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TorilMUD
Dragon1

Developer(s) Kris Kortright, project community
Engine Sequent
Platform(s) Platform independent
Release date(s) 1996
Genre(s) Dungeons & Dragons MUD
Mode(s) Multiplayer
Media/distribution Online
System requirements

Telnet client or MUD client, Internet access


TorilMUD is a DikuMUD, a text-based online role-playing adventure game, and is one of the oldest of its kind. At its peak in the 1990s it had hundreds of players online at any one time.[1] As of 2012 10 to 30 players are on line, mostly experienced, skilled players.[2] Players on TorilMUD may have a number of characters, however, they cannot play more than one at a time. The atmosphere is friendly and helpful.[2]

Game characteristics[]

TorilMUD is set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting.[1] (Toril is the name of the planet where the continent Faerûn, which "Forgotten Realms" refers to, is located.) Its technical infrastructure is based on the Sequent derivative of the DikuMUD codebase.

History[]

TorilMUD originated as a project fork of Sojourn MUD, which was founded in 1993 by Kris Kortright, Tim Devlin and others who had previously worked on Copper II, Copper III and Black Knights Realm.[3] The oldest zone on TorilMUD, the Lava Tubes, comes from Copper II, and the Underworld and Alterian Wilderness zones are from Black Knights Realm.

Sojourn was based on the Sequent codebase, the Epic spell system, and areas from Black Knights Realm. The City of Waterdeep was the first zone built entirely for Sojourn, and remains TorilMUD's most heavily populated hometown. Brad McQuaid, with Kris’ permission, used it as the model for the city of Freeport in EverQuest.[4]

Sojourn continued until 1996, when a difference in creative vision among the staff led to the project being forked into TorilMUD and Duris: Land of Bloodlust.[5][4] Of the two, TorilMUD is regarded as the more direct inheritor of Sojourn's legacy.[1] Toril continued until 1998, when it became Sojourn 2, and underwent another rebirth in 2001 as Sojourn 3. Kris retired in 2003, and Sojourn 3 was reborn as TorilMUD. (Or, as the old-time players refer to it, Toril 2.) Throughout these rebirths, the areas and code continued to grow: there are currently 300 zones (with several more nearing completion), 16277 types of monsters/mobs, and 13753 different items.

Many TorilMUD staff members were staff on Sojourn 3, Sojourn 2, and some are even from Toril 1, providing a degree of continuity. All Toril staff started as players on the MUD, giving them a great deal of personal experience with the game.

Brad McQuaid was an avid player of Sojourn and, after its demise, TorilMUD. Seeing the commercial potential of virtual worlds in the course of his MUD career, he went on to create EverQuest.[6][4]

Character Creation[]

Names[]

Naming your character requires choosing a suitable and unique fantasy name appropriate to the race. Silly names, actual names, and actual words are all prohibited in character names.
NOTE: You can complete character creation by selecting a generic name from the name generator choices. Once you are ingame, you can petition the staff and ask for a name change and then select any suitable name that you can think of. Normally this must be done by level 20.

Stats[]

Rolling: During character creation you may roll endlessly until a set of stats are acceptable, then 3 stat bumps may be applied to stats of your choosing.
Restat: After character creation, one time only, you may use the Restat command to change your stats with a point-buy system. This will reset all of your stats to a base 70 and then allow you to increase stats of your choosing with a pool of points. The higher you buy a stat though, the more expensive the point cost.
  • Strength: Affects how much weight you can carry and give you bonus to Damroll.
  • Dexterity: Gives bonus to Hitroll.
  • Agility: Gives bonus to Armor Class.
  • Constitution: Gives bonus to Hitpoints.
  • Power: (Generally unused)
  • Intelligence: Lowers Spell Memorization times for mages.
  • Wisdom: Lowers Spell Memorization times for priests.
  • Charisma: Affects store prices.

