Richard A. Bartle: Quick-Start Tutorial

Quick-Start Tutorial

This tutorial presents an opportunity to gain some early experience of MUD2 and its commands. As MUD2 is a multi-player game, it is inherently unpredictable - you never know what might be going on when you start a game - so although most of what appears here will be valid most of the time, there's no guarantee that things will always look or behave in the manner described. If things look thoroughly confusing, quit and try again later!

In what follows, I'll be using sample pieces of output generated by MUD2 itself, to show you roughly what you can expect to see. So as to make it distinguishable from the text I use to describe it, I'll prefix each line from MUD2 with a | symbol and a tab; naturally, you won't see either on the screen when you actually play yourself.

        So, you've logged in to the MUD computer, and you're ready for your first game. You ought to be at a prompt looking rather like this:
|       Option (H for help):
Type p followed by a 'return' to play MUD2 (all input to MUD2 is terminated using the 'return' key, or 'enter' as some keyboards have it).
|       Option (H for help): p

        It may be that the game is 'resetting', in which case you'll be told
|       The database is still initialising (long reset).
and be bounced back to the prompt. Wait until you're informed
|       +- The database has finished initialising -+
and then try again. The odds are, though, that the game won't be doing this, and that you'll therefore make it to the next prompt. A fair amount of information is presented first, though, which I'll explain briefly.

| MUD version 4E. | Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993 Multi-User Entertainment Ltd. | Licensed (number 12345678) to Richard Bartle.
This stuff is just general information to let you know what it is you're playing, whose copyright it is, and that the people that are running it are allowed to do so (I hope!).

| This is your first game of MUD. Good luck!
You won't see THAT again...

| You have 0 minutes of play remaining. MUD is free for all players at |the moment.
Whether or not there's a line similar to the one above depends on the nature of the system that's running MUD2. If it has other games on it, you most likely won't see charging information like that, however if it's stand-alone then you probably will.

| MUD last reset on 22-MAR-93 at 13:06:23. | This reset is number 247.
This tells you how long the game has been running since it was last reinitialised, a process which normally happens every hour and a quarter. Each period between reinitialisations is known as a 'reset', and is assigned its own number to distinguish it from all other resets.

| The personae available to you are: **Unused**, **Unused**, **Unused**. | By what name shall I call you?
This is as far as the output gets before it pauses. You are about to enter MUD2, but the game needs some means of identifying you (or rather your character in the game - your 'persona'). It could just use your real name, of course, but where's the fun in that? Instead, it asks you to provide a name by which it will refer to you. Pick something that's between 1 and 10 letters long.

| By what name shall I call you? gandalf | Sorry, I can't call you "Gandalf". | What shall I call you instead?
Oh, and DO try to be a little original, please!

| What shall I call you instead? doodah | Creating new persona. | What sex do you wish to be?
Once you come up with an acceptable name, MUD2 will let you know that it's creating a new 'persona' (ie. a character bearing that name within the game). It's up to you to decide how to role-play as this, but MUD2 does ask that you provide a (starting) gender so that it can get its nouns and pronouns properly determined. Reply either m or f.

|       What sex do you wish to be? m |       Elizabethan tearoom. |       This cosy, Tudor period room is where all MUD adventures start. Its |       exposed oak beams and soft, velvet-covered furniture provide it with |       the ideal atmosphere in which to relax before venturing out into that |       strange, timeless realm. A sense of decency and decorum prevails, and |       a feeling of kinship with those who, like you, seek their destiny in |       The Land. When you are suitably composed, you may enter that domain by |       stepping through an opening to the north; however, you are welcome to |       stay here for as long as you like, sipping tea and watching the world |       go by.
You're in! This is the opening description of the Elizabethan Tearoom. All rooms in MUD2 have a short description, identifying the room, followed by a long description that describes what it looks like. In the beginning, you are strongly advised to read the long descriptions, otherwise you won't have the slightest clue what to do next.
|       Bioot is here.
Something like this will be appended onto the end of the room description if there's another player in the room (Bioot, in this example).
|       Players: |       Richard the arch-wizard |       Polly the witch |       Doodah |       Snapp the mage |       Bioot |       Sie the superhero
When you enter the game, additionally you'll be told who is playing. Here, we can see that apart from us (Doodah) there are two wizzes (Richard and Polly) and three mortals (Bioot, Sie and Snapp). There may be others who are invisible, and who therefore don't show up on the list.
|       *
This is the prompt: whenever you see this from within MUD2, it's waiting for a command.

