Thirty Years of TorilMUD

It seems strange writing about a 30 year old game.

Not that writing about old things is exactly something odd around here.  I have been writing about modems, Usenet, and jobs I had in the 90s of late.

The strangeness isn’t that TorilMUD is old.  I write about a lot of old games of the past.  It is more that it is still an active, going concern 30 years down the road from when I first started playing it.

TorilMUD – Since 1993… or 2003… a long time

Granted, there have been changes since late 1993, when a coworker of mine at Global Village said I had to try this new game he found online.  It started as SojournMUD in 1993, then split into TorilMUD and DurisMUD, the latter being PvP focused, in 1996.  Then the first Toril MUD shut down, then it came back as SojournMUD again in 1998, then was reborn again in 2001, then had another pwipe and came back as the current TorilMUD in 2003 when Kris Kortright, the original developer, moved on.

There was a lot of upheaval in the first decade of TorilMUD, and I did not come back after every pwipe.  There are no 1993 characters left, except possibly in some file backup somewhere.

So perhaps the interesting bit is that it has, as a game, survived for the last 20 years without another pwipe or reset.  When I log into it these days, which I do every couple of months, I see some of the same characters, or their alts, that I played with during my last true active era in the game, which was from 2003 pwipe up into the launch of EverQuest II, where a good chunk of our TorilMUD guild went off to play… though we kept playing TorilMUD for quite some time after that.

Not only does it survive and still have a small but dedicated player base, it gets updates.  I watch the web site and see new zones and new classes getting added from time to time.  Plus it went through a whole transition to a more modern interpretation of the Dungeons & Dragons play model, leaving behind 2.0 (we will always have THAC0) to adopt some closer to 5th generation and the options it affords.

Because, as its core, TorilMUD has always been a Forgotten Realms campaign, a MUD that in many ways brought to life the locations of the Faerun and the planes surrounding it.  I have ventured forth from Waterdeep to the Underdark and Baldur’s Gate and Calimport, and Mithril Hall, and Jotunheim, and the City of Brass, and many more in between.

I have written a whole series of experiences about the elves of Evermeet and their hometown of Leuthilspar, where I started my adventures back in 1993, as well as tales about other parts of the game, about how questing was back in the day and how I attempted vendor arbitrage at one point in the game, hauling bronze arm plates all across the countryside, some fun NPCs, how tightly held game information was back in the day, and even about Dartan and his portable hole and all it contained.

There are a lot of memories there.  A lot more for me than I have in EverQuest really, though EverQuest took most of its design cues from TorilMUD due to Brad McQuaid being an avid player, though some thing had to be modified to fit into a commercial, live ops virtual world.  Did EQ have full zone respawns at launch?  Or was that something else they needed to adjust.

As with many posts, I started out on this one not quite knowing where I would end up.  I thought it might be just a mention of the anniversary and maybe a list of links to some past posts.  Well, I’ve gotten the links in, and there are some prime tales at some of them.

But I can never tell just how much such memories will trigger when it comes to nostalgia.

In away, its closeness to EverQuest in my heart is much more than a shared origin.  They are both titles that I have a lot of emotion tied up in.  They are also both games that, when I started in on some tale of the past about I immediately start thinking about whether or not it is viable to go back, to start over again, to play through it all one more time.

It is tough.  As a text based game it is simplicity itself.  You don’t need a powerful processor or an up to date video card to play.  I think I first played on a Macintosh Quadra 800, my home machine at the time, and a Quadra 630, which was my desktop machine at the office.  I used a simple terminal emulator that only had ten configurable macro keys, but it supported full ANSI color.  And that was one of the things about TorilMUD, then and now, that it went all out on color in its text.

The names of your gear, for example, were colored to give you a sense of what they might look like.

All Slots Filled on my character… from back in the day

At one point I had the Macintosh PC Compatibility Card installed in my Mac… borrowed from one of their sales reps who I worked with at Global Village… so I could run ZMud, which was the premier MUD client of the day.  I had macros, triggers, maps, healing lists, buff stats, and a host of other functions.  I remember getting auto-rescue setup.  As a tank there was no real aggro mechanic and if a mob switched to one of your party, you had to use the “rescue” command to save them and get the mob back on you.

But is going back worth it?  If you think EverQuest was not very solo friendly, then Toril MUD was even less so.  And it is grindy, as leveling up is not very quest oriented at all.  It is more a matter of farming a zone of appropriate level with a group, splitting coin, and rolling on the occasional piece of gear that shows up.  You need two, a healer and a tank, to get anywhere, but add a mage to cast stoneskin and your horizons are considerably expanded.

In the end, when you get to level 50 and have done your class quests to get your special items, the reward is end game raiding, which are done in full, 16 player groups.  The bounty from raids can be great.  But they take time.

The problem is that text on the screen isn’t as clear as it once was, a rapidly scrolling text even less so.  At one point they were working on reducing combat spam, which can float dozens of lines up your screen with every round of combat.   And my old copy of ZMud… can I get it to work yet again on Windows 11?  But there are other MUD clients out there like MUDlet, and if I were to start over, it might be a thing to start from scratch rather than with a hoard of maps.  (There are even clients for iOS and Android, though I am not sure how that works.)

We shall see.  It calls to me, but I don’t answer calls like I used to.  Too many wrong numbers these days.  Makes me wonder why I even have a phone… metaphorical or otherwise… sometimes.

But I am still happy it is an option, that 30 years later it is still there and playable.  And it remains a massive place.  The current “world stat” command returns the following:

• Total number of zones in world: 359
• Total number of rooms in world: 68373
• Total number of different mobiles: 20762
• Total number of living mobiles: 49254
• Total number of different objects: 20903
• Total number of existing objects: 161689

That is a lot of stuff going on, and it is all Forgotten Realms.

Related Links:

• TorilMUD Web Site (You can play from this page)
• TorilMUD News Page
• TorilMUD Forums (I think I have some 20 year old posts in there)
• TorilMUD Discord

Past milestones with thoughts and links:

• TAGN – 15 Years of TorilMUD
• TAGN – 20 Years of TorilMUD
• TAGN – 25 Years of TorilMUD

That Last Goblin Boss and Getting back to the Druid Grove in Baldur’s Gate 3

When last we left the attempt of Potshot and myself to co-op our way through Baldur’s Gate 3, we had managed to defeat the second boss in the goblin halls, Minthara the drow, and had liberated Halsin the druid, who likes to go around in bear form and kill goblins, a posture that worked for us.

