from what i understand, several of you guys have played pnp d&d.

just curious if anyone has ever done any online roleplaying.

Do MUDs count?

what?

yes Anthea, you'be talking a lot about MUD's today. what is that??

MUD. Multi-User-Dungeon. Text-based roleplaying, all you need is telnet (well... if you don't use windows. The windows telnet is just crappy. Better uses PuTTY or something like that) and a big amount of fantasy, then you connect to the MUD, log in (or for the first time, create a character) and then start with your quests, explore the world, do good (or bad) deeds, interact with other online users (depending on the MUD and the time you log in, sometimes up to 200 or more useres online at the same time), and so on.

ahaa, thanks for the info

I used to play MUDs years back. I don't know if there are any good non-PK ones left though. I never much cared for PK anything.

Well, there are some none-PKs still existent. I mainly stay in a german mud (Morgengrauen), and sometimes in TAPPMud, due to nostalgic reasons
Anyway, you can take a look at The Mud Connector to see what is available by today

And can I still play MUD? How do I connect. I have PuTTY.

Well, you might try to create a new session, enter the URL of the desired Mud under host name (e.g. tapp.mud.de ) and the correct port ( 23 ), as you find it in the mud connector list. You might have a look at the Terminal settings, I have checked there everything except the "DEC Origin Mode". You may give those settings a name and save them (under Session). then you click on "Open" and there you are.

I haven't ever done any of this. Is it fun?

well, no. i meant kinda like joining a roleplaying forum and roleplaying there...

No? How can you say that. Playing in MUDs makes much fun, and there still is the danger of addiction

Heh...speaking from the creator's point of view yeah it's fun, but only if it's balanced. I don't like non-rp pk myself. It's stupid and promotes nothing. I have nothing against a honourable challenge and duel though. And basically most non-pk muds out there are mostly hang-out-have-fun-and-cybersex oriented. I go for roleplay enforced and it's the best one can have imho. [sighs] I WANT TO TELL MY SAD TALE... sniff... I'm out of builders... and I'm dismissing builders with a shovel damn it, can't find someone who cares enough. Oh well, there, I said it.

how can i say no? because that's not what i was talking about, silly =)

I'd like to try this MUD stuff, but I've never even heard of telnet or PuTTY, what is all this stuff?

Telnet: A text-based internet protocol, much older than http
Even windows has a telnet client nowadays (just try to open a command prompt and type "telnet") but what would you expect: that windows-telnet is just a crappy sh**. So there are programmers who do good work, and so the program "PuTTY" was developed.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

So, how does MUD work?
What has it got to do with putty?

A mud is a text-based Online-RPG, so it uses the text-based interface of the telnet-protocol that you can log in, type commands, read descriptions, what is happening, what other users say or do. You might have a look at http://www.mudconnect.com/ , there you can read a bit more about MUDs and get a list of the MUDs available, what the setting is (future/past/fantasy/etc), if they are PK-MUDs or Non-PK-MUDs (PK: Player-Killing, you can kill or be killed by other players. Is absolutely forbidden in Non-PK-MUDs), and so on.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot: There are several special MUD-Clients, too, like TinyFugue, WinMUD, or others, that offer a somewhat more comfortable interface where you can define macros, get the text colored depending on the source (a friend tells you something, you get attacked by a NPC (non-player-character), standard-messages, etc), and other stuff. But I am either a bit old-fashioned, or the cause is that those clients didn't exist over 10 years ago when I started playing MUDs, anyway: I never used such a MUD-Client.