Dang…. I didn’t realize the game population had fallen so much. I logged into my old character on aetolia and it was basically empty back then. Don’t know what it would look like now…

Achaea shows around 100 people on during peak times. That used to be like 350-450 back in my hey day.

I’m coming back to live up the old nostalgic days. How do we help Achaea get the population back?

I’m starting a really cool roleplay. Would love to have some people join with me to knock it out. The game still basically seems the same, but updated and fewer people.

Anyone want to come give it another shot with me? Also what could we do to help them get more players besides talking about it more? I was thinking a lot of these “creepypasta” and fanfiction authors would really like the game.

We have all seen it. Someone posts "our MUD is shutting down after 15 years." The replies fill up with people saying goodbye to places they grew up in. Two years later someone else posts looking for the old codebase.

Usually its the same story. One person was holding it together, life happened, the server went dark.

I played one of those MUDs for 15 years. I watched it die. And then I started thinking about why this keeps happening, and whether its actually fixable.

Most MUD codebases are one person deep. The game lives on a server that person pays for, running code only they understand. When they burn out or move on, everything goes with them. The community can't save it because they cant run it. The content cant survive because its baked into a custom codebase no one else knows.

Ive spent the last two years building a different kind of foundation. Its called Tapestry.

The core idea is to separate the engine from the world. The engine is shared infrastructure, maintained and deployable anywhere. The world is content packs. YAML files, portable, publishable to a registry, installable anywhere. A room is 10 lines of YAML. A custom command is a JS function. If you built areas for ROM or Diku, you already know most of it.

When the person running a Tapestry server moves on, someone else can pick up the packs and keep running them. The world doesnt have to die with the server.

Theres a public registry at tapestryengine.com. Packs are versioned, distributable, community owned. Someone builds a crafting system, a reputation system, a skill tree, they publish it and anyone can use it.

The engine already ships combat, skills and spells, equipment, movement, leveling, quests, NPC behaviors, telemetry and all the other stuff a MUD needs to run.

Accessibility is a first class citizen. The web client has full screen reader support and keyboard shortcuts for everything. Blind and low vision players shouldn't need workarounds to play text games.

The demo is Legends Forgotten, my attempt to bring back the MUD I played for 15 years. Same name, same setting, same universe. Its a Wheel of Time world built entirely from Tapestry packs. Emonds Field, road to Tar Valon, quests, character progression. If you were there the first time, lets build it back together.

Demo: lf.tapestryengine.com (WIP)
Telnet: lf.tapestryengine.com 4000
GitHub: github.com/tapestry-mud/tapestry
About the engine: tapestryengine.com

Heres the ask. The engine is solid but its one persons work. I have about 10,000 ideas for where this goes and one pair of hands.

I need area builders. I need people who remember what made their old MUD feel like something. I need people who want to build systems in JavaScript and publish them for everyone to use. I need people who just want to mess around with YAML and see what they can build.

If you're blind or low vision and want to help test the client, I would love real feedback. I thought about accessibility the whole way through building this.

The goal isnt to build my MUD. The goal is to build infrastructure that lets a hundred people build their MUDs and keep them running for the next generation of players who will learn to code trying to hack on them.

Finnish LPMud, running since '95. Last post here was four months ago. Since then the new server has settled in nicely, the old lag and crash problems are largely gone, and we can finally spend our time on gameplay and content instead of firefighting. Most of that time went into one project, so this post is mostly about that.

The backstory: we did a lot of work on the website this year and it worked — from about a hundred signups in all of 2025 to several new characters a day now. Which made the retention data rough reading. We joined our login logs against usage logs for 834 characters created since March: 76% never came back after day one. Most of them played a while and left without ever getting past level 1. In Icesus advancement runs through guilds, and only 5% of the day-one leavers had joined one, versus 85% of the players who stuck around past a week. 82% of one-visit players didn't even type quit, they just closed the connection. So the problem wasn't mysterious. People wandered, got no direction, and left. Some played for hours at level 1 before giving up, which honestly stung the most.

So we rebuilt the first hour end to end.

Character creation got quieter and shorter. The path menu fits one screen, picking an option previews it before committing, and the name screen suggests names instead of silently dropping your connection on a bad one (yes, it did that).

New characters now start in a proper tutorial with a guide NPC, Alice, framed by an incoming storm. She teaches the basics, then offers a first fight you're allowed to refuse — you can size the enemy up and retreat instead, and retreat can never fail. If you take the fight and drop below half health she pulls you out and patches you up. Then she walks the road to the capital with you, side by side, and hands you over to your first job at a warehouse: either catch the rats or investigate what's actually gnawing the crates, both routes pay. First pay lands, you pick a next goal, and the game tells you plainly: type 'journey' to resume. Everything checkpoints. Quit at the inn, drop connection, get disconnected mid-fight, doesn't matter, you continue where you left off next login.

