D

Dungeons and Dragons ®. A fantasy role-playinggame developed in the late 1970's with muchcommercial success. Many combat MUDS(esp. DIKU) are at least loosely derivative ofportions of the D&D ® system.

Death, n.

Temporary suspensionof normal play for a particular character .Not as certain as taxes in the world of MUDs.Typically penalties are associated with dying.Penalties like EXP deductions, loss of equipment , etc.

See: deletion , ghost , kill , suicide .

Decompress, v.

To enlarge something. Typically the same computer program that was used to compress a file of data isused to reverse the process 2 and recreate the originalfile.

Defrob, v., n.

(1) Wizard made common player; as penalty (involuntary), or fortheir recreation (voluntary). Wizard status is re-acquired after apenalty period is served or when the player meets the conditions ofrecreational advancement (available to any PC ).

(2) Demotion to lower wizard level by the administrator .

See: frob , frog .

Deletion, n.

Permanent destruction of an object such as a player'scharacter .

Deny, v.

To ban a character from the MUD. The "denied" characteris kicked off and unable to reconnect until an immortal has "undenied" them.

Dev/null, n.

From Unix. Nowhere. Example: "send your complaint to /dev/null" reallymeans "I don't care about your complaint."

DB, n. [Comp. of Database.]

See: database .

Description, n.

Information that defines an object's appearance from theperspective of a viewer. The viewer is typically a character .

See: long , short .

Development Site, n.

Host where a MUD is being worked on prior to goingpublic .

DEX, n. [comp. of dexterity]

See: dexterity .

Dexterity, n.

Measure of a character's agility.

See: statistics .

Dice, n.

Random selector. Often numbers displayed in the form n,n2 refer to"dice" -- the random selection of a value in the range of n..n2.

See: die , roll , XdY .

Die, n.

(1) Same as dice .

(2) Same as death .

Diety, n.

Same as god .

Diku, n.

Also DikuMUD.

Combat oriented MUD developed in 1990 at theDepartment of Computer Science at the Universityof Copenhagen (Diku).Authors:Sebastian Hammer,Tom Madsen,Katja Nyboe,Michael Seifert,Hans Henrik Staerfeldt. Diku has spawned manychildren or related games.

Dino, n.

(1) Anyone who is seen as a founder of a MUD concept or builder ofserver and who has been involved with MUDs for longer thantwo years.

(2) Anyone who has been involved with MUDs for longer than two years.Note: It is generally not considered proper to refer to one's self asa dino and some may not consider length of time involved with MUDsimportant to the definition.

Disconnect, v.

To severe a connection to the MUD.A command on many MUDs that allows immortals to disconnect a player while leaving their character linkdead .

See: freeze .

Do, v. Command allows you to give multiple commands on the same line.Each command set is seperated by a comma (,). Example:"do get sword,wield sword,kill balrog".

Donation, n.

From making sacrifical offerings to gods.

(1) System in which the donate command exists.Typically, donate will remove a specified item from acharacter and place that item in a fixed room where others may acquire it.

(2) Destination room of a donate command ."Let's go to donation and see if there's anythingwe can use."

(3) Monetary gift made to a game owner, often in return for special privledges. This is against the license agreement ofmost freely codebases .

Door, n.

Potential exit between rooms . Doors may be:open; You can pass through to another room,closed; You cannot pass through.locked; You must unlock the door to use it.

See: close , lock , open , unlock .

Domain, n.

Large area operated or maintained by a wizard . Most oftenhas a set theme.

Driver, n.

Game server.

(1) A game server that derives most if not all of theuniverse rules from a DB .

(2) Loose name for server.

See: server .

Drop, v.

(1) command to take items from one's inventory andplace them into the room .

See: get .

(2) To say you are targeting a specificcharacter for killing.Most often used on pure pk MUDs. Example:Maetar says, "Dropping Korpora."

Dual-Class, n.

System in which a character may hold up totwo classes at the same time.Typically one class is active (or effectual)while another is on hold.

See: class , multi-class .

Dynamic Text, n.

(EM 1993) Descriptions that modifythemselves based on external factors. For example, a roomdescription that changes from "There are piles of snowbelow the windows" to "Puddles of water shimmer beneath thewindows" depending on the weather. Only applies to textgenerated as a result of instructions embedded in dataspecific to a particular room and not gang orwholesale application of footers or "tags" tootherwisestatic descriptions.