| *quit | Cheerio! | Option (H for help):
Your first MUD2 command is also the most important: how to get out of the game! Although the actual command is 'quit', most people abbreviate it to 'qq' ('q' being to easy to type by accident...).

| Option (H for help): p | MUD version 4E. | | [blah blah] | | The personae available to you are: Doodah, **Unused**, **Unused**. | By what name shall I call you?
If we type p again to rejoin the game, we'll see that this time our persona name is recorded as existing. The '**Unused**' slots are because actually MUD2 allows people to have up to three personae each. These are totally distinct from one another, and you role-play them independently however you like. As you're just starting, though, you may as well use the name you already chose.

Rooms are locations which may be occupied by players, objects and so on. To change your room, you have to move. Movement is mainly by compass points. Rereading the long description of the Elizabethan Tearoom, we note:
| ... When you are suitably composed, you may enter that domain by | stepping through an opening to the north; ...
so we ought to try that. The abbreviation for 'north' is 'n'.

| *n | As you approach the opening, a powerful feeling of dread descends | upon you, obviously magically-induced, but too strong and insidious | for you to resist. | *
Oh dear! This is MUD2's first puzzle: how to get out of the Tearoom? As it's your very first puzzle, the game does actually take pity on you and tells you the solution if you wait a few seconds:
| Still in the Elizabethan Tearoom, eh? Try sipping some tea, it might | help you go places...

However, you may also see something like this around this time:
| You now feel up to attacking other players, should you so desire.
To stop people from throwing novice personae at high-ranking personae in large quantities, MUD2 won't let you attack anyone for the first minute or so. When this time is up, the above message informs you of the fact. It doesn't mean your attacks will always be allowed (personae are safe from assault while in the Tearoom, for example), but it does mean you can give it a go.

Back to solving the puzzle:
| *sip tea | You watch the world go by. | (Persona saved on 1). | *
There! That wasn't difficult, now was it? Your persona is ranked according to experience, and experience is measured in terms of points. The 'sip tea' command will give you 1 point if your total was previously 0. If you have 1 or more points, you can get out of the Tearoom.

| *n | As you step through the opening, you become swathed in a fine, | gossamer mist. The Elizabethan tearoom fades hazily away, and vague, | new shapes begin to form around you. Their outlines become more | defined, their colours grow stronger, and the mist thins out into pale | wisps, which gradually disperse away to nothingness...
So, you now know how to leave the Tearoom! Unfortunately, where exactly you appear in the game proper is determined randomly. You'll be somewhere on a road, but which bit? Here's a possibility, but you're more likely to see some other room. (Note, by the way, that I still called this a 'room' even though it isn't what you'd normally think of as a room in the real world. That's just MUD2 jargon - MUDspeke, as it's known).
| Narrow road between lands. | You are stood on a narrow road between The Land and whence you came. | To the north and south are the small foothills of a pair of majestic | mountains, with a large wall running round. To the west the road | continues, where in the distance you can see a thatched cottage | opposite an ancient cemetery. The way out is to the east, where a | shroud of mist covers the secret pass by which you entered The Land. A | splendid necklace lies on the ground.

        MUD2 has an 'out' command. This is a special direction which moves you one room towards a central location - a ford across a river. The abbreviation for 'out' is 'o'. It therefore follows that if you were to repeatedly go 'o', you'd end up at the ford. MUD2 also has a mechanism for repeating commands automatically - you put a dot for every repetition you want. We can therefore orient ourselves by typing 'o' followed by a handful of dots. If that doesn't get you to the ford, do it again until it does.
|       *o....... | |       [Room descriptions will flash by here - don't bother reading them!] | |       Ford in river. |       You are wading across a partly-submerged ford which links the two |       banks of a fast-flowing river. To the west, the ford continues; east, |       it reaches dry land at the bottom of a sun-kissed hillside. |       *
This is the ford I was talking about; enough 'o' commands will eventually get you here. Don't worry if you do too many and overshoot - you'll only be told
|       You cannot go out from here.
a few times (once per extra 'o' command MUD2 is trying to process).