Baldur’s Gate 3 splash screen

That left us with Priestess Gut, the third and final boss we needed to slay.  We had a run-in with her last time, which did not end well for us.

This does not end well

Priestess Gut is in a large hall with an entourage of goblin helpers who were, as a group, too much for us to take on.  Even with the addition of the level 5 bear druid, I wasn’t sure how well this would go, so I went to Google to see what the internet suggested for Priestess Gut.  This consensus was:

Use parasite persuasion to get her alone and assassinate her in private.

Cool.  I could see that working… had we not had an open brawl with Dror Ragzlin a couple of posts back that turned all the goblins hostile to us.

We were now kill on sight, so sauntering up to have a polite conversation was no longer an option.  The optimum path is apparently to get her done first.  Having blown that and not being at all keen to save scum our way back to when the gobbos were all friendly and chatty with us, we went looking for a way to control the tactical situation in order to keep the goblin numbers from simply overwhelming us.  Our last run was on some open area that allow the hostiles to come at us from three sides and burn us down quickly.

So we decided to make our stand on a wooden bridge just around the corner from the room, wooden bridges having worked out so well with Minthara last time.  I realize now, once again, that I did not take very many screen shots of this fight.  But I have a mini-map image that gives the tactical situation.

The cunning plan

We set up on the wooden bridge, which is only wide enough to allow creatures or characters to stand two abreast.  Two individuals can block the bridge, so our more powerful melee characters could stand up front with the casters and ranged behind for support.  Also, Marcos, our rogue, had more bottles of grease and some special arrows ready to make this tough on the goblins.  This was going to be great!

So we set up to do that, then sent Lae’zel out with bow and arrow to take a shot at Priestess Gut, then run back to our lines.

Sniper Time!

That part worked fine.  We got the whole room aggro on us and they did, indeed, follow us up the steps and to the start of the wooden bridge.  Marcos threw a bottle of grease onto the bridge as Lae’zel passed and we were rolling.

There was, however, a problem getting everybody into their final position.  We had the casters and the rogue up front and the bear in the back to support Lae’zel in the initial phase of the plan to keep her alive, but then the whole thing turned into a “Three Stooges all try to walk through the same door at the same time” situation as I tried to get Marcos the rogue back from the front line while getting the bear up to maul some goblins.  This was something that probably would have gone more smoothly with a single player doing the positioning, or even in co-op if we had announced our intentions aloud… but somehow we muddled through and got everybody into their place.

Things were still not quite going to plan.  The goblins seems reluctant to walk out on the grease coated bridge and, when Marcos threw another bottle of grease to coat where they were standing, we found ourselves coming up short on ways to set the whole thing alight.

Then the explosive arrows that Marcos was counting on turned out to be of the AOE knock-back variety, which was fun, but they neither blew up the bridge nor set the grease on fire.  Our plan was not coming together as… well… planned.

And then there was Priestess Gut, who took an aid and decided to run around the back way to hit us from the rear.  Fortunately that was a bit of a hike, so we were able to fumble our way into a re-adjustment.   We started falling back to the door at our end of the wooden bridge, which finally enticed the goblins to step our onto their fully greased end, at which point Shadowheart finally landed a fire spell and set them all on fire.  Good for a laugh.

Then Lae’zel and the bear made it to the doorway just in time to have Priestess Gut come down the ladder into the room on that side.  With Fergorin the cleric they managed to close with Priestess Gut and take her down fairly quickly.

More like Priestess Guts, amirite?

Quest complete!  Now we just had to live long enough to reap the rewards.

Priestess Gut’s companion was on the other side of a wall with a gap through which spells could be cast, but which a player could not pass.  So I sent Lae’zel up the ladder to the platform between the two rooms and set her to sniping with her bow.  The aid was a caster and I thought this might end up being a ranged duel.  But no, the aid was keen to close ranks with Lae’zel and came up the ladder on his side only to get the heave-ho with a well placed shove.  Still the best feature of the game for us.  He tried that a couple more times until the fall damage finally did him in.

Meanwhile, Fergorin and the bear had returned to the bridge front, the bear finally squeezing past everybody to start mauling goblins.  In the end, there was a big mess on the bridge and no goblins left alive.

The goblin ranks dead on the bridge

Time to save!  Then we went out to loot the field and get everybody patched up with a short rest.  There was a pair of big spiders in a cell beneath Priestess Gut’s throne and I started to try and communicate with them… but then realized we had places to be and wasn’t sure if I wanted to pooch our success by getting tangled up in spider business.  We let the spiders be.

Halsin, meanwhile, was very happy with us, thanked us, promised us rewards, then said he would see us back at the druid grove then disappeared like every escort quest mob ever.

We cleaned up a bit more.  Marcos picked the lock on Volo the bard’s cage.

Nice roll, lots of bonuses

He too was effusive in his praise, promising a song for the ages to tell the tale of our heroic efforts, then dipped out like Halsin with a “see ya!”  Another quest complete.

So there we were, op success, just needing to get back to the druid grove.  We did what seemed natural to us and headed for the front door to start our walk back.  We had cleared most of the goblins it seemed.  We ran into some on the inside of the front door… two guards on the main floor and three ranged guards up high on either side… and managed to take them out.

Battle inside the front door

We were not sure what kind of reception we would get on the other side of the front door.  I mean, there was a chance that they hadn’t heard anything, that we might just walk past them, maybe brain tadpolling somebody at need… or it might end up being a fight.  Either way, we got ready, saved, then stepped out.

Then things went really bad.  Yes, everybody outside had received the word that we were to be slain on sight and we never made it off the front step before we were not much more than a pool of red mush on the slabs.

Front door melee time

We fought it out to the bitter end just to see how many we could take down before that ogre simple stomped us.  The answer was zero.  We managed to kill zero.

So Potshot restored the game while I went to Google to see how others had managed to get back to the druid grove after having defeated the three bosses.  I was imagining that maybe there was a back door to the place me might sneak through or some such.

But no, the answer was, “I just used the waypoint and teleported back to the Emerald Grove.”

“Waypoints?  What are these waypoints?” I was thinking.  We you play a game in, at best, once a week sessions, sometimes the mechanics slip your mind.  So once we were back into the game and standing there inside the front door, I opened up the map and, sure enough, there at the upper right were some waypoints.

