What are talkers?

A talker is a telnet based chat site. It's similar to a MUD in that it's a program, usually running on a UNIX based server, where each user has a permanent nickname or alias. However, there's usually no game aspect to a talker. Some talkers do have one, but it's secondary to the social part of the talker. Frogger's Telnet NOW! campaign home page is a good starter point for those of you completely confused already. :-)

Talkers are highly addictive and may cost you your job, your degree, your friends, and/or your life. Additionally they may result in excessive telephone bills both from paying online charges (if necessary) and from phoning people who live several thousand miles from you for hours on end!

To get to a talker you need an Internet connection and a telnet client. I've put together a page on how to connect using various platforms.

There are two main types of talkers, NUTS and EW-Too. NUTS uses the speech-as-default style of commands (it's speech unless preceded by a special character, usually the fullstop [.] with some other punctuation reserved as commands too). EW-Too is the opposite. Unless prefixed with a special character, it assumes you're typing in a command. EW-Too is the base for the similar code bases SensiSummink and PlayGround. The talkers AGMers use are NUTS-style.

Klingon has put together a large talker list which is sorted by code base, including originally-coded talkers. NUTS also has a home page written by its creator, Neil Robertson.

Listed in decreasing order of frequency.

Castle of Lost Dreams (COLD)
koksu.tcm.hut.fi 5678. Also aliased to cold.agm.net 5678. The main AGM talker, rather buggy though :-(

Prisoner
linux2.cms.shu.ac.uk 5678. Run by NumberSix with help from me, this is a hacked-NUTS 2.3 talker often used when COLD is down. Also aliased to prisoner.agm.net 5678.

Ancient Realms

hinet.palni.edu 5150.

Addicted
mudhole.spodnet.uk.com 4444.