A mud is not a mud unless you are in the world the mud represents. In other words, there must be a proxy for you, the user, extant in the simulation. The key factor in considering avatar representation in the space is that the method of representation is completely irrelevant, just as it was with maps. Again, however, there are many ways to accomplish this representation, and they all have differing advantages and disadvantages.

The general term for this proxy in virtual reality circles is avatar. However, muds tend to call them characters, which reflects the gaming heritage of the mud world. The term “character” is derived from the pen-and-paper role-playing games typified by the progenitor of the genre, Dungeons and Dragons. In a role-playing game system (henceforth RPG), a character is essentially your playing piece as well as your proxy in the game: it is a constellation of statistics and data that represent a human (or humanoid, at any rate) walking around in the game setting.

It is fruitful to make a distinction between those elements of this definition that are aspects of game mechanics—let’s call them tangible attributes—and those that are not. An RPG character is defined by a set of numbers on an arbitrary scale. These numbers represent attributes such as strength, dexterity, intelligence, and so on. The attributes listed are generally abstractions, generalizations that represent multiple types of characteristics about a character, but they have direct impact on the operation of specific game rules on that character. For example, the definition of the attribute of Intelligence in the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules reads,

Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known an intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside of those measured by the written word. Intelligence dictates the number of languages in which the character is able to converse. Moreover, intelligence is the forte of magic-users, for they must be perspicacious in order to correctly understand and memorize spells...[1]

We can think of this type of character definition as essentially establishing tangible facts about a character—tangible in that they affect the way in which the “laws of physics” of a game, the nature of the virtual reality, operates when interacting with a character.

However, there is a whole other dimension to a character, one that the laws of physics of the world generally ignore. These are intangible to the game’s rules, though they are often not intangible at all in the real world. Examples include physical appearance, temperament, talents, etc. RPGs have not ignored these attributes of a character: even in the first edition of AD&D, there was a “charisma” statistic, and later editions added a “comeliness” statistic as well. As RPGs developed, they began to attempt to simulate more of these aspects of a character using the same statistics systems that they represented other aspects of the game with. Generally speaking these were failures because they didn’t have direct applicability to the game physics. As an example, charisma and comeliness were most useful for very limited applications within the game rules, dealing with the recruitment and management of characters controlled by the “dungeon master” (the guy pulling the strings in the fictional setting—essentially, God to the gamer). As many gaming sessions had no use of this particular moderately obscure subsection of the rules, these statistics were useless and generally ignored. As a result, the player’s ability to communicate and to persuade acquired greater importance than the supposed appearance and eloquence of his character.