Places to go

We picked the Emerald Grove Environs and insta-traveled out of there.

We had to poke around a bit to find our way back into where the druid were, but once we found our way in we were able to turn in some quests, which got us all up to level 4, and hear some of the back story and prep for our next tasks.  Halsin, in particular, was not happy about how things had been going while he had been away.

Halsin tearing a new one on continuous loop

We got ourselves settled in, update a few things, then saved for the evening to pick up again next time.

The Story so far:

• Jumping into Baldur’s Gate 3
• Push Comes to Shove with Dror Ragzlin in Baldur’s Gate 3
• Burning Bridges with Minthara in Baldur’s Gate 3

Jumping into Baldur’s Gate 3

I am not really sure I had a solid reason for buying Baldur’s Gate 3 on the day after it came out of early access.

Baldur’s Gate 3 splash screen

I mean, I have positive, if very vague now, memories of the original Baldur’s Gate, and it is quite possible that I played Baldur’s Gate 2.  I cannot recall.  And, of course, anything set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting has a certain amount of appeal to me.  That is pretty much THE Dungeons & Dragons setting for me.  There is a non-zero chance I will purchase a game simply because that is the setting, something that goes back to the old SSI gold box games like Pool of Darkness.  And then there is, of course, TorilMUD, which was based in Forgotten Realms.   I have many posts about that, including a look at Waterdeep.  But I don’t buy every such title that come out, and certainly not on day one.

My reason wasn’t because everybody else seemed to be jumping on board, though I expect that this chart about Steam downloads is going to be mirrored in the coming week with blog posts about the game.

Can you see where BG3 when live on that chart?

And, of course, it was a bit of a chore to download, weighing in at nearly 100GB in size.

The download progress bar

Also, if you’ve read the blog, you may have noted that playing anything new, or anything that lacks a persistent online world, is unlikely to be in my regular rotation.

Still, I ended up buying the game on Friday.  This was more because of Potshot and I and the eternal search for a title that can feed the desire to have some sort of TTRPG feel that can also be played by the group.  We have tried, unsuccessfully, over the years to find that perfect title, and I have documented a few such attempts here.

Undaunted by years of failure, Friday saw us on Discord asking each other if we had pulled the trigger on the purchase.  We eventually both did and started the download.

Because our objective was group play, we both spent a minimal amount of time trying the game out before we went straight to multiplayer to see how badly we could mess that up.

I did get a bit into the game.  I made a character… which was a bit confusing, at least from an AI convention aspect, though I figured it out after a bit… who ended up looking like a member of a 70s English glam rock tribute band… or maybe a second rate period piece trying to dramatize some aspect of Tristram Shandy.

Pretty sure these go to 11

Also, because everybody is sharing on this point, I chose Penis B.  Then I figured out how to see Penis B and then I put my clothes back on a decided not to give that any more thought.

But even as I was fiddling around there, Potshot invited me to join a game he spun up, which was surprisingly easy, at least if you have ever tried to play a title with a friend on the XBox PC service.  We were very quickly together.

Just like that

We quickly learned that you need to make a character for your multiplayer campaign, so started on that.  And then Potshot needed to run an errand and quit, doing a rug pull on me, kicking me out of the campaign before I had made my character.

This is, of course, why I like persistent worlds and not “join my game” multiplayer.

Later we got that sorted out and got into the game.  You can choose your difficulty level.  And I can appreciate making an option for those who want to play the story more than fight as well as a hard mode.  We went down the middle… because defaults mostly.

The middle route

Potshot played completely to type and rolled up a dwarf cleric, even naming him Fergorin, while I decided to play against type and created a half-elf rogue named Marcos… who also ended up looking like a member of a 70s English glam rock tribute band.  I’ll have to figure out whether that is me or the character creator. (Also, Penis B again.)

We got ourselves into the intro, in the mindflayer ship, which honestly has more sphincters than an Ohio hot dog factory.

Just in case you were wondering what this was – My Penis B will be going into that sphincter

I had played far enough in to know we had to get a brain out of a body, and managed to make that saving throw.

I am now effectively a neurosurgeon… but only because I got a +3 due to high dex

And then we had the brain NPC in our party and got to see how the game handled that.  Meanwhile, Potshot reported that he got to see my conversation with the brain and the choices I made, so he wasn’t left out, though I might had skipped straight to the chase, having been through the dialog before.

It was time to get to the helm… and then something happened and Potshot’s internet blipped and he dropped out of Steam and Discord and we had to figure out how to get back into the game.

The safest route seems to be to exit then wait for an invite back in.  But when we were back in the game I was controlling Fergorin and Potshot had Marcos.  Oh noes!

That took some fiddling around until Potshot found the panel that lets you set who gets to control which character.  We got ourselves re-aligned, split the NPC load, and made our way to the helm, successfully completing what was probably a 10 minute tutorial in about an hour.

At that point the whole mindflayer sky buggy crashes, you survive, and you’re in a more open world.  Oh, and the game pointedly reminds you that you have a mindflayer parasite and unless you find a healer soon you’re done for.

So there we are, on a beach, in the middle of a shipwreck… a sky ship, by a ship none the less… marveling that we are once again in among one of the classic starting tropes for RPGs and wondering if we’ll be able to work in a jail break along the way, and we’re told we need a healer.

At which point both Potshot and I are looking at Fergorin, a cleric, wondering if he is just chopped liver or something.

Meanwhile, there is an NPC over by a door to some ruins moaning about not being able to get in.  She joins our party and turns out to be a cleric as well, so we have two healers who cannot do anything about mindflayer brain parasites.  Excellent.  Anyway, our new friend, Shadowheart, is going on about having to take the long way around and I am all, “Hey, rogue here, just need to pick the lock.  Piece of cake.  I even picked up half a dozen thieves tools from the corpses on the beach.  We’re good.”

And then I realize I need a 20 to successfully pick the lock.  Five tries later, with all bonuses applied, I finally get a 20.  Go me!

Then we’re off to explore some ruins.  Brain parasites?  I think somebody told me back on the mindflayer ship that we had few days before we were toast, mindless thralls… but that leaves plenty of time to go explore.  Also, the game was clearly gesturing in that direction, though I suppose we could have gone the long way around.

So we go in, get into a big room, and perception checks are going off… and failing… like popcorn, so I suspect we’re going to be in for something.  And then the game tells us about the vents in the floor… which have been highlighted as traps on a couple of our successes.