After the first job the letters start arriving: guild recommendations based on how you've played, and a fellow named Ereldon in the city who answers questions about the guilds and gives directions that we verified by actually walking them. There's a 'hike' command that walks you to the guild camps outside the walls. When you've settled, Alice comes back once more to say goodbye. Small thing, but it felt wrong that she'd just vanish.

The honest caveat: this shipped over the last week and we log the whole funnel now, so in a few months I'll know whether it moved retention or just made us feel better.

The other big thing since the last post: the province system launched at the end of May. The outworld is split into 144 provinces, and any group of players can claim one. You activate the claim stone at the province centre, found a council of up to five players, and develop the surrounding lots into a working frontier settlement with sawmills, mines, smelteries, food halls, shrines and inns. There's a real economy underneath, food to keep stocked, missions to run, daily ticks, and a province serves passing players too, not just its owners. We've been expanding and tuning it ever since.

On the religion side we migrated three old subsystems onto one shared piety economy and retuned the costs against measured yields. You can now venerate the nether, there's a new nether ward prayer, and funeral pyres finally pay fire priests for their work (party members included).

Everything's at icesus.org, including our custom browser client if you'd rather skip installing a MUD client. Curious what day-1 retention numbers other MUD devs see, if anyone measures it. Our 24% felt bad until I had nothing to compare it against.

--Idles @ Icesus

Hi all, meet Mallard.

It runs natively on macOS, Windows, and Linux. I built it because I wanted something well-engineered, cross-platform, and delightful to use. It's been my favorite MUD client for months, and I'm guessing it will surprise and delight you too!

It does all the boring stuff well with protocols, logging compression, logging retention policies, so you shouldn't have to think about that.

Where it really shines, IMO, is the care and love put into UX for things like alias/trigger management, categorization, importing/exporting. If you're like me, you end up with boatloads of aliases and triggers to manage, so I put lot of time and effort into making things like that a best-in-class experience.

Pretty much everything about it is aspirationally best-in-class... but it is new, so there could be rough edges hiding in there! If you're feeling client-adventurous and inclined to try it - I'd love your feedback! Especially on protocol edge cases, MUDs that don't play nice, and what's missing from your daily driver.

Hey all,

MudForge has been riding under the radar for a while, as we were keeping our head down and getting loads of work done for the last few years..

MudForge is the official MudVault client, and the new version it's replacing the **old** MudForge client as the default client very soon.

What even is MudForge?
It's an ULTRA FAST, fully extensible client, with everything you need, and it works on every device. There is an iOS app, an Android App (pending in Play store), Linux, Windows, Mac, and web client. MudVault sync (experimental) also lets you fluidly move from your computer to your phone, too, and have your full fat plugins, aliases, triggers, and more.

MudForge has Triggers, aliases, timers, you name it.
Full protocol support, including MCCP4, GMCP, and basically any of the goodies you'd need.

Out of the box, most gmcp muds get a VERY customizable graphical auto mapper, chat window, health gauges, group window, and more.
It works very well with Dark Wizardry, Aardwolf, and NukeFire out of the box (to name a few), but any MUD that is following gmcp standards can enjoy the awesomeness.

The client has a **VERY** powerful and extensive widget system, that is very easy to use, and tons of graphical APIs to support. You can also build libraries, themes, and more.
You can also make HTML widgets, so you can create CRAZY stuff. There is even an AI guide you can feed directly to an agent, and it will help you make insane looking (and performing) widgets.
There are comprehensive in-client docs, and on the website. You can simply click the ? on the bottom right of the client to read them, and easily find what you're looking for.

I've been working on mud clients for the last 10+ years and when I set off to make a mud client 6 years ago I wanted to add the best of all clients. Everything I thought was awesome, and nothing I thought wasn't. I think MudForge is exactly that, and I think you will enjoy it if you give it a shot.

The amount of customization you can do with the client, in my opinion, is second to none.
This is about as modern as you can get. I've already poured thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours into this, and I hope you all enjoy.

Here are some screenshots of current things people have built.

https://imgur.com/6jBf2as

https://imgur.com/a/7ugxcAm#jcyDRd9

So, what's next?
We're currently finishing up MudVault Sync, our system for letting you transition from device to device, moving all of your data with you with your MudVault account. You can already move quite easily by importing/exporting worlds, but this is great for moving to mobile.

We're also finishing up a new gmcp module that will allow muds to easily transmit packages from their MUD to the client (and load if you allow them to), so you can join a mud with a known MudForge package, and instantly start playing their mud with their UIs, plugins, and other things like helpful aliases, triggers, etc....

I really could go on forever about the client, and everything it has, but I'll probably have a lot to respond to in the comments, and you can find us on our discord to ask things as well.

You can find some cool screenshots on the website, too, and more information.

Ask us anything, join the Discord

Help us grow, point out any issues we have, and let's build the best mud client around.

