MUD Background Information

MUD is an acronym for Multi-User Dungeon and it was the name of the first MUD created by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex back in 1979. Since those early days, many varieties of MUDs have come and gone. Today this type of game is refered to by many different names including, MUD, MOO, MURPE, or MMORPG, but whatever the name, they all share the same common heritage of the first MUD. An interesting bit of trivia is that almost fifteen years later, Archipelago MUD — the previous name of Tempora Heroica, also got its start at the University of Essex!

In many ways, the ancestor to the first MUD was the Colossal Cave Adventure game created by Will Crowther in early 1970s. Crowther’s cave was based on the Bedquilt Cave in Kentucky — a cave system he helped survey. More development of the game was done by Don Woods at Stanford Univeristy. Woods rewrote much of the original game and expanded upon it to include many references to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Colossal Cave Adventure was the first “interactive fiction” that later games, such as the Zork series by Infocom, copied and imitated.

Features of Tempora Heroica

A short list of aspects of our virtual community that makes Tempora Heroica a special and wonderful place.

About DML

DML, or Dynamic MUD Language, is the scripting language of Tempora Heroica. This is a behind-the-scenes peek of how the narrators make the MUD so interesting.

Senior Staff

A little bit about the people currently maintaining and developing Tempora Heroica.

Copyright Information

All sorts of wonderful legal-type stuff. Who claims to own what intellectual property and what source code was the MUD derived from.

About ibiblio

This links to the homepage of our gracious hosts, ibiblio. Learn about all the nifty, spiffy stuff that they do.