The game also warned us about the vents in the room.  I mean, if the game takes the time to do that, it has to be serious, right?

Oh, I don’t like the whole “exploding” aspect of that

So we spent what must have been a dozen rounds in a room where flamethrowers were shooting out of the wall every single round trying to drag things over the vents.

Ignore the fire, cover the vents

Also the vents were oozing out grease, and the grease caught fire, and the burning and the damage and the running about and the glaven… it was a mess.

We hit a point where we stopped to make a short camp just to get back health and I could just picture a RL DM’s reaction to players deciding to set up camp in a room with flame throwers going off every round and burning grease all over the floor.  But the computer DM, it only knows the mechanics and the parameters, and we fit into the mix.

So we did that and were restored a bit.  We decided, upon reflection, that maybe we had better do something about the whole “flamethrowers going off every round” aspect of the scene, nothing having exploded out of the vents so far.  Fergorin and Shadowheart went to go see if they could knock out the gargoyle head nozzles from which the flames were erupting.  They had hit point after all.  But they were also flagged as “tough” and their maces had no effect.

Then, as they were doing that, I saw something on one of the pillars and called out, “Hey, how about if I press that button?”

There is a button right there

Of course, with obstacles and such, it took me two rounds to get to the button, which meant eating one round of flame thrower yet again.  But I made it to the button and, on pressing it, no more flames.  Success.  Lesson learned: Always press the button.

The room, still smoking but no longer actively trying to incinerate us, was explored.  We found a few things here an there, then decided to set up a long camp.  That would allow the casters to get back spells, recover any remaining hit points, and generally rest up.

Once again, in a room of still possible hazard, we decide to spend the night.  And, much to my amusement, the game sets you aside in a little camping bubble where you set up bedrolls, get down to… well, if not your skivvies, then at least out of your armor… to take have a nice rest.

Everybody ready to get tucked in?

You all pick a bedroll and get a nice little animation of everybody snoozing.  Then the morning comes and we were off again.  The next room had its own things going on, including a button which, when pressed, released some monsters on us, so the button lesson was amended: If bad things are already happening, press the button.  If nothing is happening, get ready for bad things before pressing the button.

We carried on, made our way through the ruins, found a ladder to get out, ran into and scared away some of the locals, and got into another set of fights in some more ruins.  Still haven’t found a healer though to deal with the whole tadpole parasite in the brain thing yet.

All of which seemed a bit silly and chaotic, but which came together much better than my solo venture at the same settings, where the glam rock ranger I made, picture above, couldn’t get in the door and into the ruins and ended up dead on the beach four time running.  Then again, I chose to make a ranger, and when aren’t rangers a terrible choice in Forgotten Realms? And yet they are almost always my first choice.

So the multiplayer thing worked out for us.  Now to see if we can keep it going.  That is always the problem.  Many a promising start has faded due to us not being able to get in sync on a regular play time.  We shall see.

TorilMUD Sees Sorcerers Return and Gets a New Zone

I keep thinking I will go back and write a bit more about zones in TorilMUD.  However, the last point I was playing it seriously and regularly was in 2004, because we moved our guild from there to EverQuest II… and then to World of Warcraft, where the guild the instance group used in retail, Twilight Cadre, was the inheritor of the legacy of the old Shades of Twilight guild in TorilMUD.

TorilMUD – Deep in the Faerun

It has been a long time and my memories continue to fade.  I am glad I wrote all that I have so far, but anything further is going to be some work.  I have a post started about the zone Ice Crag Castle, which is the oldest zone I think of as a “new” zone.  We’ll see if I finish it.

But I do manage to keep up with changes a bit because the game has a web site that the devs update when something new is added as well as a fairly active Discord server.  I see almost daily Lilithelle announcing that they are forming up to do one of the zones in the game, the precursor to raiding as it came to be in EverQuest then WoW, with visits to some places I’ve never been.  The Tiamat raid, for example, used to be such a tough raid that it many attempts failed before they even made it to her chamber.  I was on a couple of those back in the day.  But with power creep and PvE always eventually being a solved problem, I see Tiamat runs going a few times a month.

Anyway, as the title of the post indicates, there have been some new things added to the nearly 30 year old MUD. (I wrote that 15 Years of TorilMUD post almost 15 years ago at this point, which also means MUD1 is turning 45.)

Sorcerers Return

I cannot even remember when they took sorcerers out of the game.  There was a big class revamp in the mid-to-late 90s that added enchanters and set sorcerers by the wayside.  As I recall mercenaries and berserkers also ended around then.  I remember enough to know they were a thing once, back in the era when we used to do xp groups on the boats to the Moonshaes, before the devs put a stop to that as well.

But back in March we got a dev update that sorcerers were back after a 25 year hiatus.  The game itself has seen much change since then.  The whole thing was rooted in 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back then… THAC0 for the win… and has since moved up to a simulacrum of 5e.  In this context sorcerers were coming back as a whole new thing rather than a return to what they once were, their attributes being:

• Draconic Ancestry: A draconic heritage imbues Sorcerers with their power, and many of their spells are based on chromatic dragon abilities.
• Damage Role: Though they have some utility, Draconic Sorcerers primarily use their innate powers to wreak destruction.
• Sorcery Points: Sorcerers build and then expend sorcery points to cast their most powerful magic.
• Innate Casters: Sorcerers do not memorize spells, carry spell books, or have spell slots. All of their spells use sorcery points or are on cooldown timers.
• Spell Focus: Rather than dice, spell damage is based on Spell Focus, a new stat. This stat is based on a combination of your level, intelligence, and spell focus from equipment. Each damage spell does a percentage of your spell focus as damage, and the exact number is listed on the powers info screen. For equipment, Sorcerers will use the old SF: Invocation, which has been renamed. Note that Intelligence is in relation to the racial maximum, meaning that no one race will do more damage than any other.
• Critical Spells: All Sorcerer spells have a chance to score a critical hit for extra damage.
• Instant Spells: Many spells are instantaneous, without the associated casting lag.
• Metamagic: Sorcerers have access to metamagic such as twin spell and quicken spell that can alter how their other spells are used.
• AOE Balancing: This class has been balanced with both single target and area of effect damage in mind. The radius and damage for area spells has been carefully set to avoid eclipsing other classes’ damage.
• MR Immunity: Sorcerer spells are not affected by Magic Resistance. Dragons, demons, devils, elementals, and the like will take full damage from these spells.

