A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ?

f

1. preposition The abbreviation for 'from', but used as the universal preposition by true addicts because it's shorter than wi. See g, x (3).

2. verb⁰¹ The abbreviation for the 'flee' command. Classic usage: 'f o' ('flee out').

fangling

noun Any excessively modern additions; that which is newfangled. Q: "What do you think of the new parser?" A: "It's an improvement, but I won't be using any of the fangling".

FE

noun Short for 'front-end'; the interface between a player and the game. There is one FE for each player, so sometimes people will refer to eg. "my FE". The FE takes input from the player, and echoes it back. A component of the FE, the parser, then attempts to convert this into a meaningful command. This is passed to the binder, which is part of the interpreter. The binder assigns objects to nouns, creating a set of commands corresponding to the (hopefully) intended meaning of the parsed command. These new commands are then executed by the main part of the interpreter, and output is generated. This is passed back to the appropriate FEs, which present it to their players. See also vocabulary, front-end.

Note: this is how MUD2's FE system works. It is possible to split the parser from the pre-processor and post-processor, these latter two running on some computer other than the main host. In this case, the term 'front-end' is sometimes applied to the non-parser program, especially if it is graphical; a more proper term, however, is client.

feature

1. noun A MUD object which is referred to in a room description, eg. part of the furniture. It cannot be picked up, but may have other uses. See arch (2).

2. noun An interesting aspect of the game's programming, eg. "The tour feature is quite useful for guests". This is the normal sense of the word in computer-literate circles.

3. noun A non-irritating bug awaiting to be fixed, eg. "It's a feature of the invis spell that you can only cast it on players and mobiles". This derives from sarcastic usage of feature (2).

fee

noun In BL, a 10% deduction in points for people granted restores. A persona on 50K will be restored to 45K even if they could prove they were on 50K at the time of their demise (although many do exaggerate, accidentally or otherwise...). Also known as a tax or restoration fee.

female

noun A persona in the game which is of gender female. Some humanoid mobiles are also females. In general, gender in the game is not constant, and except for a few intransigent mobiles (eg. the man, the maiden, the dwarf king and queen) gender can be toggled readily. There are no differences between the sexes in the game except for a skewing of the probability distribution for attributes when a persona is created: male personae will tend to have a strength 10 greater than if they were female, and female personae will on average have a dexterity and stamina each 5 higher than if they were male. Otherwise, chosen gender only affects output and a few anti-porn commands. If a player claims to be a female, the assumption is that he or she is a male masquerading as a female. An informal convention appears to have emerged whereby personae that are socialisers are of gender female, whereas killer personae are usually male. See real female, male.

fighter

noun A persona which is unable to use magic. This will be because either it has not yet touched the touchstone, or it has done so but has subsequently used up all its magic. fighters are not a separate class to musers; musers can fight just as well as fighters, and have the ability to cast spells, too. Indeed, killers are hardly ever fighters because it is far easier to off someone if you can use magic on them; those killers who do occasionally use fighters do so only as a challenge. The only real plus that fighters have is that they can fully utilise the LS, whereas musers can't; even this isn't so great against an invis mage raining spells to cripple you, lower your dex and sta, dumb you so you can't call for help, and force you to pick up 50kg of assorted junk. Once fighters have maximum stats, which happens around super level, they're equivalent to one another in fights with other fighters. Well-armed champs can off unarmed Sirs/Ladies as easily as they could an unarmed champ. See stream (2).

F-key

noun Short for 'function key'. Some players use comms packages which allow them to define text which is transmitted when such a key is struck. For example, the route from the jetty to the vicious rocks may be on an F-key so the player doesn't have to rely on maps or memory. killers are notorious users of F-keys: they usually set them up with some non-name as the commands' object (5), then when they have selected their victim they will syn them with this target name. Consequently, their battery of fight-oriented F-keys will be victim- specific! Sometimes, F-keys are called 'hot keys', but the latter term does not properly apply to fully reprogrammable keys. See macro mode.

fob

verb¹ An attempt to stop some lowlife from hassling you by sending them on a wild goose chase; usually, this will result in unpleasant things happening to them. P1: "Can I have another glow please? I quit by accident!" P2: "You can get a glow yourself by holding the uranium and sleeping at the shrine". See wind-up, cliffy, stitch up, scam.

