In my case, for the first time, a friend lured me to roll a character from a public library six years ago or so. That character lasted for about fifteen minutes or half an hour, after which my internet time to the library computer ended. Actually, I didn't have reserved computer time, but used it as it was vacant the people who had the reservation came and I had to quit. That character was a human assassin called Agantas(I recycled the name later on), and he autodeleted after that session, since I was unable to log in regularly. Agantas was the Balance god in the fantasy world me and my two friends, one of which lured me to play CF, created as a drawn map. He was also my alter ego in that realm, as I drew the lands of Balance to that map.

So, I didn't play CF after that session, until I rolled Fungor in February 2004 or so(see the PBF for more exact information). That time, the same friend who had lured me into playing CF in first place lured me into playing CF again. He installed me a MUD-client and we rolled the character for me together. I demanded OOC map as a prequisite, so that I wouldn't get lost in CF world and starve, as my first Agantas had gotten lost in Academy cavern, and all he did was killing some slug creatures that lived there at that time. My friend showed me the Dikuclan map page, and so agreed to play CF.

Now, the question to mortals and Imms alike: How did you hear of CF and start playing it?

Well I started cause my brother in law now was my sisters boyfriend at the time. He played this game alot, mainly A-P's. Well he told me about it and I made fun of him at first. How could a game with no graphics be fun?? Well he finally convinced me to try it and I rolled up a duergar A-P I didnt do well with it, but it was enough to hook me. I played on and off quitting every once in a while when I became too obsessed and my mom got mad. Now I have come to love assassins and play them all the time. My girlfriend hates the game but I just cant give it up. :)

I had been playing ROM and kept running into Matt in the game (didn't know his real name until later...I *think* it is Matt, but it's been a very long time) and he talked me into trying this new game they were writing based on ROM code. I think I was one of the first half-dozen or so players and I had a number of early characters, most of which I have forgotten about.

Then they even talked me into being a God for a while to help enforce roleplay and oversee this chaotic group called Entropy.

So now I drop in about once or twice a year, roll up a character and just see how the game has changed.

This guy I knew from a chat room wanted to pass some gear from one of his chars to another, so he asked me to create a character as a holding point. This was 8 or 9 years ago when these things weren't AS frowned upon, and I ofcourse had NO idea what was going on having never even seen a MUD before.

Well in order to do all this I had to go through the character creation process (this was right before ninjas phased out) and I got hooked just because I could pick a fantasy race/class. I was in high school at the time, and have now gone through college and am getting married... all while playing CF! Wierd how our our strangle little Universe can be one of the few constant things in a persons life, ain't it?

A couple of old friends of mine who I had played D&D with years before called me up and told me about this computer game that was online. That was back at the end of 94. While the rp was mandatory in CF, it wasn't always adhered to or enforced. But it was there if you looked for it and also supplied it. That's what hooked me. There are plenty of muds out there with their own quests and puzzles. So very few of them create the interesting personalities that come from rp. That is why cf is so addicting. It's like going to a club, you never know who you are going to meet.

I had just started a new school in 99, It was getting close to christmas and I kept seeing my friends play this game where there was no visuals. I laughed at them and said "I'll stick to Counterstrike." Then they sucked in my best friend by showing him an arial assassin (still the thing he plays most) and I was enfuriated. A few weeks later I was sitting in the choir room and told my friend "Fine, create me a character." I chose a drow invoker...not the wisest choice for a noob =P I made it to level 12! Course I kept dying cause despite the fact there are training circles in the invoker guildhall, it is still not a good idea to cast earthquake there. I rolled a few lowbie chars over the next year messing around, then rolled up my first shapeshifter, and servant of the dawn. The RP was perfect for me and it just made me fall totally in love with the game. Here I am years later still struggling for my first tat, but damned if I don't love every aspect of the game. Just bring Balgrimnr back so I can have my Ehren Guard *tear*

In roughly 2k, my brother sat me down and rolled me a cloud giant warrior. I would run around and kill mobs and whenever someone would pk me, I'd freak out and he'd take the keyboard to run away. If you're familiar with any of my characters, my PK ability has not changed much since then :). He showed me how to regear (that was when flaming axes were not limited) and pretty much that was that.