Those are some big updates and I am sure once they hit the game a few of the old timers were in a race to get one up to level 50 to see how they would fare in zones.

The downside was that the initial plan was to retire the invoker class, converting invokers to sorcerers.  That got reconsidered and the plans changed and invokers stayed in the game and sorcerers became a new class on their own.

Updates related to sorcerers:

• Sorcerers Return
• Sorcerers: A Change of Plans
• Sorcerers: Wild Magic
• Patch Notes: Sorcerers
• Patch Notes: New Prompt + Sorcerer Fixes

New Zone: Westgate

Also on the list of updates was a new zone.  The city of Westgate, a storied location in Forgotten Realms, was being brought into the game as a new place to adventure.

From the announcement post:

Westgate is a notorious metropolis, deeply entrenched in piracy, crime syndicates, and powerful vampiric lords. It flourishes on illicit trade and rampant corruption, and is widely known as one of the most disreputable cities in all of Faerûn. The marks of rogues and spies are etched into every alley, with danger constantly lurking for the unwary. Yet, it stands as the Dragon Coast’s largest and most influential city.

Despite its shady character, Westgate opens its doors to all travelers and citizens who abide by local laws and possess ample funds.

As the oldest, wealthiest, and most corrupt port on the Sea of Fallen Stars, Westgate has earned the nickname “Gateway to the West”. This reputation is driven by its role as the Inner Sea’s most bustling port city.

Westgate is available to explore now. Have fun, and watch your backs.

It is always encouraging to see new content come into the old game.  It makes me think, if only for a fleeting moment, about returning and starting fresh.  I’m just not sure I am up to it anymore.  If nothing else, the constant scrolling text of combat is a headache inducing blur for me at my age.

Though they have been working on that too, with a new feature called Focus Mode, along with some other updates.

Related:

• Patch Notes 1/22/23 – Focus Mode
• Patch Notes 2/11/23 – Focus v1.1
• Patch Notes 2/25/2023
• Patch Notes: A Diverse Assortment

What if EverQuest had been based on Forgotten Realms?

This is something of a tangential thought from Monday’s post… it is actually where my thinking started, but I wrote one of the other thoughts first… related to EverQuest.

EverQuest, the classic

We know how things worked out, how EverQuest relied on its own IP, borrowing heavily from how TorilMUD did things, and was successful beyond all expectations, and remains to this day one of the key revenue streams in the Daybreak stable of games.  (DC Universe Online has more players and greater revenue, but EverQuest catches up when we start talking about net profit because DCUO has to split with the console platforms and pay royalties for the IP.)

The thing is, EverQuest could have borrowed more from TorilMUD.

TorilMUD, at the time EverQuest was being developed, was based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition, best remembered today for introducing the concept of “To hit armor class 0” or THAC0, and set in Forgotten Realms IP,  featuring monsters, locations, and tales from the campaign setting.

From the city of Waterdeep (which I wrote about) you could go south and visit Baldur’s Gate and Calimport, or north to the spine of the world and the home of the dwarves, east to Zhentil Keep, Thay, and the Sea of Fallen Stars, or out onto the Trackless Sea to the Moonshaes, or even as far as Evermeet, home of the elves, about which I wrote a series of posts.

And while EverQuest borrowed many of the ideas from TorilMUD, I do sometimes wonder what would have happened it the team that eventually became Sony Online Entertainment had gone all the way and created a Forgotten Realms MMORPG.

There were obvious roadblocks, not the least of which was a company called BioWare having licensed the IP for their successful Baldur’s Gate title.  But it is not entirely inconceivable (and I do know what that word means) that the wily John Smedley might have somehow somehow negotiated a deal with the then new owners of the franchise, Wizards of the Coast, to be able to create a persistent online multiplayer game with the same IP by finding enough hairs to split to distinguish it from the other deals licensing it.

And, had that come to pass, what would the game look like?

Some of it likely wouldn’t change all that much.  Freeport was already modeled on the version of Waterdeep in TorilMUD.  The individual home towns of the different races were already a thing.  Faydwer would likely have become Evermeet, home to just elves and the half-elven.  Kaladim would have to become Mithril Hall and move somewhere north, adjacent to the barbarian space of snowy terrain likely.  The halflings were probably fine where they were, while the dark elves become the drow and likely need a better location.

I’m not sure what you do with the Erudites.  Do you make them illithid and get a psionic class in the bargain?  And do you then need to create the Underdark as a setting?

Or maybe you don’t do as much at launch with an eye to expansions.  Maybe rather than going to the moon you go to the Underdark and have a new race there.

Clearly it isn’t a one to one substitution.  The game would have been built differently with the setting in mind.  But it feels like it could have been done.

Then one wonders at the outcome.  Does having the Dungeons & Dragon franchise and Diku MUD style open world 3D MMORPG mean it becomes an even bigger success?

And, if so, is the additional success worth it?  I mean, looking at Dungeons & Dragons Online, the bar is pretty low for who could get a license from Wizards of the Coast.  (Also, Neverwinter.)  But the fees for the license are not insubstantial and success often leads to greed.  Also, they might require some sort of adherence to the D&D mechanics, a level of editorial control of items and content and whatnot.

And they might not be happy with the graphical fidelity more than 20 years down the line.  Does everything get a Freeport style revamp?  Or does EverQuest II become the revamp and the original goes away?

Would we have a huge world with 20+ expansions today?

Things could have gone very differently.  But there were no doubt many choices along the way that could have diverted both Norrath games from the trajectory they eventually followed.

Just things I think about when I am in the shower.

20 Years of TorilMUD

Lord Piergeiron is looking for brave adventurers to fight off the trolls!
If you can help, form a group and head south.

-Town Crier, Waterdeep

I was shuffling through old posts, as I do every month to pull together the one and five years ago bits for the monthly review post, when I discovered that I wrote that post about playing TorilMUD for 15 years about five years ago… which means that I’ve hit the… wait… eighteen, nineteen… the twenty year mark since I first I first blundered into Leuthilspar and got hung up at the fence leading to Kobold Village.

It barely seems possible that I was playing TorilMUD so long ago.  And the town crier has been shouting the same thing every few minutes for just about the whole time.  Granted, there was a gap of a couple years in there when the game was down at various stages, but it always managed to return.

