally retconned the 3 games they didn't make, and then replaced the factions from those games with very special factions they made from the 2 games they developed themselves. This is like a bad fanfiction lol.

People predicably, are mad. Some seethe:

Jesus. I genuinely can't believe I was actually letting myself be excited for the future of this franchise before this release. Completely retconning the original games is genuinely fricking so sad man.

When is it said aradesh is no longer the founder of shady sands?

Also when do we see the ncr vertibird crashed on the strip?

It's never said by Moldaver, but it seems to be implied that she founded Shady Sands in addition to being the remaining NCR leader. This is speculation, and it probably shouldn't be listed as an actual change.

Vertibird: https://i.imgur.com/a/5ygLxmK

So even though it's been established that Shady Sands is in an entirely different state of the new california Republic from the boneyard, they just slapped it right into los angeles, and then they nuked it, why???

What even is a Shady Sands? Has anyone else wondered why they named the first game Fallout 3 by the way? Wacky Bethesda xD

That's not a nuke crater, that's a "Borg scooped up the settlement" crater. This is dumb.

I knee it.

I just knew it.

I prayed it wasnt the case but at any opportunity they had, Bethesda tried to retcon New Vegas and now their efforts... went nuclear.

Hate it. HATE IT. HATE IT.

New Vegas is the Canon version of events. Not some Amazon show.

I fricking knew Todd would frick it over to create their version of Fallout artificially. I fricking hate it. I was fine with a scenario where the NCR loses in Vegas, but to just extensively rewrite the lore of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas to jerk off the BoS even more? Fricking dead to me.

Says you, but Bethesda owns the franchise and this is the direction they took. They entirely retconned the fallout games they did not make, and they've succeeded. Next season they'll go and show New Vegas as a dead husk bereft of anything that made it special. Enjoy!

Also, they do not care anymore. They are owned by Microsoft now and exist to make xbox and live games.

Look, I am very good at that. My Canon Star Wars are the old Comic books with sea dragons and Jaxxon the green rabbit. I literally ignored anything that came after that.

So I will need to ignore Bethesda to keep the correct Canon? Boo f#₪#^ hoo. They didnt get even a passable game out in the last 12 years!

I walked the Divide for the NCR, I can ignore Bethesda for them as well.

Haven't watched the show yet as I sail the high seas but this ending sounds very, very annoying. Seems like the show starts off well though but if what I'm seeing here is the case I'll be pretty fricking ticked that they essentially made the West the same as the East in terms of development and that they made NV mean nothing.

NV was entirely retconned. The casinos are literally husks and the city is dead. NCR died when Shady Sands (located in the wrong place) was blown up by one guy.

Christ alive 🤦🏿‍♂️. They should've atleast had some obsidian writers and lorekeepers there to keep things consistent. This is just laziness. I'm not one of those people who thinks Bethesda despises obsidian but like cmon.

It's not laziness. It was a deliberate choice.

Resetting to a status quo of “muh wasteland” absolutely is laziness

Its funny because there is a meme that Bethesda is spite driven because obsidian made a better fallout game than bethesda and the metacritic score 83, 85 thing FNV being retconned is funny knowing the meme

I hate it all.

The NCR was written out as a society entirely. The writers I guess just learned about shady sands and went 'oh its the capital so if we blow it up then the NCR will collapse.'

The NCR was such a good faction, it was the only one that actually grew, that had a familiar functioning postwar society. And what did they do? They nuked them out of existence to show off the brotherhood and a dead, empty New Vegas.

Why, why would they do this.. they could have made it right after the nuking not decades after. They pissed all over the legacy of my favourite game.

I blame Lonesome Road and Chris Avellone.

I can't hold him responsible for this, he had enough sense to know how big the NCR was and how the game world worked. That's why Ulysses wanted to destroy the Long 15 and block them from reaching the Mojave.

To me, Fallout stood apart for being a post-post-apocalyptic story. Just nuking the NCR not only strips away one of the most interesting aspects of the setting but does it, to my eyes, entirely unnecessarily. If you wanted to tell a wasteland story, you could have:

Set it between Fallout 1 and 2, or even before Fallout 1

Set it in one of the vast regions of America that are untouched by the games thus far

But no. Fricking why?

I knew this would happen the moment I've heard the name Todd Howard.

