As these text-based multi-user dungeons were the first adventure games of their kind, they developed a surprisingly deep set of lingo of which a great deal is still in use today.
A
- Adventurer’s Guild – The traditional starting point of the game for new players. It is in the Guild where one can raise their stats, advance levels, show their list of quests to be solved, and check on the bulletin board for random postings from other players.
- AFK – Short for “away from keyboard”.
- Alignment – A numeric representation of how good or evil your character is. Zero represents neutral. A positive number represents good. A negative number represents evil. By slaying many evil monsters, one’s alignment will eventually shift towards that of good, and vice versa.
- Armageddon – He is a non-player character whose purpose is to shut down the game. He takes his job very seriously. Armageddon typically appears once per day at 5:50 AM Eastern Standard Time. While he is present, he counts down the game shutdown sequence every few minutes or so. The total shutdown sequence takes 10 minutes.
- Armor – Equipment which you wear in order to help protect yourself from damage against others in combat. Can also serve for purely decorative purposes.
- Attribute – Nirvana supports several basic character attributes, determining the capabilities of your character under certain situations. You can see your attributes with the “sc2″ command.
B
- Blick – Slang for “blood lick”. Used to express the satisfaction of killing another creature in combat, typically other players in hand to hand combat.
- Bot – Short for “robot”. This varies from the first-person perspective shooter definition in that a “bot” is usually an automated script which performs more than just aiming assistance for the player. “Bot” code can be used to automate many aspects of game play. While “bots” are not technically illegal in the game, if a wizard catches a player using one, the wizard cannot be held accountable for any “accidents” which result from the use of a fully automated scripting engine.
C
- Castle – Any realm within Nirvana. Traditionally, when a new wizard is granted access to the game library, they are allowed to pick a room where they drop their castle, which becomes a full-fledged realm for players to participate in upon opening. The castle serves as the portal/entrance to the wizard’s realm.
- Church – The village church is 1N from the village green. If a player dies, this is where they must go to regain their corporeal form.
- Corpse – When a player or non player character dies, their inventory is transferred to a “corpse” object which represents the properties of the dead body. The player will continue on as a “ghost”, and regains their corporeal form once they “pray” in the village church.
D
- DC – Disconnection from the game.
- Decorpse – The act of looting the equipment from a corpse, or processing the corpse into some other form of energy.
- Dest – Shortened for “destruct”. When an object is removed from the game, such as when a heal is consumed, it is “dested” from the game. Note that the process of destructing an object does not delete the file from which it was created.
- Dev – Short for “Developer”. Please see “wizard”.
- Devs – A command to see which wizards are currently logged in.
- Driver – The server software which runs the MUD environment. Nirvana runs a modified version of a driver based on the original LPMud distribution.
E
- Experience – Also shortened as “EXP”. This value is a somewhat abstracted number which represents the “score” of your character. Experience is accumulated mainly from killing monsters, but can also be gained from solving quests and puzzles. In general though, monsters form the sheer bulk of which experience is gained.
- Extra levels – Nirvana is built on a traditional mudlib which only allows for 19 player levels. Any level higher than this would result in the player being treated as a wizard. As a solution for players who have reached the top of their level, 100 extra ‘sub’ levels were created in the game. These extra levels are represented in the nomenclature of “19+30″ or “19+100″.
F
- Finger – Contrary to the cultural act of “giving the finger”, this is a good thing. The “finger” command in the game allows you to look at basic information of other players or wizards, when they have last logged in, and what guild they belong to. It is a completely non-intrusive tool and has its roots from a Unix command of the same name.
G
- Green (The Village Green) – Usually in reference to the Village Green, a room 1N, 3W from the Adventurer’s Guild. In many cases, directions to other realms within Nirvana originate from the Village Green.
- Griefer – Someone who deliberately harasses or irritates other players. Luckily Nirvana doesn’t have too many of these and they are often put in their place in fairly quick order. Should you encounter a griefer, you should keep a screen log of their activities, and report them to a Wizard.
- Gossip – One of the standard in-game communications channel. To use it, your character must be at least one hour old. It should be noted that the gossip channel filters for certain profanity.
H
- Harry the Affectionate – One of the ‘sample’ NPCs which shipped with the base LPMud library. Harry is known for being a bit of a pest by repeating parts of what you ‘say’, following players, and for picking up objects on the ground. Harry is generally easy to kill and has been left in the game for historical and entertainment purposes.
- Heartbeat – The atomic level of time within the game. A heartbeat takes one second, and combat flows in a turn-by-turn manner at this time rate. Interval based events such as healing, poisoning, aging, and pregnancies all calculate their duration off of the game standard heartbeat.
- Hitpoints – Also “HP”. A numeric representation of how much “life” you have in your character. If your hitpoints drops below 1, your character will die. Death is not a good thing.
I
- Idler – To be connected but not interactive. Many wizards are idlers, because of the relative safety of their workrooms. They can also check on their terminal window periodically in case any issues arise which requires support.
- Insta-blick – A variation of “blick” where the expression of satisfaction from killing another player in combat is intensified by said combat concluding in a very short time period.