Still, I started playing TorilMUD a long while back.  Twenty years ago was the era when the Intel 486 was king and the new Pentium (not 586 as so many expected) was the new kid on the block.  Apple’s incredibly popular PowerBook laptops were just introducing a model (180c) with an 8-bit  active matrix color screen that was actually usable. (Don’t get me started on the 165c.)  At work I was just starting off on project that would end up with a five month long crunch cycle, during which NBA Jams would be our lifeline to sanity.  I was playing Civilization I am sure and was running a BBS, which in a way was the spiritual successor to this blog.

You grab Piergeiron Paladinstar, Servant of Tyr in a headlock, and give him a furious noogie.

I think I may have beaten the back story of myself and TorilMUD to death at this point.  I have written up posts about the history, the stories, and the influence of the game in the past.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• 15 Years of TorilMUD
• How Information Access has Changed
• The End of a Trigger, The Expansion of Information
• The Salesman of Waterdeep
• The Way Questing Used to Be
• On Greater Challenges
• Echoes of a Crashing MUD
• Hauling Bronze Through Forgotten Realms
• Great Moments in Exploits – The Resurrection
• Nineteen Years Without Raising the Level Cap
• Leuthilspar Tales

There are more posts under the TorilMUD category, though that includes posts where it is referenced, but where memories of the game perhaps not the main topic of discussion.

More amazing still is that, not only is TorilMUD still there, but that it continues to be a work in progress.  Bug fixes, new zones, a web client, and a conversion to a system more akin to the current Dungeons & Dragons combat model continue on.  The whole thing reflected D&D 2.0 rules back when I started. The help file for THAC0 is still there.

THAC0 is an acronym for “To Hit Armor Class 0.” THAC0 is a number every player and monster has, and it is dependent on level and class. It is ranged between 0 and 20. THAC0 is the method that the MUD code uses to determine whether or not you have successfully “hit” an opponent while in battle. It is calculated for everyone fighting, for each and every combat round. For THAC0’s, the lower the number you have, the better success you will have at hitting.

For Example: let’s say your THAC0 is 10, meaning you have to roll between 10 and 20 on a 20-sided die in order to hit an enemy with an armor class of 0. If you are fighting a monster with an armor class of 1, then you need to roll between 11 and 20 to hit that mob. If the mob’s armor class is 8, you only need to roll between 2 and 20 in order to hit that monster. You can affect your THAC0 by using magical items that give a positive hitroll bonus. This bonus will enhance your THAC0 and therefore your ability to hit a monster.

The help entry for AC (Armor Class) further explains how this hit/miss system works. See also: AC

I don’t think it still applies, but it did at one time.  A bit of history in the help files.

And, most important of all, people still play TorilMUD.

It isn’t the 100+ people we used to have on at once back in the day.  But when I log in now and again to see what has changed, I always see between 15 and 30 people online.  Enough to form up a group generally and go raid a zone now and again.  As with any game based on progression via levels, almost everybody on these days is at or close to the level cap of 50.  Occasionally I see somebody in their 20s or 30s.  And sometimes it isn’t even an alt of a player that already has a few level 50s.

I poke my nose back in every so often.  I still see people I remember.  And time continues its relentless march forward.

Anyway, just to archive something away for a later date, after the cut you will find the credits output for TorilMUD.  The bulk of the credits is a list of zones in the game, their level range, and the creator.  That will give you a little insight into how vast the world is that has been created over more than 20 years.  I started playing 20 years back, but the work started before I ever showed up.

Sure, the “world stat” command will give you the summary:

Total number of zones in world: 348
Total number of rooms in world: 65985
Total number of different mobiles: 19975
Total number of living mobiles: 46001

Total number of different objects: 19000
Total number of existing objects: 98257

Those are some big numbers.  They have added something like 4,000 rooms and 29 zones since I last posted that output back in 2009.  But actually scrolling through the list is more impressive.

More information can be found at TorilMUD.com.

Backwards in Time to Forgotten Realms

As I mentioned at the end of the last month in review, the more pen and paper focused wing of our Saturday night group, Potshot, was looking into more small party adventure-centric options for our group.

And so he headed to GOG.com to grab Neverwinter Nights 2, a game first published in 2006.  It is the Obsidian Entertainment second version of the BioWare original.  For $20, you get the whole package including expansions all wrapped up, updated, and ready to download and install.

Neverwinter Nights 2

The download is 6GB, so that part was an over-nighter for me, but otherwise things went smoothly.

NWN2 is based on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which pretty much means nothing to me at this point.  I still think of 2nd Edition, with its THAC0 and such, as “the new stuff,” so anything after that is strange.  But it is also based in Forgotten Realms, which is the D&D setting nearest and dearest to my heart.

Potshot has grand designs for NWN2.  It comes with a tool set that lets you be the dungeon master and design adventures through which your friends can play.

But before you can run, you have to walk.   And before you can walk, crawling is often advisable.

And so this past weekend was spent trying to get the basics going.

I had downloaded the game and run through the tutorial, most of the information from which I promptly forgot once I left the game, when Potshot and I started to work on playing together in the same game.

Which is where there were some issues.  A meandering narrative after the cut.

Daggerdale – Atari has More Dungeons & Dragons Coming

Last August, Atari and Cryptic announced a new non-MMO, single-player/co-op multi-player was being produced.  It was titled, ever so originally, Neverwinter.

By the way, I would like to throw out a few other Forgotten Realms locations that could have games based around them, thus avoiding more repetition of Neverwinter. (Or Baldur’s Gate, for that matter.)

Waterdeep maybe?  Zhentil Keep?  Calimport even?  The elves of Evermeet perhaps?

All fine locations.

Anyway, I received a note today about another Dungeons & Dragons game, again not an MMO, but featuring single-player and co-op multi-player action.  This time Atari has teamed up with Bedlam Games to create Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale.

And the first thing going for it is that at least it isn’t named Neverwinter. (Or Baldur’s Gate.)

But otherwise it sounds… well… a lot like Neverwinter.

Solo or Co-op Play
It’s up to you! Whether you choose to do battle in the mines of Tethyamar or skirmish on the Tower of Rezlus, you can fight solo, join with up to three friends online, or battle alongside a partner locally.

Questing
Explore Daggerdale’s main questlines to reveal its intriguing backstory, mysterious characters, and the richness of its world. Extended depth and experience reward exploration and side-quests.

Immersive Combat
Battle a wide range of enemies by engaging in intuitive pick-up-and-play melee, tactical ranged combat, or powerful spell casting.