It really feels like they asked BETHESDA for the lore, and they said 'oh well you got the Brotherhood of Steel who have this big airship and vertibirds and huge machine guns that can only be wielded in power armor.'

then went 'oh there's this group called the NCR, I think they're from shady sands or something, you can blow them up for shock value it'll be fine. There's also this big place called New Vegas you can turn into a dump too who cares lmao.'

"heh heh heh that'll teach 'em to like obsidian's game more than ours*

Honestly I am becoming one of those people more and more by the minute, especially if their plans for New Vegas next season are what they seem to be.

somehow palpatine returned

So what did house predict then if it was vault tec who dropped the bombs. So Mr house knew the nukes where coming and still couldn't shoot them down or get the plat chip

Also it says shady shands fell in 2277 but new vegas is set in 2281 ?

I guess NV is just entirely retconned in the show? NV is dead, empty. The only places that exist are a half dozen towns outside of the city itself. The casinos are gutted entirely aside from the Lucky 38 which I guess House lives in still? He would be waking up just as the NCR was probing into NV, Caesar's Legion would be on it's way as well. Big MT is still abducting people.. The Brotherhod wouldn't have lost at Helios One but also now have infinite energy so why would they even care?

The entirity of FNV was fought over a dam, water and power.. Now the BOS has infinite clean and renewable fusion.. the NCR doesn't exist either.

So they're using the facade of 1, 2 and NV as a backdrop for more BoS shenanigans from Bethesda's mainline games.

Maaaaan

This is what I was afraid of. A good show based in world building that I think is fundamentally uninteresting.

I'm probably just gonna separate it out as its own thing in my head, no matter how canon Todd says it is.

This is what everyone paying attention was afraid of, but they got shot down as alarmist for daring to suggest the brilliant creative minds behind Starfield might provide a shite backdrop for worldbuilding.

He was in a meeting to know exactly when it would happen and was wrong.. somehow.

Did he not read the memo?

Fallout new vegas mr house : I was able to almost accurately predict a nuclear war and I have set the pieces for my rise to power after I come back online

Tv show Mr House : Shieeeeeeeet I ain't reading all that I'm just gonna pretend I read this

To everyone saying the NCR is totally collapsed.

I highly doubt it. It seems after Shady Sands was nuked the NCR was a bit scrappy but pulling itself together to keep everything afloat, with the BOS destroying the HQ and the view of the NCR leader using the Cold Fusion to power the entire city at once, it shows the civilians of the NCR are still existing at least throughout the entire ruins in some way.

I imagine next season, we're gonna see the BoS biting way more than it can Chew, and something with New Vegas as well, and with the father constantly mentioning something about "Meeting your Creators." How much you wanna bet Mr House is technically still alive? Just New Vegas went into dormancy??

Im excited to see potentially the NCR Regrouping or like Scrappy NCR rebels, and Desert Rangers in the Mojave. I highly doubt the NCR is done and over with from what we saw.

Whatever your opinions on it, retconning NV out of the timeline (which is exactly what they've done) frickin sucks.

Yeah.. But at least it isn't like a straight full on they don't even exist kind of retcon. Seems more like a soft reboot

Hello fellow spoiler fiends who went straight to the end and saw the New Vegas tease. Also, from what I gathered skipping around, the MC's father was a Vault Tec guy who nuked Shady Sands because her mother went there and was having a great time (missed a bunch of dialogue skipping through so that might not be right). The Brotherhood has cold fusion now and the guy in charge seems like a peepee so presumably they will butt up against whoever is now in charge of House's technology.

Dude wtf happened to the NCR? Didn't they say they had most of California pretty much colonized? I'm only on episode 4 but complete radio silence while it takes place near the boneyard and dayglow??

Episode 8 covers it.

It's not pretty.

About 5 years after New Vegas, Lucy's Mom left vault 33 to see if life was back on the surface, taking Lucy and her brother with her, and made her way to Shady Sands, which teleported to LA at some point. Her dad, who was a Vault-Tec executive came after them, stole the kids back, and use Vault-Tec's secret supply of nuclear weapons (The ones they launched to start the great war) to destroy the NCR, as they were a competitor to Vault-Tec.

Also, the ending credits show a destroyed New Vegas, with empty streets full of shattered Secuiritrons and a destroyed NCR Vertibird.

I also wanted to mention this specific comment, because I found it funny:

They also technically retconned FO4 since Kellogg mentions the NCR election.

Note that I'm not cherry picking comments here, basically everyone hates this garbage. Of course the critics love it, but the actual Fallout fans think it's terrible.