        A word about weather: every once in a while, it starts to rain. MUD2 first tells you
|       Clouds are gathering overhead.
and then, a few seconds later
|       It has started to rain.
You'll subsequently find that every outside room includes at the end of its description a mention of the fact that it's raining. If you're at the ford during a period of rain, you can expect to be hurt by the pounding effect of the river's freshly-swollen waters.

        Rain or not, it doesn't matter at this stage - you're only experimenting, not actually playing seriously. The most promising place for a newcomer to look is the cottage. From the ford, you go west eight times, then south twice:
|       *w........ |       Ford across river. |       It is raining. |       Rain has swollen the river to a raging torrent! You fight your way |       across, but are constantly buffeted and pounded all the way, causing |       you terrible injury!
(no, this won't happen if it isn't raining!)
|       Badly-paved road. | |       [blah blah] | |       Road opposite cottage. |       You are standing on a badly paved road with a cemetery to the north |       and the home of a grave-digger to the south. An inscription on the |       cemetery gates reads, "RESTING PLACE OF LOST SOULS". It is raining. |       *
On your journey westwards, you may notice that some of the rooms described only have short descriptions and contents lists, not long descriptions. This is because you've been there before. If you get full descriptions for all the rooms, that means you must have been dumped east of the ford when you left the Tearoom, so you haven't been there before in this reset.

| *s | Path. | You are standing on a path which leads off a road to the north, to a | cottage south of you. To the west and east are separate gardens. It | is raining. | *s | Hall. | You are standing in an oddly shaped hall. To the south is a doorway, | the east is an archway, and some dark forbidding stairs lead upwards | to the southeast. Immediately to the west is a fitted wardrobe, and | some eerie, granite steps to the southwest lead downwards to the | cellar. The kitchen door is locked shut. | *
So, this is the cottage. There are lots of things in here which are worth points only to novices such as yourself, so there's a fair chance that they'll still be accessible. However, it's possible that other personae will have taken everything, in which case you'll have to wander off on your own for the next part of the tutorial as we're going to look at how to pick things up.

| *e | Lounge. | This is the lounge. Around you are some pieces of elegant troll-hide | furniture, although all the portable ones have long been stolen so | there's no point in getting any... Ahead of you to the south is the | dining area, and to the west is the hall. An archway to the east leads | to the study. A fire is burning merrily in its grate; the flickering | flames are joy to behold as you warm your hands from the glowing | coals. The fire contains a piece of obsidian. A picture postcard lies | here, bearing a view of a delightful garden. You notice a classy, | cut-glass dish, glistening within your reach. The dish contains a | banana, an orange, a peach and an apricot. | *
Now, this room has a short description and a long description, folded into which is a list of objects: a fire, some obsidian, a postcard, a dish, a banana, an orange, a peach and an apricot. When objects are described at the end of a room description like that, it usually means they're portable, ie. you can pick them up. The command to pick things up is 'get', and the one to let go of them is 'drop'.

| *get treasure | Dish taken. | Postcard taken. | *drop treasure | Dish dropped. | Postcard dropped.
The word 'treasure' refers to all objects that are worth points. The fire isn't worth points, so 'get' didn't try to pick it up - which is just as well! The dish, in addition to being treasure, is also a container: when we pick it up, we get the fruit too. The fire also acts as a container, and the obsidian is inside it. Despite the fact that the obsidian is treasure, though, 'get treasure' didn't pick it up; that's because 'get' only picks things up that aren't inside something else unless you explicitly tell it otherwise. We could 'get treasure from fire' if we wanted the obsidian, but as that would entail a nasty burn I don't recommend you try it just now...