- Instance – Some realms create “alternate realities” for each player as they enter. This is to make the experience unique, or to address the inherently single-player aspect design of some specialized realms.
J
K
- Kid – Please see “mudkid”.
L
- Leech – Someone who takes and consumes what is given without gratitude. Generally an unfavorable trait, especially in combat parties.
- LPC – The programming language in which the mudlib operates and where all the objects defined in the mudlib interact with one another. LPC is structurally influenced by the C programming language.
- LPMud – Stands for “Lars Pensjö“, the original creator of the LPMud driver.
M
- Mob – Short for “monster object”, a synonym for “monster”, or to a lesser degree any non player character.
- MUD – Stands for “multi user dungeon”, with the aspect of a dungeon being highlighted from the time when MUDs traditionally were all of the fantasy theme. MUDs were among the first generation of network capable, real-time multi-user games in existence.
- Mudmail – There is a post office in the game which allows for players to send text messages to other players. It is located 1N, 1W, 2S from the Adventurer’s Guild. Give the command “mail <playername>” to initiate the send process.
- Mudkid – Offspring which can be had by two players in the game. The mudkid itself is classed as a non player character which can grow of age, and follow around their parents in a capacity similar to a combat-capable pet.
- Mudlib – The library of object files which is interpreted by the MUD driver.
N
- NPC – Non player character. Any living entity in the game which is not directly controlled by a human operator. This includes friendly monsters, hostile ones, kids, pets, or any combination of the previously listed.
O
P
- PK – Abbreviation for “player killing”. Typically used to describe the act of player versus player combat.
- Pwn – Slang and deliberate misspelling of “own”. Typically used to describe when someone has been dominated by another in player versus player combat.
Q
R
- Reboot – Once per day at 6AM Eastern Standard Time, the game shuts down and restarts for garbage collection and memory management purposes. Reboots are generally fairly quick, taking only a minute or two.
- Repop – A variation of “respawn”
- Respawn – Most non-player characters will re-appear in the game after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Some NPCs will not re-appear until the next reboot.
- Roleplay – Also known as “RP”. Traditionally in adventure and fantasy games, the idea of being “in character” was almost of critical importance- even more so than gaining experience. If you were a knight, you had to speak and act like one. If you were a thief, you had to act and fully develop your persona to the part. Nirvana is not a mandatory roleplaying MUD, but to engage in roleplay is a sign of civility and elegance from a time not too far long ago.
- Room – The immediate environment which you perceive. The term “room” is often used in a blanket statement even if the environment is described as an impossibly large volume of space.
- Room Lottery – The process of obtaining a new hotel room in the Casa de Nirvana. Because rooms are recycled from an existing pool, there is a possibility that you will obtain a bunch of free equipment in the check-in process.
- Risque – One of the in-game channels on Nirvana. It is notable in that content such as profanity is completely unfiltered.
S
- Score – The command to see your basic character score, along with other attributes like character age, coins, quest points, and so on. The command is “score” or also the abbreviated “sc” command works too.
- Scotty – Unique to Nirvana, Scotty is a non player character who a player can send a “tell” message, which when properly formatted causes Scotty to “beam you up” along the theme of the Star Trek universe. You will be then teleported to the transporter room of the fictional starship USS Enterprise.
- Spam – Similar in definition to its email namesake, spam is unsolicited communication usually flowing in large amounts. It can originate from another player or non player character. In the context of a “spammy” creature, this would be often the case of a monster which sends large amounts of text or line breaks during combat or over channels.
- Spellpoints – Also “SPs”. A numeric representation of how much spiritual “mana” your character has. Spellpoints are used for various magical or mental capabilities. If your spellpoints drop below 0, you will not die, but it represents mental exhaustion.
T
- Tell – To send a message privately to another player or non player character. When a tell is sent, no discernible trace is left for others in the same room to see that such a message was sent, as in the case of the “whisper” command. Tells can be sent to creatures who are not in the same room as well.
- Tellblock – A command to restrict receipt of tell messages from other players in the game. Used in the case of harassment or on the wish of privacy, or in an effort to limit bandwidth utilized.
- Toxed – Short for “intoxicated”. To heal hitpoints and spellpoints in the game, one can drink or eat items. If too many alcoholic beverages are consumed, you will no longer be able to drink for a period of time until the effect of being intoxicated wears off.
- Trigger – A programmed action which occurs when a pattern of text is detected. For example, if a program detects that something has been “dropped” in the room, the trigger with automatically attempt to “get” the object. Triggers have great utility, but also potential for abuse, especially in player versus player combat. Live by the sword… die by the sword.
U
V
W
- Whisper – A command to send a message to another player or non player character in the same room. It should be noted that a trace of the message will be sent to others in the same room. The actual message is unknown except to the recipient.
- Wimpy (sometimes spelled whimpy) – In combat, the “wimpy” amount or percentage is the threshold of where a player should try to flee combat automatically as soon as possible.
- Wizard – A traditional name for any player character who has the added responsibilities of creating new levels, administering, and troubleshooting for the game.
- Workroom – Wizards traditionally log in to their own private rooms instead of the Village green or Adventurer’s Guild.
X
- Xyzzy – An arcane and mystical secret code.