I had been mudding for a good bit of time before CF showed up on my radar (relatively speaking...since MUDs really hadn't existed *that* long way back then) I had been playing a horrid mud called Dark Castles (if you've played it, and play CF...you'll understand what I mean by horrible). It was a very cartoonish type of MUD where death meant nothing anyone could kill you, you could buy gear by sending in donations and area themes ranged from classic MUD to a Star Trek zone, to a Back to the Future zone. One of the most powerful object for the hold slot was the (glowing) (humming) white phallus that could be obtained by killing Pee-Wee in the movie gallery. I should probably also mention the spell 'solar gate' which would allow a high level mage to cast this and pretty much vaporize anyone within 4 rooms of them. Additionally roleplay was purely optional. If you've ever been around on a game where roleplay is purely optional...you know that translates to 'roleplay does not exist'...since it's really impossible to roleplay when other people are talking about what's on TV. However it was fun, if only because I hadn't found anything better.

So after that I wandered the gopher trails and came to CF. I was pretty amazed from the offset and rolled up a half-elf neutral ninja (bonus points if you can guess the name)...and not fully grasping some of the more delicate ins and outs of the game (keep in mind where I had come from) and asked about 20 people how I could get into Shadow. Shadow sounded creepy, and evil, and the perfect place for a little ninja to fit in. Then I saw Jaragh wandering through town with the Knight of Thera title...and I thought 'oooh! Knights!'. The rest, as they say, is history. I can't remember the exact date I started CF....but from what I was told it was roughly 4-5 months from the beginning of the game. (Those of you who are more avid CF historians can probably figure the time by the fact that I was like the 5th or 6th Knight inducted)

Since I've been on CF I have occasionally tried other MUDs. All of them have some charm and some interest, but it always fades and I find myself wishing they had done x or y like CF does it. Then I come home, to CF, and I think 'huh...we got it right by god.'. Sure we've got our own little problems...but on the whole, IMHO, we got it right.


Shame on me, I posted and left out the critical Shokai stamp of approval...a song quote:

"With your feet in the air
and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind."
- The Pixies -

If you've ever been around on a game where roleplay is purely optional...you know that translates to 'roleplay does not exist'...since it's really impossible to roleplay when other people are talking about what's on TV.

Yup. Nearly all larger games choose "roleplay optional" because it's a way to try to please everyone. (We might be one of the larger games out there where RP is required at a meaningful level.) One game in particular has all these very serious-sounding clans and quests, alone with an area list like:

1 - 20 ...... Hotel Orlando
5 - 15 ...... The Mob Factory '97
50 - 100 ...... ST:TNG
40 - 70 ...... The Land of Oz
65 - 201 ...... Star Wars
100 - 120 ...... Smurf Heaven
100 - 125 ...... ST:TNG (again)

, along with silly OOC titles on most characters, and no rule about leaving your character idling for 24 hours a day. (And, for some reason, a rule for "You cannot accidentally marry your alt".)

It's pretty fair to say that Shoky's equation holds everywhere I've looked:

"Roleplay is optional" = "Roleplay does not exist"

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

While Shok's equation is mostly true, I will say the one and only other MUD I've played more than 10 minutes was roleplay optional, yet roleplay definately did exist. The roleplayers would conglomerate into certain guilds, but even the guilds that did not enforce RP were always in theme.

However, the MUD came with a trade-off with some restrictive realities in the way gameplay functioned that sort of prevented OOCishness from becoming too overpowering.. for example, no long-distance channels or tells (long distance communication was limited by carrier pigeons and the like), no knowing people's names (they'd have to "introduce" themselves, and you'd have to "remember" them according to your intelligence), variable alignment based on quests and monsters killed, and no free emoting unless you were in the highly monitored semi-secret roleplaying club - you were instead restricted by socials and canned IC emotes defined by your race, guild, etc. Basically a lot of motivations to RP, but if you wanted to talk about OOC things and be a member of the generic warrior guild, no one would punish you. I guess you could define it more as "RP Encouraged" than "RP Optional".