Alignment[]

Alignment can restrict which items you can use, which creatures you encounter that will be aggressive to you, and possibly even where you are allowed to go.
There are 2 aspects to your alignment, with 3 options each:
  • Order: Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic
  • Morality: Good, Neutral, Evil

Changing Alignment[]

While you will select an alignment combination from the options available to your race/class at character creation, you may later change your alignment during gameplay through special alignment quests.

Races[]

Unity Grouping: Whereas there used to be a restriction preventing grouping between the Good Races and Evil Races, in October 2011 those restrictions were removed with the introduction of Unity.
Innate Abilities: Some races have passive innate abilities such as infravision or ultravision, and some races even have invoked innate abilities such as levitate or faerie fire.
  • Good Races
    • Human
    • Barbarian
    • Moon Elf
    • Half-Elf
    • Shield Dwarf
    • Gnome
    • Halfling
  • Evil Races
    • Drow Elf
    • Duergar Dwarf
    • Illithid
    • Yuan-Ti
    • Ogre
    • Swamp Troll
    • Orc
    • Half-Orc

Hometowns[]

Each race has a hometown which the character begins and some races have more than one hometown that they may choose from.
  • Waterdeep: Humans
  • Baldur's Gate: Humans
  • Calimport: Humans
  • Silverymoon: Humans
  • Leuthilspar: Elves (Evermeet)
  • Ashrumite: Gnomes
  • Mithril Hall: Dwarves
  • Griffon's Nest: Barbarians
  • Beluir: Halflings
  • Ghore: Trolls
  • Faang: Ogres
  • Bloodtusk: Orcs
  • Hyssk: Yuan-Ti
  • Dobluth Kyor: Drow (Underdark)
  • Menzoberranzan: Drow (Underdark)
  • Gloomhaven: Duergar (Underdark)
  • Ixarkon: Illithids (Underdark)


Scardale: This is the newbie town, all new characters can go to this zone until level 20. To return to your race's hometown, type recall followed by enter toril.
Map of Scardale
NOTE: Storage in the inn in Scardale, or equipment from a corpse in Scardale cannot be retrieved once you are level 20 as you can no longer recall to Scardale.
Underdark: Some evil races live in a vast underground world. These areas are significantly more dangerous than the above ground hometowns, and are intended for advanced players.
Evermeet: The Island of Elves is a place that is separated from the rest of the world. Players that start here will not be able to leave (Except to go to Scardale) until level 20.

Classes[]

Chosen when a character is created, your class will define your skills and abilities.
There are many classes, divided into 4 general categories:

Fighters[]

  • Warrior: These are the tanks that excel at surviving attacks and rescuing their groupmates.
  • Paladin: A holy knight with some warrior skills and also some priest spells.
  • Anti-Paladin: An unholy knight with some warrior skills also some evil priest spells.
  • Ranger: Primarily archers, with some good 2-weapon ability, some warrior skills, and a few nature spells.
  • Dire-Raider: Evil archers, similar to rangers except their spells are more like shamans.

Thieves[]

  • Rogue: Thieves who excel at sneaking, hiding, stealing, and make excellent assassins.
  • Bard: Magical singers whose various songs have many effects. Also receive a small number of rogue skills as well as a small selection of mage spells.
  • Battlechanter: Very similar to the bard, with a slightly different selection of spells and equipment allowances, due to their slightly more barbaric nature.

Priests[]

  • Cleric: The best healers in the game.
  • Druid: Nature priests with some healing spells, some damage spells, and a variety of utility spells.
  • Shaman: Able to summon a spirit animal, they also possess a combination of healing, attack and status affecting spells.

Wizards[]

  • Enchanter: A supportive mage who excels at casting protective magic on allies.
  • Invoker: An offensive mage that is extremely focused on damage attack spells.
  • Illusionist: A tricky mage who has a combination of many interesting spells.
  • Elementalist: Able to summon elementals and cast elemental attacks spells.
  • Necromancer: A mage who is primarily focused on animating corpses to serve them as pets.
  • Psionicist: Not technically a mage, they have potent mind powers capable of devastating psychic attacks. They also can dominate particularly weak creatures, who will then serve any command the player gives them, and ultimately they drain such pets to feed their psionic points.

