For those of our nations fighting men and women who get deployed, finding a way to pass the time can be difficult. You can only log so much time working out, or any other physical activities made available to you wherever you may be stationed, before things start to become a drain on your mind. Solution? Gaming. Free text games.

Sure, many troops may like playing their console games down range, but there is the constant worry of something happening to their system causing it to break. The option to play Massive Multiplayer Online games exists, but perhaps there is not enough bandwidth to pipe your game through. Heck, maybe you bought a netbook because it’s cheap and lasts a while, leaving you lacking on the requirements to play many of those MMOs out there. Here is a really cheap (free) way to pass the time and still have some fun. Text based rpg games or MUDs (multi-user dungeons).

With the multitude of online text games available for your entertainment, there are always a variety of options available for what to play. I, personally, find that playing free text games keeps my mind occupied when it’s not busy defending the nation. It gives me a creative outlet to exercise parts of my mind that are otherwise unused while out in doing the military job. I can easily connect to an available internet source and play online text games to my hearts content, socializing, fighting other players, or just running around killing every denizen in the online text game world in which I choose to play. The possibilities are endless for those of us out here, and those of you who might be in some of the trickier places out there.

The benefits to just zoning out into a video game are quite evident: passage of time. Nothing really helps passing the time more than logging a few free hours fighting the forces of magic or perhaps building a Clan that worships a forbidden deity of a long-lost culture. You can easily burn through most of a deployment working out, doing your job, and playing some text adventure games.

Yet another benefit of playing these free online text games is the ability to maintain your social networks. Logging in to one of these online text games, even at some odd hours compared to our friends back home, gives you ample opportunity to converse, maybe about real life, or perhaps engaging in a roleplaying scenario within these text adventure games to help you forget about your hard situations (even if only for a little while). I find that just being able to talk to friends from my Iron Realms online text games helps me push through some of the tougher humps I encounter while deployed. Being away from families and friends can be hard, but being able to log in as my favorite characters and talk to those who have become friends through these free text games makes it so much less harsh for me after long months of living the deployed lifestyle.

The last big benefit I will hit on is a technical one. When I’m deployed, I see many of my brothers and sisters in arms using netbooks. It doesn’t really offer much for gaming (unless you’re willing to reach back and play games from long ago), and most of the time the only thing it’s good for is checking e-mail or playing solitaire. The netbook I use is FULL of lots of spreadsheets and documents about text based rpg games, including my mud client (ZMud for those who are curious). It’s got a long battery life (which is awesome considering how rarely you get time to really charge it back to full life) and decent hard drive space (300 gigabytes average for most netbooks on the market) for storing all your photos, videos, music and miscellaneous text based rpg information. The best part: they run ALL online text game clients I have ever seen hit the market, meaning you can use your favorite client and just log in, playing until your eyes bleed.

So, all in all, I’d say that online text games as a whole really do help me pass the time, as I know they help others who serve our Nation’s Military. The social aspects, the time aspects, and the fun aspects all help Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines pass the time day to day. Sure, we work hard, but we like to play hard, too. And, as an aside, I’d like to say a big thank you to all my Brothers and Sisters in Arms who I serve next to day in and day out while I’m deployed. You are the biggest bunch of crazies out there, and I would NEVER choose to serve next to anyone else. I love you guys.

By: Derek McCullough