This file is meant to give a quick tutorial on commands and systems you will want to know about to get started, for those unfamiliar with online RPGs as well as those simply unfamiliar with the specific Cold system.

Some people may be coming to Mirrors of the Wheel from other popular formats such as MUX and/or MUSH. Hopefully, this file will explain some of the basic differences in commands from MUX and MUSH to Cold. If you're used to using MOO, it's entirely possible you can get right into Cold.

Command in MUX/MUSH (Command in Cold) and Explanation:

news, help, +help (help/@help): All the usual informational tools in MUX and MUSH are combined into a single system in Cold. You can find information and help on theme, policy and other game-specific issues (news), local commands (+help) and core commands (help) all in the same place here. Just type 'help' or '@help' to start.

+bb commands (see 'help [mail]'): Again, a condensation of commands. The +bboards of MUX/MUSH are replaced by mailers. The same commands that function on personal @mail work for mailers as well.

+ commands (various): With a few obscure exceptions, if there's a + command in MUX or MUSH, it's probably here -- just with a @ instead of a +. For example, +finger in MUX/MUSH is @finger here.

+where, who/WHO (@who, who): @who is analogous to +where in one important regard -- it shows locations of players. who works the same way, listing players and their 'doing' messages.
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This set of files will teach you the basics of interacting with the IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) world, from roleplaying to chatting.

Communication

Commands covered here include posing and emoting, making OOC comments and paging. While these commands are common to many game platforms (MOO, MUX, MUSH, etc.), they are presented here for people new to online roleplaying.

Say: Let's say you want your character to say hello to everyone in the room. If you were to type 'say Hello!', the room would see: Joe says, "Hello!" (assuming your character's name is Joe...). A shortcut for 'say' is the ". So, instead of 'say Hello!' you could simply type '"Hello!'. The second quote is automatically added by the game when it displays your message.

Emote: Now, obviously it's a little hard to be very expressive in roleplay just by saying things all the time. That's where emoting comes in -- you can add movement, emotion, all sorts of things to your 'pose'. For example, say you want to smile when you say hello, just because you're a friendly person. To do this, type ':smiles. "Hello!"'. The room will see: Joe smiles. "Hello!". Note that this time, you do need to add the second ". Watch people's poses for examples of the creative ways to use emoting.

@emit: This is one of the more advanced commands for scene setting and posing. You may notice that after a while you get tired of the limitations put on you by say and emote, and want to really get adventurous and add things about the room to your pose. For example, say you were getting really dramatic and wanted to enter a room by throwing the door open. You could type '@emit The front door flies open, and Joe enters the room like a brewing thunderstorm.' The room would then see: The front door flies open, and Joe enters the room like a brewing thunderstorm. Note that what the room sees is exactly what's after the @emit. You can also abbreviate @emit with the ! symbol. If you do not include your name anywhere in the text emitted, the game will add your name at the end of your @emit.

OOC: There are times when you need to make comments out of character in order to ask a question of the room or to provide others with details of a scene. The ooc command is used for this. Say you wanted to ask what time of day it was in the scene. You would type: 'ooc What time is it, ICly?' and the room would see: OOC: Joe says, "What time is it, ICly?". The OOC command will also take emotes: 'ooc :ahems. "What time is it, ICly?"' would result in the room seeing: OOC: Joe ahems. "What time is it, ICly?". A word of warning -- overuse of the OOC command in the middle of RP is generally frowned upon for interrupting the flow of a scene, and it is recommended that you page someone privately or ask a question over a channel. These commands are covered later.

Paging: If you want to ask someone or a small group of people a private question, use the page command.

Channels

Channels are possibly the most common form of OOC communication on the game, and one of the most useful ways to meet people and get comfortable with your fellow players. After all, that's an important part of online gaming -- meeting people and making friends. The commands below will show you how to join and leave channels, talk on channels and list the channels you're on.

Talking: Everyone is on the [Public] channel by default, and we'll discuss here how to talk over the channel. The [Public] channel is aliased as 'pub', so should you wish to say hello over the channel, you can simply type 'pub Hello!', and everyone that has the channel on will see: [Public] Joe says, "Hello!" You can also emote over channel as well (see 'help [Communication]'). Typing 'pub :smiles. "Hello!"' will result in: [Public] Joe smiles. "Hello!"

Adding new channels: The @addcom command will allow you to join other channels that you will hear about or be told about from time to time. The syntax is '@addcom =' Much like [Public] is aliased as 'pub', you can define your own aliases for other channels you join. Say you wanted to join the [Caemlyn] channel. Typing '@addcom caem=Caemlyn' would add the channel and turn it on for you. Note that the channel name is not enclosed in brackets here.

