A MUSH (Multi-User Shared Habitat, or Hallucination) is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time. MUSH are often used for online social intercourse and role-playing games, although the first forms of MUSH do not appear to be coded specifically to implement gaming activity. One of the earliest forms of MUSH that existed are tinyMUSH and tinyTIM. MUSH has forked over the years and there are now different varieties, such as PennMUSH, with different features, although most have strong similarities. The source code for several widely-used MUSH servers is open source and available from its current maintainers.

A primary feature of MUSH that tends to distinguish it from other muds is the ability, by default, of any player to extend the world by creating new rooms or objects and specifying their behavior in the MUSH's internal scripting language. Another is the default lack of much player or administrative hierarchy imposed by the server itself.

Another difference between MUSH and prior MU* languages, such as MUD and MUCK, are the inclusion of many visible flags which, when appended to a user name, signify special properties that apply to that user account. One example that is often given is that if a character is set as ENTER_OK, they can be entered just as any virtual room within the text-based world of MUSH; a flexibility that differentiates it from earlier MU* where rooms and entrances, objects and players were all coded to operate as non-interchangeable states of design.

The programming language for MUSH, usually referred to as "MUSHcode" or "softcode" (to distinguish it from "hardcode" - the language in which the MUSH server itself is written) was developed by Larry Foard. MUSH started life as a set of enhancements to the original TinyMUD code.

Roleplay on MUSHes

Traditionally, roleplay consists of a series of 'poses'. Each character makes a 'pose' - that is, writes a roughly paragraph-length description of speech actions, etc. which the character performs. Special commands allow players to print OOC messages, distinguished by a prefixed tag from IC action. This medium borrows traits from both improvisational stage acting and writing.

Administration of MUSHes

All MUSH servers provide a flag called WIZARD; when set on a player, the player gains the ability to view and modify nearly everything in the game's database. Such players are called Wizards, and usually form the basis for the MUSH administration.

Although MUSH servers do not impose strong administrative hierarchies, most MUSH games establish addition levels of management besides Wizards. Some do so on a purely organizational basis, naming some Wizards "Head Wizards" or "Junior Wizards" or assigning sphere of responsibility to Wizards, despite the technical equality of their abilities in the game world. Others provide finer-grained control over capabilities that can be assigned to players so that some players can be granted the ability to view, but not modify, the entire game world, or to perform limited modifications.

Popular MUSH Software

Maintainers and developers of MUSH servers have traditionally shared ideas with one another, so most MUSH servers include concepts or code developed originally in other servers. There is particular interest in ensuring that common MUSHcode features work similarly across servers.

• PennMUSH is an open source free-form MUSH developed from TinyMUD and PernMUSH at University of Pennsylvania, and later at University of California, Berkeley and University of Illinois at Chicago.
• TinyMUSH is an open source free-form MUSH developed from TinyMUD and fuses in some TinyMUX code.
• TinyMUX is an open source free-form MUSH developed from TinyMUD.

See Also

• TinyMUD
• MUSE
• UberMUD
• MUX - Multi-User eXperience; not multiplexer
• MOO
• Star Wars MUSH

External Links

• MUSH Warehouse List of MU*s
• Mud Connector Well-maintained list of MU*'s and other related items such as clients
• MUSHClient A popular MU* client
• SimpleMU* Another popular MU* client
• TinyFugue A popular and powerful MU* client.