Alter Aeon FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQ 20.1 - What is a vnum?

Every room, mob, object, and door on the game has what's called a 'vnum',
or 'virtual number'.  This number decides the basic stats of the thing
in question, and will help you keep track of what is what.

Each type of thing has its own vnum space - meaning that there can be a
room 462, door 462, mob 462, and object 462.  But there can only be one
room 462 and one door 462.

Mobs and objects are a little bit different, as any real mob or object
(that you can kill or wield for example) is only a -copy- of the vnum -
this is needed so that the separate mobs and objects can have different
stats.  As an example, imagine two guards of the same vnum:  they might
have different stats because one is wielding a sword and the other is
not, or perhaps one is about to die due to a battle while the other is
healthy.

It is important to note that changing a mob or object (with mset or oset)
usually -does not change the underlying vnum- that the mob or object came
from.  You must use oset or mset to update a mob, then use the 'mset mob
save' or 'oset object save' commands to update the underlying vnum.

After you have saved the new stats back to the vnum, any future copies of
that vnum that you create will have the updated stats.  You can make sure
that the stats saved by either 1) waiting for your area to repop, or 2)
use the oload/mload commands to create a new copy of the mob or object.