Listing your channels: Occasionally, you may forget what you've aliased a channel as, or what channels you're on. Typing '@channels' will give you this information in a handy list.

Useful channel commands: If you want to leave a channel to avoid being spammed while RPing, or just for a little peace and quiet (they get pretty noisy sometimes), you can type ' off'. Likewise, ' on' will turn it back on. Should you want to know who's listening to a channel, ' who' will list all those players connected who are members of the channel, and display an asterisk (*) next to their name if they currently are on the channel.
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These files will show you how to read and send local mail, as well as give some basic instruction on the editor the system uses.

Reading

The first set of commands we'll go over here will pertain directly to reading your own personal mail, and then we'll extend them to cover reading mailers (analogous to +bboards on MUSH/MUX).

@nn: Short for Next New, this command will show you each new message you have, one by one. This means that you have to keep typing @nn until you're told there's no new mail.

@mail on: Typing '@mail on me' will give you a list of messages by number, and also list the sender and a short form of the subject.

@read <#>: Now that you have a list of message numbers, you can read each one individually (this includes previously read mail) by typing '@read on me'.

Now, at this point it is worth pointing out that the mail system is 'smart'. It will remember the last mailer (this includes yourself) that you read, and assumes all commands pertain to that mailer until you give it a new recipient with the 'on ' option for the above commands. So, say you had typed '@mail on me'. At that point, you could simply type '@read ' and the command would automatically assume you meant 'on me'. On to the mailers... the first thing you'll need to do is subscribe to those you want to read on a regular basis. Of course, first you have to find out what mailers exist.

@mail-lists: This command will list the mailers currently available. Next to the mailer name will be two characters, r and w, that describe whether you can read it, write to it, both or neither

@subscribe: Once you've seen what mailers are out there, you need to subscribe. All mailers begin with the asterisk (*) character, to indicate they're a general mail list. So, if you want to subscribe to the Caemlyn mailer, type '@subscribe *caemlyn'. Now, when you log on, you will be notified if there is new mail on that list.

From this point, the reading commands are the same as above. @mail on and @read <#> on will work for reading mailer messages as well.

Sending

Sending mail is pretty simple. To compose a message, either to a single player, a list of players or to a mailer, the command you want to use is @send.

@send ,,..., is the general format, where recipient can be a player or a mailer, either one. Make sure when you try to send to a mailer that you include the * at the beginning of the name, or it'll think you're sending to a player.

Next it'll ask you for a subject for the mail message. If you change your mind about sending, you can type '@abort' here and discard the entire thing. Once you've entered the subject, you'll get access to the editor. For information about how to use that, look at 'help [editor]'.

Editor

For the general commands and what they mean, we suggest looking at the following file: [editor]. When you are accessing the editor, typing 'help' alone will list the commands, and you can look at the available help for each one. They can be a little cryptic, so we'll discuss a few specifics here.

Adding text: There are two common commands: after (_) and insert (i). Typing 'after ' or '_ ' will insert your text after the current line, while typing 'insert ' or 'i ' will insert it at the current line.

Deleting text: Delete/erase is the command you want here. 'd -' will remove all the lines from line number 1 to line number 2. You can also delete a single line.

Other things: If you want to change something in an existing line without deleting the entire thing and starting over, use the 'sub/sed' command. 's///' will substitute for in the line number you specify.

Proofing and Rows: To look at what you've entered, type 'list'. If the thing you're editing is very long, you may see something at the end like (... five more rows), and you won't be able to see the end. To get around this problem, do the following: @set me:rows=100. This will enable you to list the entire contents of your mail message or whatever you're editing. It may get long, so you may need scrollback capability.
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One of the most important things you can do to make your character realistic is to set a good description. These files will run you through the process of how to do this.

Setting

There are a couple of ways that you can set your description. The easiest way is to use @describe. Entering '@describe me as (text)' will set your description fairly simply, and anyone looking at you will see what you've entered. Unfortunately, if you want an elaborate description, this isn't always the most useful command to use. So what else is there?

A good general purpose command is '@edit me'. While on the surface, it looks a little ambiguous, the command is actually pretty smart -- it knows that you want to @edit the description on yourself. Likewise, setting the description for a room you own is equally simple -- @edit here. But for now, we're talking about personal descriptions.