As one of the comments already mentioned, they really shouldn't have set this in the West Coast. They should have set it somewhere new for numerous reasons:

New factions and threats to add a sense of tension and mystery as the viewer wouldn't know anything more than the main character
Avoid having to retcon or step on the toes of the games
Keep it in a region that is less advanced so you can have your apocalypse fantasy
Set the show up as a prequel for Fallout 5, building hype for it even if it's years away.

Expect this thread to be updated as more seethe is posted, this is developing drama. In a few hours we will probably see the hitpieces from journ*lists calling the haters bigots, so keep an eye out for that.

Edit: here are more threads with tons of seethe in them:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1bt7fzx/fallout_spoiler_master_thread/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c17tyn/spoilers_about_the_ncr/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c17mrr/discussion_about_the_ncr_in_the_tv_show/?sort=controversial

:marseycope: dear god this one is maximum cope: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1c185mn/my_theories_for_season_2_and_possible/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1c15tey/so_does_the_show_take_place_in_an_alternate/?sort=controversial

BussydoFollower Gay/Chud rDrama #1 Sinophobe and TCD advocate 24d ago (text post) 634 thread views #261220

EFFORTPOST A Short Story about an Neurodivergent Subreddit, and an Autist that Haunted it -- r/HappyTreeFriends and u/brunynhoalves

Emoji Award given by @DWHITE___________DYNAMITE: "marseypolyamory"

Tho Rizz/Ohio I'm so esoteric and niche smh 27d ago (reddit.com) 662 thread views #260534

EFFORTPOST This is an introduction to a community that is ripe for drama, introducing plurals

What is a plural? :marseyconfused: A plural is according to themselves

Plurality is the state of having multiple headmates collectively sharing a single body. A group of headmates is called a system. Plural experiences are extremely diverse. Systems may be spiritual in nature or secular, median or partitionary, small systems or ones with thousands of headmates

According to regular people you might be aware of them as people who fake DID/MPD, You might've thought of it as a small mostly TikTok based community that was around for a short period in 2020 if any of you remember the infamous video

>HI im bunny! :marseybunny2: H-h-h-hey im oliver :marseygigaretard:

Now how do these people explain themselves after being accussed of faking DID :marseyquestion:

DID is a specific psychiatric diagnosis. It is a Complex Dissociative Disorder(CDD) alongside several other disorders like P-DID (ICD only), OSDD, and UDD.

Some plural folks meet the criteria of a CDD, but many do not, as these disorders have very specific criteria- and experiencing 'more than one' experiences of various kinds is only one of those.

So they created a whole new spectrum lol

Some important words used in these spaces:

Plural = a person experiencing plurality :marseyautism:

Singlet = someone who isn't plural :marseygigachad:

System = a group of people inside the body :marseymeds:

Headmate = an entity inside the system

switching = a headmate taking over the system from another headmate

sysmed = someone who believes "systems" can only exist in disorders such as DID

Theres more terms (some are funny asf :marseylaugh: ) but those are the most important: https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/plural/pluralglossary

What are the causes of plurality (besides being an attentionseeker even doe i and (you) !attentionmaxxers are one aswell)

Traumagenic is the name for plurality caused from having trauma :marseygiveup:

Plurality can also come from tulpamancy (if you didn't know tulpamancers are the coomers of the occult world)

and other causes are called endogenic which spawns the terms "endo" and "anti-endo"

Internet history

They seem to have begun in 2001 when a website named darkpersonalities created an article on why they don't identify with their diagnosis (im assuming this was actual diagnosed ppl not identifying cuz im not reading allat), But the actual time i found when this whole community i think took off is when in 2019 streamer protomagicalgirl disclosed their plurality, which made the xitter :marseybluecheck: hashtag #pluralgang trend and made many people "recognize" they were also plural

resources: https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/pluralstuff, https://pluralpedia.org/w/Plurality

Ok heres the community to troll now

https://old.reddit.com/r/plural/ (posts are restricted apparently but i havnt tried posting yet and if not should be easy to get into, also i think comments are free game)

Dramaworthy post to mine btw

https://old.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/1c0m68l/plural_lesbians_are_awesome_truth/?sort=controversial

MTF 33 year old plural lesbian recieves backlash in lesbian sub (xer whole account is also very interesting :marseylowpoly: )

sneedman he/him Relapse 28d ago (image post) 947 thread views #260259

EFFORTPOST When whites weren't genocided - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission

I've been put on lithium for Bipolar Disorder. Apparently it's potentially toxic so I have to take blood samples frequently. My psychiatrist wants me to be hospitalized again but I refused because I don't want to and I don't think I need to. I just admitted I have suicidal ideation but no plans. So long as I don't go manic, I'll still be able to refuse. I'm getting good sleep lately so I don't think a manic episode is coming anytime soon. Shit only gets bad when I only get an hour of sleep and feel fine afterwards. Let's talk a bit about South African history.