'Get' and 'drop' are used very frequently, and have the abbreviations 'g' and 'dr' ('d' is short for 'down', a movement command akin to 'out'). Most MUD2 players abbreviate almost pathologically, as the fewer letters typed means the quicker a command will be executed. If you really want to, you CAN type things like 'Pick up the classy, cut-glass dish and the picture postcard.', but by then someone else may have entered your room, typed 'g t', and left! ('T' is the abbreviation for 'treasure').

| *g t | Dish taken. | Postcard taken. | *i | You are carrying the following: | the postcard and the dish. | The dish contains: | the banana, the orange, the peach and the apricot. | *
The 'i' command is short for 'inventory', and it tells you what you're carrying. The output is formatted by MUD2, so you can see what's inside what more easily. If you feel, adventurous, you might at this point want to try 'g fruit from dish', 'i', then 'dr fruit in dish'.

Treasure is worth points. Indeed, treasure is the main source of points for the vast majority of personae. To find out how many points something is worth, value it:
| *val t | The value of the dish is 15pts. | The value of the postcard is 11pts.
These values are NOT constant: they rise the more players there are, and the later into a reset it is. For certain objects (the dish and the postcard among them), the value can actually be negative if someone too experienced is holding them; this is why they generally lay untouched for quite a long time. All the buildings off the road have similar 'trinkets' inside them, so if you were disappointed at the cottage you might be luckier at the inn, stable or villa.

Merely holding an object isn't enough to earn you its points, however. To convert objects into points, you need to dispose of them in a fashion that renders them unusable by everyone else (until, that is, the game is reinitialised at the end of the reset). In MUD2, this means you drop them in the swamp. Of course, to do that you need to FIND the swamp! Fortunately, there's a 'swamp' movement command that you can use to move you one room in the direction of the swamp. It's not actually very far from the cottage:
| *swamp | Dining area. | You are standing in the dining area of a long narrow room. To the | north is the lounge, to the west is a serving hatch which, you | surmise, leads to the kitchen (although it's too small to climb | through). To the south are some french windows which open out over a | pasture. | *swamp | East pasture. | Around you is a delightful pasture. To the south is a fast flowing | stream. Further north and east you can see a woodman's hut and to the | north is gorse scrub. Northwestwards you can see a strange, forbidding | cottage, which you can enter via its french windows. It is raining. | *swamp | Rapids. | You are on the bank of some dangerous rapids. Beyond them to the east | the river goes underground; to the west it continues out of sight, and | you can hear a thundering of falling water from that direction. To the | south can be seen (and smelled!) a fuming swamp, and southeast is a | small pond. It is raining. | *swamp | You are waylaid in a treacherous swamp. | It is raining. | *
The abbreviation for 'swamp' is 'zw' (as 'sw' is 'southwest'). You could therefore have got there from the lounge by typing 'zw' and four or more dots.

| *drop t | Dish dropped. | (Persona saved on 16). | Postcard dropped. | (Persona saved on 27). | *
When you drop treasure in the swamp, you score for it at its current value. MUD2 tells you what your new points total is. In the example above, we had 1 point from the earlier 'sip tea', plus 15 for the dish, plus 11 for the postcard, giving a total of 27. We COULD have scored points by eating the fruit, but it's too late now that we've 'swamped' it. Note that when you swamp a container, you only score for the container itself, not for its contents. You might therefore wish to 'empty' the container if you've been using it to carry around large quantities of goodies.

This is perhaps a good time to look at another important MUD2 command, 'score' or just 'sc'. This tells you pertinent information about your persona, which I'll describe a few lines at a time.
| *sc | name: Doodah | sex: male
The first two lines are obvious, because they merely repeat what we already know. Sex can be changed as a result of magic, but it tends to remain pretty constant.

| strength: 48 | dexterity: 58 | stamina: 42 max: 44
The next three lines describe the main attributes of your persona, which were generated by the game at persona-creation time. You'll notice that they add up to 150 - they do for all new personae, to keep things fair. Strength is a measure of how strong your persona is ("you don't say..."), the primary purpose of which is to determine how much damage you do when you hit someone in a fight. Dexterity influences how often you hit, and stamina is how much damage you can take. Although strength and dexterity don't fall, stamina does as a result of injury - Doodah's is down 2 on his maximum because he was hurt earlier crossing the river at the ford. Strength and dexterity can be affected by a number of external factors, however, eg. if you're carrying large numbers of heavy objects then both will fall; in such cases, you'll be told your 'effective' strength and dexterity, too.

