(We've sent this document because someone (hopefully you) requested a character on our MUCK, and registered it to your email address. If you have received this message in error, your courteous reply is appreciated so we can properly handle the request.) Otherwise, welcome to Sociopolitical Ramifications MUCK! Please take a moment to read this document, as it contains important information about your character and our server. __ __-- Connecting to SPR Sociopolitical Ramifications ('SPR' for short) is a furry, free, tech-styled Fuzzball MUCK based in Sweden. A couple of important URLs are: server: telnet://muck.sprmuck.org port 23 webpage: http://www.atlantic.net/~flburns/sprmuck If you are currently connecting with a 'raw' telnet client, you may consider trying out one of the fine MU* clients available. Try the site listed below appropriate for your operating system: TUCOWS (Windows): http://www.tucows.com/ zMUD (Windows): http://www.zuggsoft.com/ Mac Orchard (Macintosh): http://www.macorchard.com/ TinyFugue (Unix): ftp://ftp.tcp.com/ If you're familiar with Fuzzball MUCK, you're already familiar with most of our interface. To connect, follow the instructions on the splash screen. After you've connected for the first time, you should change your password to something secure and memorable. You can change your password with the '@password' command: @password = If you didn't read the SPR policy documents as a guest, now would be an excellent time to do that. Type 'news' to get a list of the documents available, then 'news ' to view the document that is called . You can also type line numbers after the name. For example, 'news policies=1-20' to list lines one through twenty inclusive of the document called 'policies'. You should also check to ensure that your email address is correct, using the '@email' command. If your email address changes, we will likely be unable to do things such as reset your password if you should forget it. If you lose your password, you can ask a wizard to have a new one emailed to you; you may also have to send your request (called a 'newpassword request') by email to the handling wizard. If you would like your character removed, ask a wizard. Note that you will have to put in two such requests (which are called 'toad request(s)'), the second one more than forty-eight (48) hours after the first one, for your character to be removed. Although we generally do not purge idle characters, we have done it before. If you're going on vacation or losing your Internet access for more than a month (though you'll likely have to be unconnected for three months before we even *start* to consider purging your character), you can notify a wizard to ask that your character be protected from any surprise idle purges. __ __-- Setting Up and Getting Around Now that you've got your character, you can use one of our Player Hammer programs to set things such as your gender, species, and description, as well as more esoteric settings such as your sweep messages and whether or not you can fly. We have both Triggur's Player Hammer (type 'editplayer') and Syvel's NewEditPlayer (type 'nep') available for your convenience. To find help with basic Fuzzball commands, type 'help'. For help listing some SPR-specific commands, try 'globals'. If you have any trouble finding help with a program or feature, try consulting the help-finding tips available with the 'help?' command. If you still can't find help on certain topics, you can try asking a member of our staff--type 'staff' to see a list of helpstaffers, or 'wizzes' to see a list of wizards. (Wizards are users who have special administrative powers on SPR, while helpstaff are simply friendly users who can answer your questions.) SPR has several bulletin boards for both general and specialized messages. From anywhere on the MUCK, you can type 'boards' to go to the official board area. There you can type 'bhelp' for board use guidelines. Also, the Circuit Board (and the other boards) are accessible from anywhere on SPR, with the +read and +write commands. You can type '+boards' for more information. __ __-- Socio: The SPR Landscape SPR is a vast and growing place filled with many environments. You can get almost everywhere on the entire MUCK from the 64-bit bus. Type 'bus' to go there, then 'dests' to see the destinations menu, or 'bus #help' for usage instructions. At the heart of Socio (SPR's main world) is Matrix Plains City, a techno-natural city which is in the process of being rebuilt as of this writing. Knuth Park, the MUCK's primary meeting place, is at the center of the City, and is reachable from anywhere on the MUCK by typing 'park'. A number of shops populate the City, but there is still room for expansion (especially in the City Underground area at 'bus mpc'). The area north of the city is mostly covered by forest. There you can find the overgrown ruins of an old town called Arrenvale, from which you can proceed north towards Lakelands, go westwards to Goth City, or east to Drakkhensvale, a village and nature area inhabited by dragons. Going west from Matrix Plains, you will pass Vixen End village to climb into the Kamiyama and Aadhad mountains, and further west, you can follow Vesterdalen valley to get to the ocean at Fractal Fjord. Southwards from the city, you will find African-inspired landscapes with the Savannah, Lake Upemba, Stormy Mountains, the great desert and Yangu River Canyon, which leads you to the harbour town Leoport at the shore of the southern ocean. Going to the east, you'll reach the spaceport, with the possibility to use a spaceship to fly into SPR's space, and further east, New Tikal, a city which is currently being built up. To get a home of your own, you can find a public room or a room of a friend's set Abode (i.e., with an 'A' in the flags list after the room's database reference number), build a new place for yourself and link it to an existing area, or consult the homes list (type 'homes') to find an apartment house or similar place off of which to build your home. We encourage you to help build up our MUCK by adding your own areas to it. SPR has no building quotas. If you plan or build a public area, we would appreciate finding a place for it in the existing landscape, rather than muddle the area with disjointed traffic and 'floating' areas; feel free to ask wizards or owners of existing areas for help finding a place. Many MUF programs and MPI macros are available for use in users' building projects. We use Neikrad's weather and map programs, as well as programs registered in the 'plib' program library listing and MPI macros listed on the official MPI bulletin board (type 'boards' then 'mpi', or consult '+boards'). __ __-- Command Summary Here's a review of the commands we've mentioned: To change your password: @password = To change your email address: @email To set up your character: editplayer -or- : nep For help with Fuzzball: help For help on getting help: help? To list SPR's news/policy files: news To list SPR global commands: globals To read boards from anywhere: +boards To list places offering homes: homes To list online helpstaff: staff To list online wizards: wizzes Go to the official boards: boards Go to the 64-bit bus: bus Go to Knuth Park: park __ __-- Your Password And now, the moment you've been waiting for: Your character has been created with password: x Remember to change your password with the '@password' command as shown above. We're sure you'll help keep SPR the wonderful place its users have made it, and we all--wizards, helpstaff, users--hope you enjoy our MUCK. Welcome to SPR! (This document edited by Natasha. Description of the landscape of Socio by unci. Based on the original spr-welcome by Raven. Thanks to F'rret, Sand, and Thalen for suggesting MU* client sites.)