The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermDigital term

MUSH

A text-based online world, descended from MUDs, focused on social play, collaborative storytelling and user-built content rather than combat. MUSHes hosted long-running roleplaying communities set in both original worlds and licensed fictions.

A text-based online world, descended from MUDs, focused on social play, collaborative storytelling and user-built content rather than combat. MUSHes hosted long-running roleplaying communities set in both original worlds and licensed fictions.

Origin

TinyMUSH grew from enhancements to TinyMUD (1989), whose social, build-your-own design it inherited.

Quick answers

What does "MUSH" mean?
A text-based online world, descended from MUDs, focused on social play, collaborative storytelling and user-built content rather than combat. MUSHes hosted long-running roleplaying communities set in both original worlds and licensed fictions.
Where does the term "MUSH" come from?
TinyMUSH grew from enhancements to TinyMUD (1989), whose social, build-your-own design it inherited.

Nearby in the archive

MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)

Digital genre1978

A text adventure that many people could inhabit at once: typed commands, prose rooms, strangers typing back. The MUD was the first online world and the direct ancestor of every MMORPG.

Painting: a 1978 university computer room at night, a single glowing text terminal.

MUD1

MUD1978–1999

Two Essex students turned the solitary text adventure into a shared world: MUD, where strangers met, fought and cooperated in real time on the way to Wizard rank, the seed of every online RPG since.

BBS Door Games

Phenomenon1984–1996

Before the web, hobbyists ran dial-up bulletin boards from spare bedrooms, and their users logged in each night to spend a ration of turns slaying dragons, trading across galaxies and flirting at the inn.

MMORPGs

Digital genre1991

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game: a graphical world shared by thousands at once, where a guild, a raid schedule and a virtual economy can matter as much as the story.

Play-by-Mail Games

Tabletop genre1963

Strategy by envelope: write your orders on a turn sheet, mail them off, and wait two weeks for a computer printout to tell you whether your fleet survived and which of thirty strangers betrayed you.