q: old dial-up MUD-like commercial game?

From: Andreas Meyer <ahm_at_spies.com>
Date: Fri Dec 8 16:42:49 2000

Ryan K. Brooks writes:
> Anyone remember having a multi-player D&D/MUD like game dial-up
> service in their city? I'm thinking around 1985 or earlier... it was
> some sort of a timeshare system with 8/16/24 ports that people could
> dial in to at an hourly rate and play. As I recall it was some sort of
> franchise and we had one here in Milwaukee (414 area code) that was
> quite popular- I believe it was called Sceptre, but I'm not sure if that
> was the name of the game/world/town, etc.

The MUD was called "The Scepter of Goth". However, that was just one
of the games available on the GameMaster, which is probably the system
you're thinking of. GameMaster was an XT running QNX, with special
multi-modem cards that only allowed 300 baud dial-ins.

At the time, I was looking into possibly setting up a similar system just
outside New York City, by either buying a franchise or just the source
code so I could port it to a Unix box. However, I spoke to GameMaster's
operator (Jim?) on the phone a few times and he managed to talk me out
it. Apparently he was being jerked in various directions after having
invested over $7000 in hardware, software and telephone lines. He said
he wasn't allowed access to the source code so he could make changes
or improvements.

But it was a pretty neat MUD.

Andy
Received on Fri Dec 08 2000 - 16:42:49 GMT