Remort[]

There is also a special remort class that can be quested by a high level character of the suitable class:
  • Lich A necromancer that has advanced to become an undead creature themselves, and the ultimate master of necromancy.

Game play[]

TorilMUD offers exploration, quests, and both solo and group gameplay, adventures.

  • Quests: In order to talk to a being that you encounter, ask <mobname> hi. This is the common starting point for most quest dialogues. From there you can ask the mob any one-word possibility you can think of (often a word in the previous response) to continue the conversation and find out more about what they might want. To complete a quest, giving the mob the correct items they want will automatically complete the quest and give you a reward in return.
    • NOTE: This is a basic view of questing, some more advanced quests can be much more difficult to figure out the correct keywords to ask, require different sorts of steps (such as drop an item in a certain room), and have many additional complexities to their completion.

Getting started[]

  • Light: As a new character you start the game with a permanently lit Newbie Book. Keeping this in your inventory will light up any room you are in. Permanently lit items are marked (illuminated) in bold white. There are also basic torches available ingame that you have to hold to light, but these have become obsolete with the introduction of the Newbie Book granted to all new characters.
  • Boats: Eventually you will run into a room with water. Buying a canoe, casting 'minor creation' raft, or even keeping a plank or log found in some places, will be helpful when you encounter water rooms.
  • Food: While food may be acquired, carried, and eaten being hungry will not affect game play other than as spam.

Commands[]

  • Score: This command will show you certain stats about your character, such as your money, your experience, and what spells are affecting you.
  • Att: Attribute is a command that shows you more info about your character, such as stats, AC, hitroll, damroll, and saving throws.
  • Tog: Toggle lists certain game settings that you can turn on and off, such as chat channels, wimpy (which sets how much hp you auto-flee at), and vicious (which makes you auto-finish mortally wounded enemies.
  • Wear: In order to equip an item type wear <item keyword>. You can also wear multiple items at a time by typing wear all. To remove an item you have already equipped, type remove <item keyword>.
  • Eq: Typing equipment will show you a list of the items you are wearing.
  • Inventory: Typing i will show you a list of the items you have on hand but are not wearing.
  • Look: This command will show you the room you are in along with anyone in it or anything on the ground.
    • Directions: If you type look <direction> such as look north then you will see a description of that room and anyone or anything in it.
    • Characters: If you direct it at a character in your room or a mob in your room, you will see a description of them along with any equipment they are wearing.
    • Containers: If you have a container such as a bag in your inventory you can type look in bag to see a list of the items within the bag.
  • Scan: This will show you all the rooms adjacent to your current room.
  • Kill/Hit: These 2 commands are interchangable, and are used to initiate combat with a target.
  • Mem: Memorize is a command that must be used by spellcasters to prepare their spells. All casters must be resting to mem, and mages must also have a spellbook in their inventory. If used while standing, this command will simply show you a list of prepared spells and spell pending memorization.
  • Flee: This command is used to get out of combat and will send you in a random direction to the next room.
  • Search: has a chance to reveal hidden items, creatures, or exits in the room. You can also find hidden items that are within containers by search <container>.

Monsters (Mobs)[]

  • Aggro: Monsters (also known as mobs) may be aggressive and attack a player on sight or they might not.
    • Race Aggro: Some mobs will only be aggro to certain races.
    • Align Aggro: Some mobs will only be aggro to certain alignments.
  • Trackers: Some mobs will track and follow you after you have engaged them in combat.
    • Zone Trackers: These mobs will chase you, but only within their zone, they will not leave the zone edge.
    • Global Trackers: These mobs will track you out of the zone, and keep following you anywhere they can get to.
    • Caster Trackers: Caster mobs that are also trackers may either summon you to their location (priests), or dimension door to your location (mages). These 2 spells only work if you are within the same zone as the offending mob.