FOD

verb¹ Abbreviation for 'finger of death'; the expanded form is never used except to explain what the letters 'FOD' stand for... The most powerful spell in MUD, used mainly by wizzes to dispose of people who are annoying them beyond endurance. It derives from the 5th level anti-clerical 'finger of death' spell in the original 'Dungeons & Dragons' rules, which became a 7th level druidical spell in 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' and is now a 7th level wizard spell in 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition'. Often spelled in lower case, but in threats the upper case version probably strikes more dread into the heart of a potential victim. FOD is consummately real-world extensible, applicable to any act of deliberate destruction from killing queued printer jobs to throwing a stone through a window. See mortal FOD.

FOD war

noun What arises when wizzes start FODding one another. Sometimes this is done in jest, sometimes it's in anger, although in MUD2 it's usually the former as wizzes have the capacity to make themselves unFODdable by other (non-arch) wizzes, which rather puts the mockers on anything likely to be interestingly gruesome.

four-eyed

verb⁰ When highlife enter the game, sometimes a message is sent to all players saying "For your information: <highlife> is worth <number> points if killed". As this is broadcast to everyone else in the game, it is therefore useless for the named persona to try and sneak around, eg. by going invis. Friends may therefore tell the victim that they've been four-eyed, meaning FYIed, ie. 'for your informationed'.

frazzle

verb⁰ Synonym of toast, usually used in the past tense. See also fry.

frig up

verb¹ To increase the points and stats of a persona by a large amount in one fell swoop. This happens mainly in MUD1, where mortal wizzes often die by accident, and any crash means people lose what they've gained since they last issued a 'save' command. frigging up does happen in MUD2, but less frequently; an unadvertised change to the game which makes something previously safe cause a points loss might result in the first affected persona being frigged back up to their previous total. See restore, play up, kiss up, wizmort.

front-end

noun The long way of saying FE.

fry

verb⁰ Synonym of toast, usually used in the past tense. See also frazzle.

FS

noun The abbreviation for 'firestone'. See BS.

fun

noun The supreme emotional state which MUD players experience. Not the same as in English: fun in MUD can be quite the opposite at times! It is, however, intense, addictive and mind-rattlingly enjoyable. See also Have fun!.

function

noun The specification of how to interpret a command in MUDDLE. MUDDLE's functions are the equivalent of MUDDL's actions, but are only directly usable by players if they can be referenced via the vocabulary. Like MUDDL's, MUDDLE's commands are processed using a matching mechanism, but rather than being tabular in nature with arbitrary actions acting as guards, the class hierarchy is used. Incoming commands are compared against defined functions, taking the most specific match first (ie. lowest in the hierarchy), left-to-right along the parameters. Thus, 'hit(jack, axe0)' would match '{ hit player weapon }' before '{ hit object axe }'. MUDDLE is synchronous, which means its operators can be much lower level than in MUDDL without tripping over the signal/wait mechanism.

For comparison with MUDDL, here is the relatively straightforward definition of the function that implements the 'fix brand in sundial' command:

	{ drop gnomon sundial }:
	holdinga(second, object) 'o' ->>
		!? ("There's no room for " +
		    the%(first) + ", " + the%(second) +
		    " is holding " + a%(o) +
		    ", birdbrain.*N"),
	aflame(first) ->>
		!? (theu%(first) +
		    " is aflame! Put it out, you jerk,*
		    * you'll burn yourself!*N"),
		$(      checknkeeping(first)
			drop%(first, second)
			!! (theu%(first) +
			    " seems to be just the*
			    * right length for you to*
			    * be able to tell the time*
			    * from " +
			    the%(second) + ".*N")
		$) 

This isn't too hard to follow if you know programming in general, but points to note are: 'first' means whatever is bound to 'gnomon'; 'second' means whatever is bound to 'sundial'; the 'o' construct is an assignment to a local variable (o, in this case); '!?' means "print this as an error message"; 'the%' and 'a%' are functions defined elsewhere to return the definite/indefinite object strings of their parameters; 'checknkeeping' is a function which will abort if its parameter is being kept by the persona issuing the command; 'drop%' is the general transfer function from persona to container.

Note that unlike the MUDDL version of this example, in the MUDDLE one the brand can be retrieved from the sundial later. See action.

fungus

noun The class (1) name in BL for the 'toadstool' object. Since fungus is shorter, this is the form by which it is commonly known. See shroom.

FYIed

present participle A less imaginative (but shorter to type) version of four-eyed.