The Comms Plus! Articles Hat
Comms Plus! was a comms-oriented magazine which ran from October/November 1989 until December 1990/January 1991 in 7 (one was skipped - August/September 1990) issues. It was printed on glossy paper and cost £1.00 an issue (comparable to newsstand magazines) but it was never going to hit the big time despite its aspirations (the editing and layout were too weak). After the magazine folded, it was relaunched as The Message, a name which rather annoyed me as I'd already used it for the name of the religion in my first novel.

Blane Bramble wrote a regular column on "MUGs", by which he meant MUDs, and these are reproduced here. Other articles were also carried on the subject, most notably by Paola Kathuria (occasionally referred to in the magazine as "Paola Kathurian"); these are reproduced in the main part of the arhive.
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 8 to 11,
October/November, 1989.
An introduction to "MUGs", and a list of those available at the time (mainly explaining how to access them). It refers to MIST as "Essex MUD", which I asked them to correct. See the next issue for their bodged response.
Remember when we used to think that an 80386 running Xenix was "a fairly hefty setup"?
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 10 and 11,
December, 1989/January, 1990.
A discussion of the Mosaic system for programming MUDs, and a review of Shades. There's also an apology for using the "tradename" MUD with reference to MIST in the previous issue. Groan...
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 17 and 18,
February/March, 1990.
A few brief words on each of the games available on the (recently renamed) IOWA on-line system, followed by a review of Gods.
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 18 and 19,
April/May, 1990.
The usual IOWA-intensive set of short newsy pieces, although it opens with a review of AberMUG.
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 27 and 28,
June/July, 1990.
More short reviews, beginning with a few words on the future of MUDs (which seem to advocate adding features we rejected after version 2 of MUD..!)
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 20 and 22,
October/November, 1990.
Standard fare, looking in a little more detail at Chaos and the promise of The Spy.
I didn't include the connection details section this time (or the next): it's the same as the others, out of date anyway, and a devil to scan (black printed on a grey made up from small black dots).
Mortar Board Forbidden Realms
Bramble, B.
Comms Plus!, pages 25 and 26,
December, 1990/January, 1991.
This time it's The Void's turn for extra coverage.

Richard A. Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk)
21st January 1999: cplus.htm