| score: 27pts this game: 26pts value: 80pts
Here, we find out how many points we have, and how we're doing overall this game. Note that, like objects, personae have a value: it's the number of points people will be awarded if they kill you in a fight. Only very low-scoring personae (such as Doodah here) have a value that actually exceeds their points total; a persona's value is normally just over a fifth of its points total.

| level: 0 novice
Points give an indication of each persona's experience of the game, but the bare numbers don't really give much of a feeling as to how well (or badly) anyone is progressing. Ranges of points are therefore attributed names, and each range is called a 'level. Between 0 and 199 points, you are level 0, 'novice'; 200 to 399 is 'protector'; 400 to 799 is either 'yeoman' or 'yeowoman', depending on your gender. The scale ends on 204,800 points at level 11, 'wizard' or 'witch' (known generically as 'wiz'). Personae are almost always referred to by the game using their name and level name, eg. 'Snapp the mage', although this is not the case for novices as the level name can be implied from its ommision. Level names also depend on other things, eg. ability to use magic, but the basic rule is that if a level name sounds powerful, it is...

| weight carried: nothing max: 48kg | objects carried: 0 max: 7
You can't simply pick up any object you choose and carry it around with you indefinitely: your effective strength limits the total weight of the objects you can carry, and your effective dexterity limits their total number. The above lines from 'score' tell you the current state of affairs. the dexterity restriction is easiest to circumvent - just put the smaller objects into a container and carry that.

| games played: 2
Finally, there is a reminder of how many games you have played using this persona. This is Doodah's second, but long-term players can clock up many hundreds, even thousands.

| * | Tally ho! A rabid-looking fox glares at you! | * | The fox slopes off. | *
If you hang around at the swamp a long while, you'll eventually see something like this; indeed, you may have seen something like it on the way. The fox is a game-controlled creature which wanders the land doing its own thing (in the fox's case, that generally means stealing objects and dropping them in the swamp, hence its appearance here!); such creatures are known as 'mobiles' (because they're implemented as 'mobile objects'). Mobiles are the second most dangerous things in the game, after players...

| *n | Rapids. | It is raining. | *
Leaving the swamp by going north, we arrive at the 'rapids'. You'll note that the description of this room is rather terse - a single line; this is because we've been here before this reset. Room descriptions come in two parts, the 'short description' and the 'long description'. If you can see, you always get the short description. If you haven't been to the room before, you'll also get the long description. If you only get the short description and you actually wanted the long one as well, you can 'look':

Just now, I said "if you can see". Yes, sometimes you can't! The main reason for this is being in a room where there's no light, and therefore you ought to find out fairly early on how to produce a light source. You'll need a stick, first, of which there are usually several lying around in forests.

| *g stick | Unlit brand taken. | *
The 'stick', it is now revealed, is functionally a 'brand', ie. a fire brand. This means that if you were to set fire to it, it would burn slowly and give off light.

To find a fire, we'll need to re-orient ourselves. If you've been walking the woods, you may feel a little lost. Remember the earlier trick with the 'out' command?
| o.... | | [blah blah] | | Narrow road between lands. | It is raining. A splendid necklace lies on the ground. | *o | The gap is too narrow for you to move in that direction without | dropping everything. | *
When we get to the 'narrow road between lands', we can't proceed any further; this is because we're carrying an object (the brand we picked up). Further uses of 'o' just tell us we have to drop everything to move in that direction. The 'NRBL' is on the 'out' route of all rooms lying west of it, and in this manner it acts as a stop point like the ford and the swamp. If we actually wanted to carry on to the ford, we'd have to move around it, eg. by going s.e.o....

We can now light the stick from the fire:
| *light stick | The lit brand is now alight. | *
This will enable us to see in the dark; we can also use the flaming brand as a weapon if we suddenly have need. However, beware of taking lit brands into the swamp with you, it'll cause an explosion. (I don't mind telling you that, by the way, because you WILL take a lit brand there by accident eventually, even though you've been forewarned!).

