Play it now, ask questions later!
What is Jewel of Jeopardy?
Jewel of Jeopardy MUD is a short but complete medieval fantasy role-playing game that takes about 20 to 30 minutes to play from beginning to end. It has the look and feel of popular MUDs out there in Internet-land.
Unlike a real MUD, the game has a single goal built into it. A real MUD is usually composed of many areas, and some of those areas will have quest-type goals built into them.
Like a real MUD, the game is played in a text window, and you type commands to have your character perform whatever action you want them to do. (While playing, type HELP to see the list of commands). Most commands can be abbreviated; this saves much finger-grief.
Why did you write it?
I wanted to provide people a feeling for what playing a MUD is really like, simply and quickly.
On many real MUDs, before you can decide whether or not you actually want to play, you may have to go through a multi-page-after-page of character creation, answering questions and selecting options for which you have no clue (since you've never played their game, silly!).
Or else some MUDs have a registration process involving several email exchanges, at the end of which you discover you must wait for final authorization and approval from some immortal who retired from the game the previous year, but for whom they have still not found any replacement.
Or at last, when you finally do get to play, you must suffer through some newbie education and levelling area, after which you are confined to a five-by-five grid with nothing but water fountains and stock mobs to talk to, because you are much too weak and inexperienced to even dare think of leaving town to actually explore anything...
I am not saying that any of those real MUDs (who shall remain nameless) are good or bad, I'm just saying that too often it takes way too long to find out whether or not you even like a game or not.
In Jewel of Jeopardy, you just pick a name for yourself and go.
What server does it run on?
Well, first off, its not a real MUD, which usually is implemented on a server. On a real MUD, multiple players can log in and interact and play the game simultaneously. This makes MUDs very sociable places to play. There are exceptions, but given the textual nature of MUDs, you have a good chance of meeting people who can actually read!
My MUD is written entirely in Javascript so your browser is the server. The downside to this is that you will never meet anyone on this game (I still put the WHO command in, for those desperate souls out there who will hope beyond hope!) As you play, you may notice occasional references to the 'server', I just tossed these in to add to the flavor of playing on a real MUD.
Why do I need cookies enabled to play?
The game uses one session cookie during play, solely for the purpose of keeping your one character saved as you play, in case you interrupt your game (to click on some other link for example).
When you return to play, the game will ask you to type in your character name again, but it will have saved your character's progress. Since I only use the one cookie, you can only play using one character at a time.
For those who are paranoid about these things, the cookie will disappear as soon as you close your browser. Unless you keep your browser on 24/7, you'll have to start your game all over from the beginning if that happens.
Okay, I completely understand everything you wrote except for one thing: What's a MUD?
Hrrrm... For you, I can think of two options:
1) See http://www.mudconnect.com/mud_intro.html at The MUD connector.
2) Play Jewel of Jeopardy now and try it for yourself.
