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 ?

h

1. verb⁰ The abbreviation for the intransitive 'help' command. It means "I want the game to fill my screen with information that might be of use to a newbie" (see c (1)).

2. verb¹ The abbreviation for the transitive 'help' command. "I want to assist this persona in doing something that requires the effort of two or more personae".

hack

1. verb¹ To attack a player or mobile. "She hacked my mage a month ago!"

2. verb¹ To get the better of a player or mobile in combat, usually implying that the fight was one-sided. "I was hacked to bits by the rats!"

3. verb⁰¹ To be in combat (with something). "Shut up, I'm hacking dwarfs". See die (2).

4. verb¹ The traditional computing meaning: to produce something that works but which you'd have done better given more time. Optimised for write-time rather than run-time.

5. verb¹ Another traditional computing meaning: to explore and experiment with a system in a playful manner.

6. verb¹ The traditional news media interpretation of (5): to break computer security with a view to starting World War III.

7. noun The victim, or intended victim, of an attack.

Note that all the above verbs can be made into nouns, but it's more likely to happen with (1) "She had a hack at my mage" and (4) "This routine is a complete hack". In all cases, a hacker is one who hacks.

hack and slash

adjective A variant of hack and slay. Sometimes written as hack and /.

hack and slay

1. adjective Descriptive of a period of frenetic activity where everyone is being wild and murderous. The exact opposite of slack and hay. When the game turns into a hack and slay session it's time to set aside your main persona, bring on a dispensable one, and then to cause as much mayhem as possible in the full knowledge that you'll be dead dead within ten minutes. During a period of hack and slay, it is common to say/shout "hack and slay!" a lot of the time; apart from conveying the right ambiance, it also warns people just arriving that their personae may be somewhat at risk... See Mist.

2. verb⁰ To take part in a hack and slay session. Q: "What happened to your mage?!" A: "I got into hacking and slaying a little too deep last night...".

3. verb⁰ Interspacing the playing of MUD with serious hacking work.

4. verb⁰ Slicing your way through hordes of oncoming mobiles. "If you want to kill dwarfs, get hold of the SS - it's great for hacking and slaying".

hack attack

1. noun The sudden impulse to go on a rampage of wanton destruction.

2. noun A sustained period of play, usually in order to achieve some goal eg. making wiz. It derives from the mainstream computing meaning. See session, wiz run.

hack into

verb¹ To break system security. "I never wrote that! Someone must have hacked into my account!". See hack (6).

hack mode

noun A state of intense concentration entered into by killers when they are lining up to jump someone or are actually in the process of hacking them. You could set fire to a player in hack mode and they wouldn't notice.

HAHAHA

interjection Maniacal laughter. The actual number of repeated HAs is indeterminate, but it is always at least three and usually around six or seven. killers will sometimes shout this when they have won a fight, or, more rarely, when they are on the point of winning one. The BL equivalent is MUAHAHAHA. Not to be confused with HEHEHE. See die (2).

hallowed

noun The 'hallowed chamber' room, where people med. See ancient.

hang

verb⁰ When your terminal sits around doing nothing it is hanging (or hung). This can be caused by comms problems (you're using the wrong terminal settings), game problems (the interpreter just crashed and the FE hasn't realised it yet), too many players (so your commands take ages to process) or by executing a single command that takes a long time to process (eg. issuing 'empty coracle' when it has 20 items in it will take about the same time to interpret as 20 individual 'drop' commands would).

hard stuff

noun Synonym of hard T. Nothing to do with alcohol!

hard T

noun Treasure which is difficult or risky to come by. The rewards may be high, but they're not necessarily worth it. "I like Valetant, but he's hard T really".

hassle

verb¹ To make life difficult for someone. This can range from talking to them when they don't want to be talked to, through incessantly pestering them, to stealing things from them, hitting them and to attacking them. Normally, hassling is petty, but it can be quite vindictive. Wizzes will sometimes hassle mortals as part of a test, but more often than not it's inadvertent - the wiz is simply immune to hints that the mortal doesn't actually want to explore their latest blank area right now or whatever. It's possible that someone can be hassled by a group of players but not by a single individual: if there's one mortal and five wizzes, each wiz may be well below the bounds of hassling but from the mortal's point of view "the wizzes are hassling me!" If someone systematically hassles a particular player, that becomes bullying. See also tweak.

Have fun!

imperative The traditional way of signing off to someone who will continue playing after you quit.

HCDS

noun Abbreivated form of Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: the theory that all players in a MUA can be categorised into one of four basic types. Consider the following graph:

Players who get more fun out of the fact they're in a world, rather than the fact it's shared, are T-hunters if they also prefer to experience rather than to learn, and are explorers if they prefer to learn rather than experience. Players who prefer the fact that the world is shared over the fact that it's a world are killers if they like experiencing the world with others, and socialisers if they prefer to learn from others (ie. gossip!). The horizontal axis is sometimes labelled PEOPLE/GAME, and the vertical ACTIVE/PASSIVE. socialisers are 'hearts', killers are 'clubs', T-hunters are 'diamonds' and explorers are 'spades', hence the theory's name.

Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades

noun The almost-never-used full version of HCDS.

hedgie

noun A pet form for the 'hedgehog' mobile. Unusually, the ie ending is preferred to the more common Y ending. The other common abbreviation used is hh.

HEHEHE

interjection Laughter, as written in conversation. It can mean a number of things, from "what I just said wasn't serious" to "what you just said was amusing". If someone told you that a particular player you knew had just scored 60 points, you might say "oh, the same as his IQ, hehehe"; this is an insult, but the HEHEHE flags the fact that you meant it only in fun and don't /really/ think his IQ is 60... Sometimes, players will use 'hehe' for variety, or mistype as 'eheheh'. You may occasionally see the equivalent bulletin-board flags of '<g>' (for 'grin') and ':-)' (a smiling face), but these have fallen out of fashion in the main. Compare HAHAHA.

help

1. verb⁰¹ The 'help' command. See h.

2. interjection As in the phrase "help at rapids"; it that means the speaker is in combat and requires back-up - now!

hh

noun The 'hedgehog'. To do the hh is to perform the task associated with it. Sometimes fully capitalised, for no good reason! See hedgie.

high level

1. adjective In absolute terms, descriptive of a persona which is well on the way to becoming a wiz. Mages are all high level, warlocks probably are, necros possibly are, and sorcs probably aren't.

2. adjective In relative terms, closer to wiz than the rest of the group under discussion. In a reset full of novices, a sorc is high level. In this context, the term is often used in comparative or superlative form, ie. higher/highest level. Sometimes you even see things like "If there are two mages, I always attack the one that's highest level".

3. adjective In programming terms, far from the machine. C (2) is (supposed to be) a high-level language.

For all the above, the term may be either hyphenated or unhyphenated - it's usually hyphenated only when directly before a noun or adjective. See level, and the equivalent entries under low level.

highlife

noun personae well advanced along the road to wiz; usually mages, or perhaps warlocks who have recently been mages and are likely to regain their status soon. Deriving as an alternative to the term lowlife, highlife was originally a collective noun, used either in the singular (to refer to the group as a unit, eg. "When the killers come in, the highlife quits") or in the plural (to refer to members of the group, eg. "Today's highlife are wimps"). A growing number of people would also accept "She may only be a sorc at the moment, but she's a highlife really"; in this form, the plural is normally highlifes (rarely highlives), eg. "All three of my personae are highlifes". Any of these variations may be hyphenated, but true addicts don't normally bother. Wiz mortals are usually excluded from considerations of high/lowlife. See lowlife.

hog

1. verb⁰ To hold most of the useful objects, eg. keys, FSs, rings, picks, wafers, parachutes, boats... It's easier to hog in MUD1, and can be a problem there; in MUD2, there is usually a replacement around (albeit in some out-of-the-way location). See genie, tie up.

2. verb¹ To hold most of a particular class of useful objects. "You're hogging the keys!"

3. noun Someone who consistently hogs.

honeypot

noun A room which draws personae to it very frequently, thereby acting as a place where they can encounter their fellows accidentally. honeypots are usually designed with this purpose in mind; examples in MUD2 are the Tearoom and the swamp (1).

hoover

verb¹ Picking up large numbers of low-value items. the term is general, and implies no particular strategy: it can be used to refer to both glooping and scooping up (2).

host

noun The computer or network upon which a MUA runs. Players typically use communications software of some description to link to the host, which does the majority of processing (although some FE activities may take place at the player's end). When MUD2 was first launched, BT placed a series of advertisements using the slogan "the host in the machine", trying to convey the impression that: (a) the game was welcoming and friendly; (b) a lot of people would be playing it; (c) an expensive ad agency had been involved to produce such a boldly weak and inappropriate pun (on "The Ghost in the Machine", a quotation from chapter 1 of "The Concept of Mind" by Gilbert Ryle). Sadly, to computer-literate (but literature-illiterate) modem owners, this proved merely confusing ("But the host _is_ the machine, surely?"). See carrier loss, comms.

hot potato

noun A heavy object passed between combatants in MUD1 so as to weigh them down a lot. Conventional wisdom has it that this will make it harder for them to hit you. The tactic is less effective in MUD2, where even the mobiles will drop such items, and where the act of giving things exposes you to attack.

hot tub

noun The 'barrel' object in BL.

hunchy

noun Pet name for the 'hunchback' mobile. See y.

hut

noun The room where people traditionally meet up after one of them has done the icons. It is close to the swamp, but rarely visited except on purpose. Killers will sometimes turn up there uninvited and attempt to steal the icons; this is not quite as much fun as killing, but it nevertheless causes enough suffering for killers to derive fun from it.