        We will now kill off Doodah, or whatever your persona is called. Yes, that is rather callous, but your personae are going to die an awful lot in the game, especially while you're new to it and exploring, and you may as well get used to the experience. We'll have some mobiles perform the deed, rather than give some other player the points benefit... The nearest mobiles are the rats, which inhabit the cottage's cellar:
|       *w |       Hall. |       The kitchen door is locked shut. |       *d |       Steps to cellar. |       You are on some granite steps leading downwards to the cellar. There |       is a hallway above to the northeast, and below is a dank cellar. |       *d |       Cellar. |       This is a dank, murky cellar, its granite-faced walls stained with |       mould and dust. Upwards to the northeast are steps, whence comes light |       enough to see by. To the south is a crack in the wall, leading to a |       small, earthen tunnel, although it looks very cramped and you might |       not be able to turn round and come back were you to enter it. To the |       west is the doorway to the coal bunker. An evil, black rat bares its |       razor-sharp incisors at you. An old, woodsman's axe has been left |       within reach. The door is locked shut. There is a large stick on the |       ground. |       *
Something like the following is almost certain to happen:
|       An evil, black rat bares its razor-sharp incisors at you. |       The rat is moving towards you venomously. |       *
The "moving towards you venomously" line tells you that the rat it attacking you; it might be phrased a little differently, but the rat's intentions will still be obvious. If there are rats present but they don't attack you, just:
|       *kill rat
and you'll initiate a fight yourself.

        Fights proceed by 'rounds'. Lines of text will start scrolling off your screen, saying variations on:
|       * |       A tame bite from the rat is cleanly parried by you.
(this means the rat didn't manage to hit you)
|       The rat ably parries your rather obvious display of courage.
(you didn't hit the rat either)
|       * |       The effort of your cunning piece of fighting makes the rat sprawl. |       Damage range: 1-4.
(you hit the rat, reducing its stamina by between 1 and 4 points - you don't get it more specific than that)
|       You are stricken by the heaviness of a crafty assault from the rat. |       Stamina=18/44.
(the rat hit you, and your stamina is now down to 18 out of a possible 44).
|       *

As you accumulate hits, you'll see your stamina getting lower and lower, until eventually...
| Your tame piece of fighting is cleanly blocked by the rat. | The heftiness of a businesslike attack by the rat makes you fall | awkwardly. | Stamina=0... | You have been killed by the rat. | Not updating persona.

That "not updating persona" line is among the most heart-breaking in the game. It means your persona has been killed, and has consequently been deleted. It no longer exists. You don't believe me? Re-enter the game and have a look:
| Option (H for help): p | MUD version 4E. | | [blah blah] | | The personae available to you are: **Unused**, **Unused**, **Unused**. | By what name shall I call you? doodah | Creating new persona. | What sex do you wish to be? m | Elizabethan tearoom. | | [blah blah] | | *
It's possible to die without losing your persona (eg. by entering the swamp carrying a lit brand), but if you die in a fight, your persona will be zeroed.

So what should we have done when we saw we were about to die? Let's get back to the rats:
| *sip tea.n.o........ | | [blah blah] | | Ford in river. | You are wading across a partly-submerged ford which links the two | banks of a fast-flowing river. To the west, the ford continues; east, | it reaches dry land at the bottom of a hillside. It is raining. | *w........ | | [blah blah] | | Road opposite cottage. | You are standing on a badly paved road with a cemetery to the north | and the home of a grave-digger to the south. An inscription on the | cemetery gates reads, "RESTING PLACE OF LOST SOULS". It is raining. | *s..d.. | | [blah blah] | | Cellar. | This is a dank, murky cellar, its granite-faced walls stained with | mould and dust. Upwards to the northeast are steps, whence comes light | enough to see by. To the south is a crack in the wall, leading to a | small, earthen tunnel, although it looks very cramped and you might | not be able to turn round and come back were you to enter it. To the | west is the doorway to the coal bunker. An evil, black rat bares its | razor-sharp incisors at you. An evil, black rat bares its razor-sharp | incisors at you. An evil, black rat bares its razor-sharp incisors at | you. There is a burning fire brand here. There is a rat here, asleep. | An old, woodsman's axe has been left within reach. The door is locked | shut. On the ground there is a large stick.
We can't use the axe because (you'd find out if you tried this) it's too heavy for a novice like us to wield. We can, however, use our stick again.

