You have probably already found a game that you’d like to play on if you’re even reading this, so I’ll keep this short. There's no brief summary of the below on the grounds that if you want to read it, you want the detail. See the links page for game-lists, search engines, clients and further resources.
What the heck are these things?
I'm not going to attempt the technical side of this, so apologies to those of you who don't want the layman's version. You can try A Beginner's Guide to MUSH for those details, bearing in mind that it's for MUSHes and not other M*s, although the general idea is the same (see below). By now, everybody knows that it's possible to talk to people from around the world over the internet by typing out what you want to say. These games take this one step further so that people from around the world together type out a story—well, it's more of a vast soap opera. The word is Interactive. Ever played those old text based games? The ones where you typed in brief commands and had written descriptions of where you had gone, what you had looked at or the result of your actions come up on your screen: North - 'You go north.' West - 'You go west. There is a tree here.', Look Tree - 'It is an oak tree.', etc. Imagine them, but with real people playing the various characters you meet, no purpose to the game except the one you give yourself and no Game Over (not to mention better descriptions than the above examples). To join, you create a character that's entirely yours and then you see the world through their eyes. To enjoy, you find another person and start typing....
Find a theme that interests you
Most M*s are themed after some famous film or book, e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, Pern. If you’re familiar with a world and want to play there, that’s great! If not, then visit the homepages of various games and see if the theme strikes you. Most games do not expect you to be an expert on the theme and have help available for those people who have never come across it before. For a nice place to start searching, try The Mud Connector which has a search engine plus many more details and explanations.
Help! There are fifty different PernM*s to choose from!
Some themes are inevitably more popular than others with several different people producing their own M*, so you’ll still want to choose between the games on that theme. You can either do this by simply joining the first one you come across (which often works perfectly well), or if you’re a little more cautious, you can look around the webpage and try to get a feel for the game before you connect. See if you can find logs to read or character pages that let you get an idea of the general tone.
Technically most M*s based on the same theme are going to be pretty much the same, but there are differences to watch out for, usually in what they consider to be canon. They vary in what changes they make from the books/film/whatever in interests of making the world more accessible as a M*. Another thing to look out for is how newbie-friendly they are. If you’ve no experience, then there are a few games which might not be the best ones to start with. All games have some sort of help-system obviously, but some games (usually among the smaller ones) are more oriented towards experienced players. This doesn’t make them any less of a game, just try them after you’ve got the hang of things.
Finally, I’d recommend that, whatever game you choose, you log on as a guest first (you should be given this option when you first connect). This gives you a chance to try out the commands, read some helpfiles and look around the game before you go to all the trouble of thinking up a character. If you decide that it’s not for you, you can try another game. And another, etc.
To Mush or to Moo?
OK, there are predominantly MUSHes and MOOs out there to choose from, with a few other types thrown in. What’s the difference? Well, I only play on MOOs myself, so I’m not entirely sure. I’ve heard that MUSHes are more complicated code-wise, i.e. there are more commands to figure out and a greater possibility of breaking things. At least that’s what it means to me in my technophobic mind. Of course, I've also heard people swear blind that MUSH code is easier than MOO code. I suspect that, on the whole, it makes little difference and I’d worry about the other differences listed above first. If you want another person's opinion on this, you can visit this page, MU* Explanation, or look through some of the general resources on the links page.
