Archives & Historical Writings

Links to various writings from the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, as well as more recent resources that have since been archived.

• 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A. Reed - Web series turned book covering one text game per year from 1971-2020. Not MUD-specific, but covers them as part of the broader history
• An Introduction to MUD (1985) by Duncan Howard - PDF hosted on Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
• Bartle’s MUD Writings Archive - Collection of academic and popular articles
• Downloadable ftp.game.org Archive - Collection of MUD files and software submitted by internet users in the late 1980s
• Imaginary Realities Archive - Tharsis Gate [HTTP only] - Thought leadership about MUDs, published between 1998-2001
• Grim Wheel’s Imaginary Realities Archive - Additional resources and context about Imaginary Realities e-magazine
• MUD Institute - Academically inclined repository of preserved codebases and curated articles
• MUD Game Programming (2003) by Ron Penton - chm file available on Anna’s Archive
• The Sourcery - Older collection of MUD developer articles
• Orcs.biz [HTTP only] - Collection of text-based game and resource archives from the co-founders of muds.wikia.com (now muds.fandom.com)
• Titans of Text - Podcast interviewing creators and legends from the text-based game community, including Richard Bartle. No longer producing new episodes