        Now, a fight with a rat can end in one of three ways: either the rat kills us (we've seen that); we kill the rat
|       The effort of a lucky lunge from the rat makes you stumble. |       Stamina=21/43. |       The rat is worried by the sharpness of your copybook blow. |       Damage range: 5-9. |       You have killed the rat. |       (Persona saved on 31). |       The rat has just passed on. |       *
(note we get points for doing that); or one of us flees
|       *f o |       (Persona saved on 0). |       Lit brand dropped. |       You have fled by going out. |       Steps to cellar. |       *
(note we lose points for doing that!). Fleeing stops the fight and moves you in the direction requested. Note, however, that commands do take finite time to be processed, and that a 'flee' will not be performed the instant you hit return; it is therefore possible that you might leave it too late, and be killed before the command takes. If you're going to flee, flee early.

        Fighting reduces stamina, but how is it restored? There are several ways: you can quit and play with another persona (stamina will be restored "off-line" in complete safety, but very slowly); you can continue to play as normal (it goes up very slowly, and you can still be attacked); you can quit, re-enter, and wait in the Elizabethan Tearoom (safe from attack, and quite quick); you can use an appropriate magical object (once you've found one); or you can sleep. Sleeping is risky, as anyone attacking you will do double damage on their first hit, but it returns lost stamina at a rather impressive rate.
|       *sleep |       ZZZzzz... |       *
Sometimes, as you sleep, you may see something like the following:
|       You dream of a gothic tower. An unwary youth strides toward you and |       with an insane laugh, says "fautwyrf". With that, a name you once knew |       turns deepest red, and you are left feeling severely metallic. |       *
The first persona to say the word in quotes gets another dose of stamina back, so you should either do it immediately or save it for a fight and hope it hasn't been used by then.

This brings us to the last topic for this tutorial, communication. Now, you may be somewhat shy about speaking to complete strangers, but don't be. Remember: no-one knows who you are. If you start a conversation and it gets into a real mess and you suspect the other person must think you're a nutter, just kill off your persona and start afresh with another one after a decent interval - no-one will know who you were, except perhaps the wizzes.

Sadly, communication being a two-way thing, it's rather difficult to show by example how to talk to people because the response can't be guaranteed. However, the commands involved in communication, and how they appear to the person receiving the message, can be easily explained.

        The first method to convey a message is to 'shout' it. This is non-specific, in that every non-deaf persona in the game will hear it, but it's also partly anonymous: only the gender of the shouter is indicated.
|       *sh I'm new here, what do I do?!
Other players would see this as:
|       A male voice in the distance shouts "I'm new here, what do I do?!".

        The second method is persona-specific using a form of telepathy that personae are assumed to possess; this is called 'telling'. Here, you give the target persona's name (but not their level!) followed by your message. They are informed that you (by name) have told them the message.
|       *Bioot That's a rather silly name you have, isn't it?
Bioot would see this as:
|       Doodah tells you "That's a rather silly name you have, isn't it?".

        The third method is close-quarters talking. Everyone in the same room as you received the message, and is informed that it was you who said it. Just begin the message with a leading quote.
|       *"This is fun.
Everyone in your room would see this as:
|       Doodah says "This is fun.".
However, compare
|       *"This is fun!
seen as:
|       Doodah exclaims "This is fun!".
and
|       *"This is fun?
seen as:
|       Doodah asks "This is fun?".

There are modifications to these commands which other players may use to show off, (eg. yell 'I was asleep!', 'hello doodah', ':raises an eyebrow') but they're really just variations on a theme. If you can master the basic three forms, you're equipped for anything!

        OK, just because you're curious, I'll end this quick tutorial with an example of a death that doesn't delete your persona (but does cost you a few points - still, it's better than costing ALL of them!).
|       *l |       Steps to cellar. |       You are on some granite steps leading downwards to the cellar. There |       is a hallway above to the northeast, and below is a dank cellar. |       *d.g lit stick.o
I'll assume you manage to get the stick before the rats move in, and that it hasn't gone out as you slept.
|       *zw......... | |       [blah blah] | |       Rapids. |       * |       The volatile marsh gases ignite from your open flame, and in an |       instant you are a charred corpse which is sucked unmercifully into the |       deep. |       (Persona saved on 23). |       You scored 23 points this game.
Dead, but not forgotten!