[robocaptain]

Thanks for posting this - some great memories and great links here. I'll jump on the bandwagon since I don't see any MUSHes mentioned here yet.

MUSH was MUD-based, but built around roleplaying (planned and improvised) and community-driven building. PennMUSH also had a great underlying program language that was (in retrospect, quite amazingly) flexible and powerful. Many MUSHes had very advanced combat, economy, and other systems. I developed a love of programming thanks to the PennMUSH codebase.

My personal favorite was (still is) TF2k5 (Transformers: 2005) - oddly enough, a MUSH based on the 1986 Transformers movie. :) Last I checked it was still going.

I bookmarked an old feature Kieron Gillen did on RPS about MUSHes (and TF2k5)[0] a long time ago - still a very dead-on description in my opinion.

[0] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/07/08/gaming-made-me-3...