Guides — Icesus MUD

How to Play a MUD

The practical first-hour guide. Commands, movement, combat, chat, clients, and where to ask for help when the world stops making sense. Written for someone who has never typed look into a black terminal before.

Beginner ≈ 12 min read Updated 2026-05-09

→

Part I

Genre & first principles

Text-Based RPG Online

What separates a text RPG from CYOA, interactive fiction, and graphical games — with Icesus as a persistent example.

Primer·≈ 8 min

MUD vs Roguelike

Persistent worlds, permadeath, and where the two genres quietly trade ideas. In the press.

Forthcoming

Part II

Setting up your client

MUD Clients for Icesus

Start in the browser. Move to Mudlet or another desktop client when you want triggers, aliases, and a proper mapper.

Setup·≈ 6 min

Mudlet Setup

Install Mudlet, connect to Icesus, and configure aliases, triggers, mapper, GMCP, logging, accessibility, and backups.

Setup·≈ 10 min

Adjacent

Building, coding, lore

Contribute to Icesus

Help build areas, quests, systems, accessibility, and the public wiki. In MUD tradition we call contributors wizards.

/contribute/

RPG Programming

FluffOS, LPC, codebase comparisons, and project ideas. A 31-year-old codebase you can actually contribute to.

/rpg-programming/

Public Wiki

Reference material maintained by players: races, guilds, areas, quests, and the slow accretion of folk knowledge.

/wiki

Legends

Tales, retired heroes, and the long memory of a world that has been running since 1995.

/legends/

Editor's note

The codex is hand-set, like the world itself. New entries arrive when they're ready, not when a calendar says so. If something here is wrong, say so on Discord.

Begin reading

Or skip the codex entirely and open the world in your browser. Reading about a MUD is a poor substitute for typing look.