[Lipa]

Hi all!

This is my first post, so a short introduction is in order. I’m a long-time addict to interactive fiction (text adventures) and roguelike games (mostly Angband versions), so you can tell that I value text more than anything. Sadly, I’ve only recently discovered the concept of MUDs after joining the interactive fiction community at ifMUD, but now the more I read about them, the more I feel that this is something that I would really enjoy! I truly got interested!

Yet the number of available MUDs is staggering, which brings me to the purpose of this post. I’ve done some research and I found a few games that I find interesting. Aardwolf and New Worlds seem to be popular, and I’m also very interested in trying out one of the Iron Realms titles. Furthermore, as an avid Frank Herbert fan, I’m also tempted to try Dune. Unfortunately though, I simply don’t have time to try them all, and also they’re not the sort of games that you can simply “check out” in a couple of minutes.

So – I’m humbly asking for directions. And what are my preferences? First and foremost, I’d like a MUD that wouldn’t necessarily demand too much time per playing session. I could easily afford, say, one hour every couple of days (sometimes more, sometimes less), but I generally couldn’t commit five hours or so per session. This means that the MUD should probably allow me to easily save the PC and the equipment, so that I wouldn’t “lose” much at log-off. Secondly, I also like roleplaying very much, so I guess I’m looking for a friendly universe where RP is encouraged or even enforced. And finally, since there will be occasions when I would only be able to log-on for less than an hour, it’d be nice if the MUD would have something to offer for solo play, such as randomly generated quests, for example.

What would you recommend? Iron Realms games look really promising – is this something I should try (and which one)? What about the other options?

Thanks for helping another newbie into the sandbox!