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, there were fears that revenge was going to be the norm. Several pieces of writing can be found on this "Swaart gevaar" or "black danger" that would come with democracy. Some whites fled, but many decided to stay and embrace the multicultural society. To help heal the wounds of apartheid, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was held. The aim was to air out all the crimes of humanity that occurred. Those who gave honest testimony would be given amnesty while those who were deemed to be politically motivated would face justice. It was also a platform for victims to tell their stories.

Instead of retributive justice, the country turned to restorative justice, which is an approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitutive agreement to the satisfaction of each. Victims take an active role in the process. Meanwhile, offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions, taking the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community. This approach is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community, rather than the State.

Do you agree with restorative justice, or do you think retribution is superior? Mull over this as we delve into the intricacies of the TRC.

Reasons for the TRC

It shouldn't need to be stated, but several atrocities occurred during apartheid. This is without considering the several freedom fighters who went "missing". Some of the most tragic incidents are:

In 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre occurred, an event that garnered international attention and outrage. When protestors convened outside a police station to protest pass laws, police opened fire and killed 69 people
Another notable protest occurred on the 16th of June 1976 when students in Soweto marched to Orlando West Junior Secondary School. Teargas and bullets were released, resulting in fatalities of children. Most famously, Hector Peterson was one of the victims.

Subsequent waves of protests meant that by the end of the year, the government issued an official (although likely underestimated) casualty figure of 575 dead. This was the heyday of apartheid, but it led to complete condemnation from the international community and sanctions were put in place. Eventually, when F.W. de Klerk came into power, apartheid laws were slowly repealed. In 1994, the first democratic election was held and the ANC was voted into power, allowing Nelson Mandela to become president just four years after serving a 27-year prison sentence.

South Africa experiences hope

Americans will be familiar with the metaphor of the melting pot. In South Africa, we have the rainbow nation. When democracy was won, a wave of optimism swept the nation. Along with this came the idea of the prosperous, racially integrated ‘rainbow nation'. The idea became so popular that the rainbow became a shorthand for a nation seeking reconciliation and unity after decades of racial and political tensions.

The TRC consisted of three committees: Human Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation and Rehabilitation. For the first time, the TRC process allowed for the voicing of injustices rendered audible in the public domain, and harrowingly revealed the pain, grief, and trauma that had previously been borne in silence and anonymity by victims and their families. The TRC was also aimed at a restoration of humanity, and comprised a drama of national proportions.

Significantly, however, four kinds of narrative truth were recognised by the TRC:

factual – objective, empirical, impartial, legal, forensic
social or dialogue – the kinds established by social interaction, discussion and debate
subjective – personal memories and experiences
reconciliatory – stories about healing that were future-oriented.

The first TRC hearing was held on 15 April 1996 in East London. When Fort Calata's widow, Nomonde, let out a piercing wail on remembering her husband's murder, the entire East London hall, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, stood up and began singing Senzenima – what have we done? – a chorus to her agony, those present taking on her trauma collectively. (Many who testified to apartheid atrocities were having to ‘speak the unspeakable', and were reduced to conveying their pain in a realm outside of language.) Fort Calata was one of the Cradock Four, a group which included Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli, who were murdered by security operatives in the Eastern Cape in June 1985.

Over 50 public hearings were held over 1888 days, more than 20000 reports/statements on 38000 incidents involving 14000 deaths were taken from victims/survivors (although only about 2000 were heard in the public hearings themselves, i.e. 10%), and 7116 applications were made for amnesty (of which 1167 were granted, i.e.16%). Amnesty could only be applied for in respect of acts committed with the complicity, if not proven approval, of apartheid leaders (e.g. the military, government and security forces) in pursuit of alleged enemies of the state. The Amnesty Committee concluded its work on amnesty applications by perpetrators in May 2001 (3 years after the five-volume TRC report was released in October 1988), but work continues to prosecute those not granted amnesty. Some ex-members of the Security Police and Bureau of Civil Cooperation have been serving prison sentences for murder, illegal arms possession and fraud e.g. Eugene de Kock, the Vlakplaas Commander (known as “Prime Evil” in the media), Dirk Coetzee and Craig Williamson.

