Gretchen's+Social+MOO

Monday, February 8 10:30 PM: I'm just starting out trying to figure out how to work a MOO. I couldn't get LambdaMOO to work so I'm trying PythonMOO. I just hit "connect," signed in as a guest, and it started me off on a porch of this run-down mansion. I approached something like a hidden path and got lost in a misty cemetery apparently. I accidentally closed the window and upon starting up again I went back into the cemetery because I'm convinced it ends somewhere. Now I seem to be stuck at the opening of a tunnel leading underground; I tried to go in but it told me I was too scared and turned back. Basically, I'm still really confused and just messing around until I figure things out!

Sunday Feb 14 6:55 PM: I received a user-name for PythonMOO! The e-mail including my user-name and password advised downloading a MOO client, which I did from vmoo.com. So now I can wander around space as Gretchen, not a guest, but I haven't figured out how to create my own space yet. Here's a screen shot of some of my exploring from last time:



The cemetery is pretty intense, but the rest of the town seems fairly normal so far.

Sunday Feb 21 7:00 PM: FINALLY, some success with LambdaMOO! I gave LambdaMOO another try today because I was having so little success with PythonMOO (I never once saw a non-idle character there and I was having issues creating my own space). I just requested a character name from LambaMOO so hopefully I will have one by tomorrow! So today after signing in as a guest (Khaki_Guest) on LambdaMOO I did a tutorial which was super helpful. After exiting the tutorial I was placed in the closet where everyone starts when you sign in. I somehow managed to get lost and confused (surprise) but a person named Mauve_Guest "paged" me and after a couple of messages back and forth (in which I asked novice questions and Mauve_Guest revealed they used to have a character but quit because they got addicted to moosex...) s/he told me to join him/her at their location so we could chat with other people (you can just type @join to join someone wherever they are in the MOO or go to a specific place, which is great for someone like me who is prone to getting lost). I joined Mauve_Guest in a common room with 3-4 other people, some of who were guests, characters, or people who have a character but were just pretending to be guests. The way you can interact with objects in the room is interesting; for instance, one character (Everin) kept gagging the Cockatoo when it escaped its gag (wtf?) and another character put wood in the fireplace and lit a fire. The more veteran characters asked the guests how they learned about the MOO etc. All in all, LambdaMOO was actually fun because there were people there to interact with, as well as places. I requested the character name "Gretchen" during a lapse of creativity but I haven't decided how to portray my character yet. Maybe I will experiment with identity, or maybe I will continue to be brutally and boringly honest. We will see tomorrow!