Grouping[]

A group; known in other MUDs as a party; or formation, form, is a number of players who move and fight together.

NOTE: Certain spells and abilities, such as bard's song only affect players that are grouped.
  • Experience: All groupmembers in the room during a kill will split the experience gained.
  • Gsay: A chat channel that is heard only by your fellow groupmembers.
  • Consent: By consenting to the group leader, you can be enrolled in a group. Consent can be used from anywhere in the world.
  • Follow: By following a group leader, you can be enrolled in a group. Follow can only be used in the same room as the leader.
  • Max: There is a maximum of 15 players in any group.

Leaving and reentering the game[]

  • Rent: Normally the way a player leaves the game is by renting in an inn. Inns are found in all home towns and in some other cities. Renting is free. Your entire inventory and equipment is saved when you rent. On reentering you are still wearing your equipment.
    • Storage: You may establish a storage in any inn, where extra equipment may be stored. Type storage ? in an inn for the list of storage related commands.
    • Multiplaying: Having more than one character in the game at one time is prohibited. However inns are the only place where you can have more than one character in the game at a time, solely for the purpose of transfering gear between characters.[7]
  • Camp: If you are outside of a city, and away from significant zones,[8] you may also use the camp command to set up a temporary save spot, but this will take a minute of gametime before you actually leave the game.
  • Quit: Using the quit command is not recommended, as you will drop all of your items on the ground if you do.
  • Linkdead: In an emergency you can just sever your connection to the game (by just closing your client) to go linkdead and you will eventually disappear into the void, preserving your gear. However the best way to leave the game as stated above, is renting. For purposes of interpreting multiplaying rules a linkdead character is considered to be in the game.[7]

See also[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Towers, J. Tarin; Badertscher, Ken; Cunningham, Wayne; Buskirk, Laura (1996). Yahoo! Wild Web Rides. IDG Books Worldwide Inc.. pp. 158. ISBN 0-7645-7003-X. "Here it is — the big one! Sojourn is gone but not forgotten, and Toril is the new king. [...] Still based on TSR's Forgotten Realms world, Toril has kept Waterdeep, Bloodstone, and all its other great areas [...] Toril has over 300 players at peak hours, and closer to 100 at times when you wouldn't expected to see more than five players on another MUD. [...] There's no doubt that Sojourn is alive and well, and living in Toril." 
  2. 2.0 2.1 Login September 3, 2012
  3. Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Playing MUDs on the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. pp. 35. ISBN 0-471-11633-5. "This code is moving into a new version named Copper III, which should be present on the given Mudlist. When this Mud went down in mid-1993, a different Mud spawned from it into what was known to many as Black Knights Realm [...] The creators of this world would move on later to form a TSR-backed Mud known as Sojourn." 
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Olivetti, Justin (2011-04-19). "The Game Archaeologist plays with MUDs: The games". Massively. Retrieved on 2011-04-25.
  5. Towers, J. Tarin; Badertscher, Ken; Cunningham, Wayne; Buskirk, Laura (1996). Yahoo! Wild Web Rides. IDG Books Worldwide Inc.. pp. 145. ISBN 0-7645-7003-X. "Once upon a time, boys and girls, there was a gargantuan MUD named Sojourn. It had over 400 players at peak times, and some of the most highly modified code in the land. Following faithfully in the wake of TSR's Forgotten Realms (AD&D), the MUD enjoyed an enormous wealth of areas, characters, and ideas from that role-playing game. But gods are vain and so are coders. Having different opinions on the future direction of Sojourn, they took the code and went their separate ways. The world was split into two main offshoots: Duris and Toril." 
  6. Nelson, Mike (2002-07-02). "Interview: Brad McQuaid". The guru of 3D. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  7. 7.0 7.1 Help Multiplayer
  8. Camping should not be used at locations where quests or desirable targets will repop, see help camping.

External links[]

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at TorilMUD.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with MUD Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).
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