Basically it was an entirely different MUD from CF. And a lot of the time, because of the restrictions, it was more of a solo quest adventure game than a multiplayer interactive game.

I think any MUD that has the gameplay flexibility of CF needs to enforce RP or it will all fly out the window. A lot of the gameplay features that allow for more interaction between players can also very easily spiral into OOC blabber if it is not an RP Enforced MUD.

Fall of '95 or so. An ex girlfriend of mine met some guy online who was an imm on a mud. She said it was fun to play. Well the "mud" was this imm and her, and me, in a multi-area chatroom with stuff to kill. Kind of dumb. But the idea intrigued me and I looked around online, found CF, tried it out.

I rolled an elven ranger named Durin. I think I got him into the low 20s. He was consistently murdered by an assassin whose name escapes me now. Durin got pulled aside to ROTD for a name change. I didn't know he was part of the Tolkien universe...I had pulled the name from an elf in the Sword of Shannara series. Young and indignant, I argued with the Imm for awhile and I guess he/she took pity on me because I kept the name.

In the summer I played a necromancer whose name I can't remember. The coolest thing was going to the elemental canyon and finding lodestones to zap people with. MANGLES at level 15? Wow! I even used my telnet client to set up a trigger. If I ever got into combat, I could click on the button and it would cast every spell in my spellbook in order, and then zap with a lodestone. I was so smart: S-M-R-T! Those poor fools at the receiving end of my deathfulness had no idea I could electronically pass more commands than them because I had set up a macro!

I think I learned about rounds, tics, and lag somewhere in there. Painfully.

I remember trying to write some triggers using the rudimentary scripting language built into the telnet client "Tera Term Pro". It was...painful. That's before I knew mud clients existed.

btw, Tera Term is a great telnet client. Esp. since you can patch it to support ssh.

I'm not sure exactly when I started. Me and a friend had played BBS muds, but we were looking to find a good mud, which we never had. So we sat down and methodically played EVERY mud on the mudconnector (about four or five hundred at the time). He wasn't a fan of diku muds in general, and he didn't really like CF in particular, but I thought CF was the best of them.

Anyhow I liked it, and so I made a drow necro whose name I forget. After getting utterly obliterated I tried something else but it didn't stick. I next played probably a year or two later, I tried to make a paladin. That paladin was named Valkenar, but never got anyway. However, the name stuck and it's what I use everywhere online. But then I didn't play at all for a few years.

I don't really count myself playing since '97 or whenever, since I played one necro to 26 or so, and don't really remember anything of it. My first real character was Sythvaur (human necromancer turned good and joined Warlock) in 2001. Since then I've played 2 other real characters (Zandrumial and Elrys).

I first started playing, because a psycho ass girlfriend of mine started cheating on me with a guy from Canada that she met on a game called carrion fields. I started playing to try to figure out who the guy was (yeah I know, real mature). So anyway of course I never figured it out, but in the mean time I really started to like the game. I had started on other non-rp muds, just basically kill all the people, and last person standing gets the win. Carrion fields was a hard learn for me rp wise. However I've had lot's of successful characters, someone just has to talk me into an evil character now yech! heh.

Bobbyp

I can't remember when exactly this started. I had been playing
myth I
with a buddy (met online playing) got a message on an IM
asking what I thought of mudding. to me 'mudding' was a
pastime that drunken yokels where I grew up engaged in. (After
a good rain .. between harvest and planting mind you.. you get
plastered, jump into a pickup and go skittering through corn
fields.) So I replied with do you mean....?? No no he says...
You HAVE to try this. Okay how?
type telnet://carrionfields.com:9999 into your browser.

15 minutes later I'm in ROT (I never read the stuff on names
as my friend was saying come on hurry up. I'll show you
around. HURRY come ON already. etc..) So I had to change the
name.. which i never remembered and could not log back into.

