RuthMOO: Getting Started

Welcome to RuthMOO, an online community hosted at Brandeis University. This page is intended to prepare you to connect as a guest at RuthMOO, request a permanent character, and interact with the environment in basic ways including talking to other people and using the online help system. If you have already done this, you will probably want to move on to the RuthMOO: Settling In page.

1. Connecting as a Guest

When you connect to RuthMOO via telnet you will see a logon screen that looks something like this:

Welcome to RuthMOO

This is an experimental site for the exploration of educational technology and v
irtual community.

The operators of RuthMOO have provided the materials for the building of this co
mmunity, but are not responsible for what is said or done in it. In particular,
you must assume responsibility if you permit minors or others to access RuthMOO
through your facilities. The statements and viewpoints expressed here are not ne
cessarily those of the MOO administrators, Jack Abercrombie, or Brandeis Univers
ity, and those parties disclaim any responsibility for them.

Type:
Connect   to connect to your character.
Connect Guest to connect to a guest character.
help @request for information on how to get your own character.
@who to see who's logged in right now.
@quit to disconnect, either now or later.

In order to log on you should type:

connect guest

and you will be logged on as a guest character. As a guest you will have limited abilities, although you can walk around and look at things, intereact with the environment and talk to people. You can also request a permanent character.

2. Exploring the Environment

When you connect to RuthMOO you will be in a quiet room called the Lobby. It will look something like this:

Lobby

A plain lobby with doors leading to much more interesting things. A small sign
 next to the door says:

        Welcome to RuthMOO!

You see red box here.

Exits:  
CAFE to Caffe Appassionato and BOOTH to Information Booth

The red box is an object you can look at:

look red box

You can also look at yourself:

look me

The exits, CAFE and BOOTH, are other rooms you can get to from here by walking. To use an exit just type its name and you will go there.

cafe

If you wish to talk to someone you do it in one of two ways:

say Hello.

"Hello.

Which ever one you use, you will see something like this:

You say, "Hello."

And everyone else in the room with you will see something like:

Guest says, "Hello."

If you wish to wave instead of saying hello you could use one of the following:

emote waves hello.

:waves hello.

You and everyone else in the room will see something like:

Guest waves hello.

This is called emoting and is limited only by your imagination.If you wanted to let people know that you were a little overwhelmed by all the MOO commands you were learning in such a short time, you could use:

::'s head is spinning!

And you and everyone else in the room would see something like:

Guest's head is spinning!

Notice how when you use a single colon to emote, there is a space between your name and the text you are emoting. When you use two colons, there is no space, allowing you to append text such as an apostrophe s to your name.

3. Finding People and Getting Help

The first place to look for help is in the online help system. You can see the entire help index by typing:

help index

To see help on a specific topic, such as communication (a good one to start with), type:

help communication

The next best place to get help is from other people on the MOO. To see who is online at the moment type:

@who

This will show a list of who is online, how long they have been online, how long they have been idle and where they are. To talk to someone who isn't in the same room you are, you will need to page them (using my character, fiasco, as an example):

page fiasco Do you have time to answer a question?

If the person you page doesn't have time just at that moment, she will page you back to tell you so. If she doesn't respond, it probably means that she's away from her keyboard just then and didn't see your page. If either of these happens to you, you can try paging someone else, or wait and ask again later.

If the person you page is available to help you, she may @invite you to @join her. If that person is fiasco you would do so by typing:

@join fiasco

@Joining someone without paging her first to see if she is busy is extremely rude. If you do so, don't be surprised if you get @ejected and end up back in the Lobby. This is not done to be mean, but to preserve privacy and enforce good manners. If you get @ejected and don't understand why, it's a good idea to page that person and politely ask for an explanation.

4. Requesting a Character

In order to request a permanent character you will need a name for your character and a valid email address. The name must be one that is not already used on the MOO. While logged in as a guest you can type:

@who Myname

to see if MyName is already being used by someone. Keep in mind that names cannot have spaces, periods (.) or quote marks in them.

If MyName is not being used, you will get a message like this:

"MyName" is not the name of any player.

If MyName is being used by someone else already you will see a message like this:

Player name   Last disconnect time          Location
-----------   --------------------          --------
MyName (#99)  Mon Dec 22 18:01:30 1997 EST  MyName's Home

 Total: 1 player, who has not been active recently.

If the name you choose is already being used you will need to select another before you can request a character.

The valid email address is required because when your character is created, a random password will be assigned to it and that password will be sent to your email address.

Once you have picked out a name and have your email address you can type:

@request MyName for email@address

substituting the appropriate values for your character name and email address. It will ask you to verify that your email address is correct. This is important! When you want to answer 'yes', you must type out the word, 'yes'. Just typing 'y' will not be accepted.

If all goes well you will get a message that looks something like this:

Character MyName (#xxx) created.
Mailing password to email@address; you should get the mail very soon.
If you do not get it, please do NOT request another character.
Instead, send regular email to postmaster@moo.edu
with the name of the character you requested.

In a fairly short time, usually a matter of minutes, you should receive email from RuthMOO with your character name, password and the address of the MOO, in case you've forgotten.

For more information on what to do once you have a character, see RuthMOO: Settling In.

Back to the RuthMOO home page.

This page maintained by S. J. Herdman.