Develop Your Character
Select a class, build your ultimate hero, collect loot, and earn experience! Select powers and feats to enhance and customize your hero as you level up.

Stunning Levels and Deep Exploration
A wide variety of perilous quests encourage you to explore Daggerdale’s richly detailed environments.

Multiple Game Modes
Unlock new areas and challenges in Campaign mode, or hone your skills and discover powerful new items in Freeplay mode.

Authentic D&D Experience
The detailed world of the iconic Dungeons & Dragons franchise has been painstakingly recreated for a rich, complex, and thrilling game experience.

It also includes the usual claim to be true to the spirit of the 4th Edition rule set, though it lacks some of the heavy-hitter name that Cryptic mentions prominently; R. A. Salvatore. (He wrote the story on which the game is based.)

Oh, it does have one more thing going for it that Cryptic’s Neverwinter does not.  Daggerdale is supposed to be out before Summer.  Cryptic is still living up to its name and still saying just “2011” on the Neverwinter site.

Anyway, it is clear that Atari is big on Dungeons & Dragons of late.

Daggerdale is slated for Windows, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3, though my experience so far in cross platform is that PC players get the short end of the stick.  And Daggerdale’s latest video doesn’t exactly have me wetting my pants in anticipation.

Not that it looks bad, but there wasn’t anything that really stood out either.

How about you?  Have you heard anything good about Daggerdale?

Or have you heard anything new about Neverwinter?

Cryptic Calls My Forgotten Realms Bluff

If you didn’t like the IP idea in my last post, why not just go with Forgotten Realms?

Is Forgotten Realms good for everybody?

(Quiet you Dragonlance weenies!)

As noted over at Massively, Cryptic announced their next project, Neverwinter.

This is what Cryptic has to say about the game so far:

100 years have passed since the Spellplague consumed the world of Faerûn. Neverwinter, a once majestic city of magic and adventure upon the mighty Sea of Swords, is still being rebuilt from near total ruination. Even as new wonders of stone and iron rivaling ancient works are being raised by the hands of man, dwarf and elf, dark powers beyond reckoning vie for control of the land…

This is a world that promises death for the meek, glory for the bold and danger for all. This is the world of Neverwinter.

Neverwinter Nights Reborn

Continue the critically acclaimed adventure! The #1 best-selling Neverwinter Nights series of PC RPGs returns with an epic Dungeons & Dragons storyline, next-generation graphics, a persistent world, and accessible content creation tools.

Immersive, Imaginative

Enter a world ravaged by the Spellplague. Wrest victory from the claws of darkness and battle the greatest of civilization’s enemies in and around Neverwinter, a storied and ancient city upon Faerûn’s Sea of Swords.

Challenging, Complex, Classic

Epic gameplay and action rooted firmly in the best traditions of the RPG genre await those heroes courageous enough to brave the Spellplague and all that it has ravaged.

Build a Fantasy

Easy-to-grasp adventure creation tools empower users. Bring compelling quests to life and build challenging levels! Share creations with the entire world in-game. Become a part of the existing Dungeons & Dragons universe… Then build a new one.

Play Together or Die Alone

Encounter dangerous foes and perilous environments. Work with others, strategically, to overcome nightmares, demons, monsters, and beasts of legend.

World Without End

Neverwinter features co-operative multiplayer in an ever-evolving, persistent world where Dungeons & Dragons adventurers quest alongside thousands of other warriors, rogues, wizards and faithful avengers.

New D&D, Beloved D&D

Neverwinter is a true Dungeons & Dragons experience based on the acclaimed 4th Edition rules — a first of its kind!

A Legend Arises

Unprecedented character customization as only Cryptic can deliver. Imagine a hero, make a hero, become a hero.

Neverwinter is based on the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons rule set and set around the Forgotten Realms location of  Neverwinter.

This is pretty much what I have been asking for.

I was just commenting on a post the other day regarding DDO and how Eberron doesn’t thrill me, but Forgotten Realms… now there is an IP!

We’ll see how the D&D 4th edition rule set gets translated… that is always a leap of faith… but it couldn’t end up that bad, right?

And now, here we are.

Certainly, there are aspects to this concept that interest me.

• Forgotten Realms

My favorite D&D campaign setting ever!

• Based around events in an R.A. Savatore story line

He’s the man for Forgotten Realms fiction… but doesn’t he work with Curt Schilling?  How do you explain that one to the head man?

• Cryptic Studios

If nothing else, I want to see the fantasy RPG version of their character creator.  That should practically be a stand alone game in and of itself.  And if they’ve learned other lessons, so much the better.

• Content Creation Tools

Yes, there is the 90% crap rule, but if they can figure out how to promote the good stuff so we can find it, this could be worthwhile.

• Did I say Forgotten Realms already?

Oh yeah, still excited about that!

• Not an MMORPG

Interesting.

Jack says “I wouldn’t say MMORPG at all — Neverwinter is a cooperative RPG.”

So where will Neverwinter stand then in the grand scheme of things?  And how does “not an MMORPG” fit in with their statement under “World Without End” I quoted above?

Is this just positioning, a “Neverwinter is not WoW” message?

Will it be “not an MMO” the way Guild Wars and Dungeons & Dragons Online are “not” MMOs, lacking as they do the shared, persistent world?

Will it be a step closer to the Dragon Age segment of the fantasy gaming world?

Or will it fall closer to Diablo III and Torchlight II?

And how will we be paying for this game, whatever it ends up being?

I will certainly want to keep an eye on this new game.  We’ll see if my calls for a real Forgotten Realms MMO were a bluff or not.  And, if nothing else, I always like to see how the game that ships lines up with the first press release.

Meanwhile, the last time I was in Neverwinter, it looked like this:

Neverwinter Map – TorilMUD

Not exactly impressive, but that was the way things were back in the day when I played TorilMUD regularly, and I enjoyed it immensely at the time.

15 Years of TorilMUD

This past Monday was the 30th birthday of the original MUD, rightly noted and celebrated on a number of sites.

MUD 1 represents one of the roots of the game genre we refer to with the adjective “Massive” these days, an online user experience shared by many people at once.

This fall represents another anniversary for me.  I don’t recall the exact date, but it was in the autumn of 1993 when my friend and, at the time, co-worker Scott came over to my cube and told me there was an online game I just had to play.  It was a MUD called Sojourn.