Post TRC - Was forgiveness worth it?

Jacob Dlamini's text Native Nostalgia which discusses the possibility of the existence of a nostalgia for a pre-democracy past. In the introduction, Dlamini provides statements from South Africans who reveal a dissatisfaction with post-1994 society and a longing for the past. anxieties surrounding life in the new South Africa have resulted in some portions of the population believing that their survival was more secure during apartheid. Thus, while the arrival of democracy may have brought some hope to South Africa, views of the country's socio-political state after 1994 have led to scepticism regarding the possibility for post-Apartheid prosperity.

These views are exemplified in the case of South African Brandon Huntley who applied for refugee status in Canada, claiming that the government failed to protect him from racially motivated attacks. His lawyer, South African Russell Kaplan, claims that one of Huntley's intentions was to inform the world “what a sickly place South Africa is”.

The biggest setback is the lack of change that followed the TRC. The thing about rainbows is that the colors are separate, which is the case in South Africa. Arial photos taken by Johnny Miller reveal that economic divisions created by Apartheid still stratify the Western Cape. Using a drone, he captures how the segregation is not created by any natural phenomena but instead is caused by the manmade divisions of Apartheid. The photo below is of Lwandle/Nomzamo, a township that was designated for black people by the Group Areas Act of 1950. It was originally built as a low-cost place for workers to live.

According to a 2011 census, Nomzamo still has a black population of over 90%, revealing that demographics have not changed since 1994 and society is still segregated racially. These racial segregations trace economic lines.

Another photograph taken by Miller features Manenberg. This township was created in 1966 for coloured people after District Six and other areas were declared whites-only regions.

Like Nomzamo, Manenberg mostly retains its pre-democracy demographics thus over 80% of its residents are coloured. Furthermore, housing continues to be a problem and the widespread poverty breeds crimes and gangs.

Questions to ask yourself

Was the TRC a good idea?
Was justice served?
Would South Africa be better off with a tribunal?
Would South Africa be better off with white genocide following the end of apartheid?
Did the TRC do anything good or was it just a show to brush away a bloody past?

To end off, I'd like to post an interview with a jail warden who once jailed political prisoners but now works as a tour guide at Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was held. Do you think he received justice? Hmmmmm...

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Emoji Award given by @Prof_YeetusMcNasty: "boomermonster"

Redactor0 naori/oppa The Rachel Dolezal of Filipinos 1mo ago (text post) 1,017 thread views #256172

EFFORTPOST The history of MUDs, games from my old boomer times

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I did a poll a while back asking what I should write about. Surprisingly "my old boomer times" won by a large margin. So I present you with a history of MUDs, the thinking man's multiplayer game.

Telnet

Back in the 1800s (yes, that's how far back I'm going) Americans invented all kinds of awesome things: telephones, machine guns, movie cameras, record players. Two of these devices, the typewriter and the telegraph, were combined into something even more powerful. The keyboard of one typewriter sent electrical signals to control a typewriter at a distant location. This was known as teletype. It's how big organizations like militaries and multinational corporations sent data for about a century.

Teletype Model 33.

Eventually Americans invented even more cool stuff like mainframe computers capable of doing time sharing. This meant they could respond almost instantly. You could connect a teletype to the computer but that was suboptimal as the teletype couldn't print as fast as the computer could think. So the printer was replaced with a video screen, and now you had a dumb terminal. It could show text on a screen and accept text input but that was about it. These came into use in the 1970s among big organizations that could afford to pay for the luxury.

A DEC VT100 terminal. This is the standard terminal that's emulated in software.

Another revolution quickly followed in the 1980s with microcomputers, little computers so cheap that an individual person could own one. These were not very powerful at first but they were smart enough to pretend they were a dumb terminal and connect to mainframe. It's a computer emulating a terminal emulating a teletype.

Telnet being used for something more serious.

Why waste your time with this history lesson? It's important to understand the environment we're dealing with here. The Telnet protocol that you use to connect to a MUD is all about text. The technical details of how it gets from one place to another are more advanced, but in the end it's just alphanumeric characters going in and out like a machine from the 1800s.

Gaymers Rise Up

As universities got mainframes capable of time sharing, computer games soon followed. Among the most revolutionary was 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure. The player explores a cave system made up of a network of rooms. Each room has a text description and it can have items in it for the player to pick up. The player gives commands by simply typing in what they want to do. Many more games following this formula followed and the text adventure genre was born.