Then was an elf ranger. Elf ranger he says? they suck. Why? I
say.
a million beatings and a mutant con death at 22 lvl or so. 
(walking down eastern road no less. at four con I moved in age
range where con dropped and poof. No 30 mins ghost time to say
goodbye.. just poof.)
I took a break now and again. My problem is the harder
something is for me, the more I strive at it and the less able
I am to just walk away. I must be part mule. :) Here I am
years later. Trying to figure out why as I learned to run then
survive a pk, then kill someone, etc.. The better I got in pk
the worse my roleplay got. and then trying to get back into
the 'swing of things' That made that first character .. okay
second character so much fun to 'be' .. 

Well anyway.. here I am.. Still having fun. Not playing as
much as i once did, but Still there.

Wandered into a computer lab, saw this black background with green text, and unfortunately curiosity got the best of me and I asked that fateful question "What's that?"

Turns out "that" was Carrion Fields, and the person was playing a Knight named Monmouth back in 94-95 or so. I ended up making an arial warrior named Sengir, got his backing into Knights, and such is how the curse began. Played for about 2 yrs 'til grades and upset parents stopped college, and vanished for a few years 'til getting my act together and going back to college. CF came back, though with more moderation, and I've been playing again since, with various breaks due to the varying levels of stress college and subsequent grad school has given me.

Yeah CF spiced and ruined (in a joking way) my life. Yeah I paid more attention to it more than my work, then-girlfriend (now wife) and family. Imagine visiting my girlfriend and then asking for an internet access.

Still a wonder why she stuck to me.

To the point, Harlequinn introduced me to CF while I was playing Darkness Falls. He asked me to try it, and I did. Had a hard time figuring out the maps, getting used to commands and pks. Anyway I cheated with link-dropping, multi-charring, dropping equipments, etc. I wonder if he still plays CF. If yes, thanks for sharing CF with me. It is indeed a rewarding experience of honest gaming, and learning to deal with situations and changes. Helped me in my work life too, believe it or not, er, besides the long hours after work gaming.

So close to dropping CF entirely in the first year. Failed with 12-13 empowered characters, never got to beyond 20 level, got pk-ed, ganged, sucked a whole bunch. One thing is the learning curve is so high. Another thing is my desire to overcome something which has a better over me. I stuck on.

Belaran was the first hero character. Once you hit hero, the others just moved into place. You want to be successful with the next, and so on.

I frequented lots of BBSs before going off to college. While there, a high school friend (at Harvard, believe it or not) turned me onto some MUD or another. It might have been Carrion Fields; I'm not sure. But shortly after that I ended up on CF. I thought it was so cool that there were online games that, unlike BBS games, were real-time rather than turn-based. This was just prior to or around the same time Doom came out, so there were no networked first-person shooters to contend with. I played for a while, always via telnet, never hooked up with any online communities and never rose above the level of utter novice. Eventually I quit. Being tesseracted to, charmed, and ordered to attack my guild guard got...old.

After a while I came back and managed to make moderate progress, getting a couple of tattoos and into a couple of cabals. Still being an utter newbie, I became frustrated again and quit. Around October 2000 I came back yet again and decided that, this time, I was going to "figure it out". Been here since.

My freshman year of college at UCLA, 1994, my new boyfriend (now husband), introduced me to CF and another MUD called Genesis.

Here I am 11 years later still playing.

My husband really only played CF for a few months, and on occasion curses ever introducing me to the game, especially during some college days in which I played *really* addicti.. er, intensely. Once I got out of school and entered the real world I started playing more moderately and he's supportive of it, and continues to keep up to date on the latest changes in CF. Occasionally I will even convince him to play a mortal which he always gives up in a few weeks, but he can provide some valuable newbie/casual player feedback.

He's dyslexic, and while his dyslexia is managed, I think the rapid processing of text required to do well on CF just exhausts him. So I am doomed to enjoy CF alone and occasionally must instead get sucked into graphical games with *him*. :)

Sitting in the computer lab thinking; "I'm supposed to be taking my finals right now, but I can't quit! I'm on a Hell trip!" That was the end of my college life. :)