Introduction

"MUD players are MUD authors, the creators as well as the consumers of media content. In this, participating in a MUD has much in common with script writing, performance art, street theatre, improvisational theatre - or even commedia dell'arte"
Sherry Turkle - life on the screen p. 11-12

This site has been specifically devised as an aid for the "MOO to you" and "MOO to you, too" workshops held at the incubation2 conference in Nottingham hosted by the trAce online writing community. This gives a brief overview of some tools and commands used within a MOO environment, specifically the enCore Xpress used by LinguaMOO, however, most of the basic commands can be used in any MOO.

What is MOO?

For those of you who've never come across a MOO environment before (or who have but have been completely bewildered by it), MOO refers to a Multi-user environment, Object Oriented. It sounds scary, but all it means is that it is a place where people can communicate and interact with eachother and the environment online in real time. Generally, a MOO will have its own geography, that is to say a set of interlinked rooms or areas where people can come together to communicate. MOOs have been around for a long time now, and originally were purely text based environments. (in fact, many are still purely text based, and can only be accessed via a MUD or MOO client).

When logged in you can communicate with anyone else who is logged in at the same time and interact with objects in your environment. There is also an inbuilt mail system so you can send messages to other people, as well as writing notes or posting messages to noticeboards.

If you apply for a character, you can build your own room, and create objects to furnish it and link it to the rest of the MOO.