Don't get eaten by a grue.

Zork was among the most popular of these new games. Some nerd at the University of Essex loved to play a version of it called Dungeon. In 1978 he decided to make a multiplayer game based on it, which he naturally called Multi User Dungeon, and the MUD was born. In 1980 the university was connected to the internet, exposing MUD to the whole world.

UNIX Nerds Emerge

The roots of the MUD genre were now firmly planted but it would be many years before it bloomed. There were a number of technical obstacles which made it prohibitively expensive for all but a lucky few to play MUDs. The internet was only available at a few dozen universities and major computer companies, most of which frowned on using it for monkey business like playing games. By the late 1980s there were several MUDs running on commercial networks like CompuServe and AOL but these charged obscene amounts for connection time. Microcomputers like the PC became available but were still far too expensive for an ordinary family to get just to play games. A modem had to be purchased separately and these were incredibly slow and expensive as well.

Remember how to calculate your THAC0.

Despite these challenges, the 1980s saw great progress. A new nerd monoculture was sprouting in America and Europe, one that would prove to be fertile ground for the emergence of MUDs. The UNIX operating system and C language were taking over university computer science programs replacing a hodgepodge of weird proprietary systems. This made it much easier to share code, which would be crucial in the golden age of MUDs. There was compatibility in culture as well. Every nerd liked The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.

Explosion

Ultimately MUDs would explode in popularity not because of some revolutionary idea from a creative genius but simply because computers got better and cheaper over the years. By 1995 you could get a Windows PC with a modem for a reasonable price. The fiber optic backbone of the internet was laid and in the early 1990s the government allowed it to be used for commercial purposes. University computers became powerful enough that running a MUD wasn't too big a drain on resources.

Around 1990 a few free (as in Richard Stallman eating something off his foot and calling it "GNU") MUDs appear. Most MUDs in the future are descendants of these, especially the enormously influential DikuMUD. However there are also all kinds of MUDs with their own unique codebase, some of them quite bizarre like one based on LISP. The most enduring are true labors of love, often based in a university computer science department and passed down from one class of students to the next.

A map of the city of Midgaard. DikuMUDs generally kept the same layout.

Some MUDs were for roleplaying. You were expected to stay in character pretending you were an elf or a Romulan or something. As shameful and embarrassing as it was to engage in this type of behavior, it had a charm. You were essentially cooperating with the other players to write a story in real time. If nothing else, you could learn how to write quickly under time pressure. Some of these artsy-fartsy type MUDs let you create your own areas and even program them. It was kind of like Second Life except without graphics or Bardfinn. With no graphics and such a simple user interface it was easy to add whatever gameplay mechanics you could think of.

But most were simple hack and slash affairs. You go out to an area appropriate for your level, preferably in a group, and hunt for mobs. When you find one you type something like "kill orc" and enter combat, taking turns attacking each other. Occasionally you "kick" or "cast magic missile" or whatever your class' special power is. When you kill it you get xp, gold, and maybe equipment. This should sound very familiar to you. MUDs were inspired by D&D and in turn became the basis of MMOs. EverQuest, the first MMO to achieve mainstream success, ripped off DikuMUD to a large extent.

Legacy

The golden age of MUDs lasted until around 2000. During this period they were really the only game in town. There were multiplayer FPSs and RTSs but nothing that gave you a similar experience. On a 56k modem it took a few seconds just to download a jpeg. Internet connections were much less stable, frequently cutting out for a second or two. So text still made sense as the medium for a multiplayer game.

Then MMOs arrived like Spanish conquistadors, bringing ruin for our civilization. Better PCs and better communications technology like DSL finally allowed the dream of a "graphical MUD" to come true. These were the shiny new thing. Why read walls of text written by some random 20 Finnish nerd boy when you could be looking at 3D graphics instead? If you had any normie friends they would be playing WoW, not words words words. Of course some MUDs have survived and are still thriving today, but the age when there were a thousand running at a time with all kinds of creative new ideas is over.

You can't compete with graphics like this.

So why do I lament the passing of this era? Is it just nostalgia for a time when ska ruled and action movies had real stunts? No. It's more. That was a time when we were free. Free to express yourself. Free to make your own world. Free to implement any crazy gameplay system you wanted. Free to be a Romulan. Jolan 'tru, dramanauts.

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