Entering '@edit me' will give you access to the editor program. If you're unfamiliar with it, look at 'help [editor]'. Note that descriptions are written in what's called CML (Cold Markup Language). For the purposes of this help file, we'll just discuss how to add carriage returns to your description to use multiple paragraphs. Whenever you want to add a carriage return, add a {p} to your text. This is a lot like using {br} in HTML.

Multidescing

The multidescer manages a set of descriptions that you can change and rearrange as necessary. Clothing, jewelry, facial expressions and anything else you can put in a description can be saved and recalled for later use. Multiple saved descriptions can be combined into one description, creating a longer one. Below are the commands for use with the multidescer:

@add-desc (desc_name). This will take your current description that you have set and saves it as .

@use-desc (desc_name_1) (desc_name_2) ... (desc_name_n). This will set your current description from the list you specify, adding them in order, with a carriage return between each one. You're only required to put one desc name in. Remember, also, to put a space between each description name in the command.

@list-desc. This will list all your currently saved descriptions.

@del-desc (desc_name). This will delete from your list of saved descriptions.

See the following example for step-by-step instructions:

This is an example on using the multidescription commands. For the sake of argument, let's say you're a new character without a description. First, you need to set a basic description. A word of warning: these commands will clear out any current description you have.

Type: @describe me [ input. Enter "." to finish or "@abort" abort.]}
A young girl with curly hair.
.
Description set.

Next, save this description with the name 'basic'.

@add-desc basic
Description added to list.

Now, let's create an outfit called 'blue_dress'. Important note: description names cannot have spaces in them.

@describe me
[Receiving input. Enter "." to finish or "@abort" abort.]
She wears a light blue cotton dress.
.
Description set.

@add-desc blue_dress
Description added to list.

Let's check to make sure the descriptions were saved with the @list-descs command.

@list-descs
-- List of Descriptions --
basic
blue_dress

Now let's set your current description to a combination of basic and blue_dress. This is done with the @use-desc command.

@use-desc basic blue_dress
Set current description.
look me
Lilu
A young girl with curly hair.
She wears a light blue cotton dress.
She is awake.

Descriptions can be deleted from the list with the @del-desc command. Remember that each description you set takes up some database space, so be reasonable in how many you keep online. You can always save some descs locally on your computer and add them when they're necessary.
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Here you'll find some commands useful for such things as setting your Doing message, finding out who's connected and where they are, and learning OOC info about other characters.

Globals

Globals are, simply put, just something for fun. These are commands like 'hug', 'tickle', 'snug' and so on, and are completely OOC. The fun of globals is that you can set the messages others see when you use one on them. So how do you do this?

If you type '@msg', you will see a list of mesages you can set on yourself. These include foof.actor, foof.recipient, and the same pair for hug, kiss, poke, snug and tickle. All these are global messages you can set. The messages are organized in the following way: the *.actor messages are what you see when you type 'hug (or tickle, kiss...) '. Likewise, the *.recipient messages are what the other player sees when you hug them. So, let's say you want others to see "Joe hugs you warmly and tightly." when you give them a hug. You would do the following to set that: @msg me:hug.recipient=[actor] hugs you warmly and tightly.

What's this about [actor] and [recipient] then? Well, the trick here is that when the command interpreter reads [actor] in a message, it will automatically substitute your name. And with [recipient], it will substitute the recipient's name. It's just a clever way of writing it is all.

Info

You may notice that when you type 'who' (see 'help [Connected]') to see what characters are currently connected, that some of them have a message called a 'doing' set. This is a message to pass on a quote, or some sort of brief information, and is really just for fun -- you don't have to have one set, but it's something of a tradition on online RPGs. So how do you set this?

The important command here is @set. If you simply type '@set', you'll get a long list of variables you can set on yourself. One of them is 'doing'. If you want to set your doing to something like 'I'm new, be gentle.' you can type '@set doing=I'm new, be gentle.' and then when someone types 'who', that message will be seen across from your name.

Other things you can set include your title, which in the case of non-staff is an IC title only, and is displayed next to your name on the login monitor. Additional information is set during the character generation process. Where is this displayed? We're glad you asked. A good deal of IC information about a character can be learned with the @finger command. If you type '@finger ' it will respond with a listing of some important information a player has set about themselves.

Connected

The various commands to check who's connected and where they're located are fairly common from game platform to game platform. As with many other things, Cold is most similar in this regard to MOO.

There are two main commands. The first is 'who'. This will give a list of players, in order of how long they've been connected, and list their @doing message -- a short quote that may convey some information or merely be for fun.

The other important command is '@who'. This will list players in order of how long they've been connected, and also list how long they've been idle, and their current location.

Note that if someone has been idle less than a minute, there won't be a time in the idle column.
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