~ Early Web Links ~

TADS (Text Adventure Development System) is the official home of a free, professional-grade authoring toolkit for creating interactive fiction, maintained by Michael J. Roberts. The site offers downloads, comprehensive manuals, code examples, and community links for both TADS 2 and TADS 3, making it an essential hub for serious IF developers.

Nodeka is a real-time multiplayer online fantasy RPG featuring an overhead map client, a wildly complex crafting system, 120+ character classes, 80+ races, and over 400 quests with a morality engine. With thousands of skills, spells, and components to discover, it pitches itself as a deep and strategic alternative to traditional MUD-style games.

Textfire.de is a German-language magazine and resource hub dedicated to text adventure games, encouraging enthusiasts to write and share their own interactive fiction. It features articles for authors, programming examples, reviews of existing works, and even hosts a competitive Grand Prix tournament for text adventure creators.

The Two Towers MUD is a free text-based multiplayer roleplaying game set in Tolkien's Middle-earth, established in 1994 and featuring over 100,000 rooms spanning from Mithlond to Mordor. Players can join guilds, complete hundreds of quests, siege enemy lands, and choose sides in the War of the Ring in this richly developed online world.

tkMOO-light is a cross-platform chat client developed by Andrew Wilson, designed specifically for connecting to MUD and MOO online text-based environments on UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh. The site offers downloads, a manual, plugin documentation, and release notes for a client that has been actively developed since the mid-1990s.

The official home of MUD2, the direct descendant of the original Multi-User Dungeon designed by Richard Bartle in the late 1970s, widely considered the grandfather of all MMORPGs. Maintained by Viktor T. Toth, the site offers access to the live text-based game, help resources, and community features for players who still love classic text adventures.

ArcticMUD is a free online multi-player text-based RPG set in the Dragonlance universe of Krynn, running continuously since 1992. Players can explore a massive world, complete quests, engage in player-vs-player combat, and choose from a variety of character classes and alignments inspired by TSR's beloved fantasy novels.

Merentha is a long-running free online text-based multiplayer RPG that has been running since 1996, set in the fantasy world of Cardania with dozens of races, classes, guilds, and kingdoms to explore. The site serves as a comprehensive portal for players, featuring maps, quests, coding tutorials, player directories, character artwork, and lore spanning over two decades of active gameplay.

The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction offers a beginner's guide to interactive fiction distilled onto a single postcard, written by Andrew Plotkin and designed by Lea Albaugh for newcomers sitting down in front of an IF game for the very first time. Available in multiple formats including PDF, PNG, SVG, and HTML, plus translations in French, Russian, Spanish, German, and Italian, this handy reference card conveys the essential command patterns without overwhelming beginners.

BatMUD is one of the longest-running text-based multiplayer online games in existence, having been continuously online since 1990 and set in a medieval fantasy world with open-ended roleplay and character creation. Players can log in directly from the browser, download a dedicated client, and even attend real-world player meetups like the Las Vegas-hosted Vegascon conferences.