And as surely as MUD1 was on the path to the MMOs of today, Sojourn MUD put me on the path to playing those very MMOs.

It wasn’t that MUDs were something new and different to me at that time.  I had played Gemstone on GEnie and a few other MUDs along the way, but none of them really captured my attention.

So what was so special about Sojourn MUD?

A friend of mine, Scott, was already playing.  I think history bears out that as the number one reasons for playing a given game; somebody you know is already playing it.

It was free.  We worked for a company that made modems at the time, so I even had access to terminal emulation software at no cost.  Unlike the early days when I was playing games on GEnie at an hourly rate, I was now working for a living, paying rent, insurance, taxes, and all that other fun stuff that finds a way to dun your savings every month.

It was populated.  One thing about a lot of MUDs is that they are often deserted.  Only a few make it into triple digits of users at any time in their life.  Sojourn had lots of players.  There were even problems at one point when they were limited to 127 simultaneous connections.  Queues to log in?  Been in that boat off and on for 15 years now I guess.

It was colorful.  Unlike a lot of other MUDs, Sojourn got on the ANSI color boat pretty early.  Very few items in the game were just plain white text unless that was the natural color of the item.  And because I had a fully functional terminal emulator, I could see all that color as it was meant to be seen, which was actually not that common back then.  A lot of emulators only had partial support for color.

It was Forgotten Realms.  In addition to real life, real job, and all that the days of my being able to devote time to live role playing games was diminishing both because of my own time constraints as well as the constraints on the people with whom I played.  The last campaign set we played with any regularity was Forgotten Realms, a setting that was developing both in depth and popularity.  And, suddenly, here before me, was Toril right here in text whenever I wanted, with people to play with and I did not even have to roll any dice.

And so off I went into this world of text.  A world alive in my mind.  To this day I can picture in my mind a whole host of locations despite never having actually seen them.  The descriptions and the things that happened there made a picture in my mind all its own.

Some things, of course, I had seen drawings of before I played Sojourn, like the City of Brass.  And, of course, every creature in the Monster Manual already had a drawing, sometimes a bit silly, associated with it in my head.

I was fortunate to also arrive in the game just after a pwipe, (I cannot believe that Wikipedia does not have an entry on pwipe!) which meant I was new and leveling up at the same time everybody else was starting afresh.  Veterans and noobs alike were leveling up together.  In the months that followed I made friends, some of whom I still chat with, or even game with, to this day.  I met Gaff somewhere near the Tinker camp, probably killing Bandor for experience. (What was the experience cirle we would run? Bandor, Kobold Taskmasters, and a couple other mobs, over and over again?)

I also ended up playing with people who went on to create EverQuest, Brad McQuaid being probably the most well known among them.  So, years later, when EverQuest launched, Norrath was a place both fresh and new as well as a place of familiarity and known concepts.  Those concepts included last names at level 20, stiff experience curves, required grouping, and a severe death penalty that included the possibility losing all your equipment should you not be able to recover your corpse.

Time passed.  Sojourn persisted at times, went away at others.  It changed names.  Sometimes it was Sojourn, sometimes Toril.  Then there was a point around 2000 where it seemed like it was going to be gone for good.

Then, a couple of years later, I got an email from Scott saying, “It’s back!”

And, sure enough, there it was again, up and running as TorilMUD.  We got on right at the end of a beta and were able to start fresh at a new pwipe and relive the joy of everybody leveling up together.

And everybody was about right, as people and names from as far as 15 years back (and probably further) showed back up to play.  It was glorious.  My druid, Zouve Telcontar, lived again to move groups around the lands via moonwells. (Who’s in Baldur’s Gate? I need a well target.)

Of course, time moved along.  We all hit level 50, did the MUD version of raiding (a 16 person group tackling a high level zone with bosses), made alts, had a good time, and then grew restless.

A new set of MMOs came out that drew people away.  Some of us went to EverQuest II, more went to WoW, and a few are even lurking in EVE Online, but the memories remain.  The guild names you see me write about here are often reflections of the Toril guild I was in, Shades of Twilight.

Still, the game persists.  It is up and active and there are people there every time I log in for a peek.  I don’t play, having sold or given away almost every single item I had in the game so as to make a clean break from the game… at least until the next pwipe. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And, for all that EverQuest borrowed from Sojourn/Toril MUD, it is also interesting to look at how much of the life of EverQuest was foreshadowed by it as well.

Sojourn was founded and run by people who had very set ideas on how the game should be played and they actively tried to get people to do things “the right way.”  For example, being able to solo was was frowned upon.  Experience, equipment, and abilities were altered or nerfed to discourage it.  But as time went along, as the gods in the game came and went and as the population fell, that changed.  In the current version there is a much friendlier attitude.  They even had a “multiplay” weekend at one point, where you could log on two characters at once to play.  That was absolute heresy at one point in the game, a character deletion offense.  And while that was a single event, it shows that views soften, especially when you need 16 people to do a zone and there might be as few as 25 people on at a given time.

The economy in the game mirrored what happened in EverQuest.  Platinum coins can’t buy you decent equipment because… well… you cannot spend that platinum on anything better.  People who have played the game since pwipe have piles of platinum stored away in the bank.  The economy is admittedly not that bad in EverQuest, but it is a matter of degrees in the MUDflation effect.

Finally, there is longevity.  People still play TorilMUD regularly.  Daily.  I see the some of the same names every time I log on. (I’m looking at you, Lilithelle… but Corth, you don’t count, you’re always AFK.)  The content has been updated and expanded regularly, there is still a team working on the code, and there is still a supportive audience, so people still play the game.  Some people still play it as their main game after 15 years.

EverQuest is coming up on the 10 year mark next year, and the same holds true for it.  And, as TorilMUD goes, so seems to go EverQuest.  Populations may diminish, but we will still see the game live and viable for years to come it seems, unless we hit a point where 3D graphics become dated more quickly than text.

And, so, after all that text, the real message here is, “Oh, wow! Has it really been 15 years?”

It has, and TorilMUD still lives on.  Go Team!

To celebrate this milestone I am going to go into the archives and fish out some choice items I have stored away from my time in the game to post.  I am not only a packrat in game, but in real life as well, so I have email from 15 years ago in a folder in Eudora.

Some of them will be generally amusing.  Some of them will be obscure.  If nothing else, Gaff and I will enjoy them!

[Addemdum: If you want to see what else I have written about TorilMUD, you can click on the tag… or you can just click on this link.]