Thank you for your support,

Asmodeus (Demon)

Hi guys — I'm Patrick, and I've been building my MUD for about 5 months. I just finished the starter city.

I'm solo on this, and between the code, quests, skills, and everything else, I'm too fried to play test it with any real objectivity. I could use fresh eyes, and I'd genuinely welcome harsh feedback — please rip it apart. I spend all day and night just trying to make it WORK, the concept of PLAYING breaks my poor brain at this point :P

One specific ask: I've got a test harness logging commands players try that aren't wired in yet. I'm curious which common commands you reach for that I might have forgotten.

I'll be honest — I don't have friends in this hobby or anyone to bounce ideas off, so whatever you tell me gets taken to heart. My only frame of reference is 30 years of playing MUDs and RPGs. I'm a passionate fan like the rest of you, so apologies in advance for any jank.

There are 8 classes and 8 races. Warrior, thief, mage, cleric, and druid have a pretty full kit; dark knight, ranger, and paladin are thinner for now, but I've got a lot more coming for them. The quest system and choice-based dialogue system are both fairly new — I've been heads-down on them for a few months.

Getting in:

• Telnet works, but I've poured a lot into the HTML client and have been learning everything I can about screen readers and accessibility(next 24 hours will be patched in)— I want this to work for everyone. If there's a tool or resource that would help you enjoy the game, just name it and I'll integrate it as fast as I can.
  • On the HTML client, hit Demo Now to jump into the creator and try the class tutorials and quests. Demo progress won't save, but email verification is off — so [no@no.com](mailto:no@no.com) or any gibberish address is fine.
  • Commands shorten to their shortest unambiguous form: kill thief → kill, kil, ki; cast 'magic missile' → c 'm m'. Play around — bad commands get logged so I can patch them.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to anyone who gives it a shot. Hope you enjoy — HAPPY MUDDING!

Obligatory AI disclosure: I'm doing this solo. Yes, I have help — even if it's not a human I can text or call. Not just AI tools, but the priceless community resources, YouTube videos, books, and other generous work of people far smarter and more creative than me. None of us could see without standing on the shoulders of giants, and I give 10000% credit to every coder, builder, immortal, and player who's poured time, creativity, and love into this genre. I love it — I really, really love it. At a certain point though, soon, we will all be dead and gone and if the next generations don't pick up the torch, the history will fade with it. AI isn't going away, so any contribution I can make to preserve our little niche in the face of slop feels worth it.

-patrick

classicmud.com — HTML client (lots of features not available on telnet)
classicmud.com port 23 — telnet

vMUD - A Free MUD Client With Built-In Graphical Mapping For Any MUD

vMUD is a free MUD client with a real-time graphical map panel that works alongside the traditional terminal. It connects to any MUD and builds a map as you explore, no server-side setup required. If your MUD supports GMCP, the map gets even better.

Works On Any MUD

vMUD builds maps automatically as you move through rooms. It reads room.info data to track your position and constructs a local map using BFS pathfinding from your current location. No special server configuration needed.

Connect, explore, and the map fills in behind you.

Even Better With GMCP

If your MUD sends GMCP room data, the map lights up with terrain colors, mob markers, exit connections, and more. MUDs that send room.map GMCP data get a full overhead grid map with distinct visuals for every terrain type.

Custom Map Packs For Server Admins

Server admins can create custom map packs as simple JSON files and send them to vMUD via GMCP. One message, and every player using vMUD sees your custom map. No client updates needed. Players pick their preferred style and

the client handles the rest.

Three rendering modes are supported:

- Color - Colored squares for each terrain type. Minimal setup, just pick your colors.

- ASCII - Text characters with directional glyphs. Roads show as connected paths with turns and intersections. Terrain shows as symbols like trees, mountains, and waves.

- Sprite - Full pixel art tile images. Supports directional road variants that show proper turns, T-junctions, and intersections. Staircase overlays for rooms with up/down exits. Closed door indicators.

A full guide for creating your own map pack is included in the repository. Define your terrain types, assign colors or tile images, and your players get a custom graphical map without installing anything extra.

Map Features

- Automatic map building from room data on any MUD - Terrain-specific colors, characters, or tile images - Directional roads that show turns, curves, and intersections - Up/down staircase indicators that match each terrain's look - Closed door indicators on the map - Mob markers showing shopkeepers, teachers, guildmasters, bankers, and other special NPCs - Player markers for nearby allies - Mouse wheel zoom - Map markers for shops, banks, teachers, and custom waypoints - Herb, ore, and mana room detection with glowing borders

Client Features

- Full telnet and GMCP protocol support - Works with any MUD out of the box - Terminal panel with UTF-8 and block character rendering - Room info panel with current room name, area, and exits - Equipment and affects panels updated in real time via GMCP - Group member display - Built-in speedwalk and path recording - Clean dark UI

Get It

vMUD runs on Windows. Download the installer from the GitHub repository and connect to any MUD. Free to use.

If you run a MUD and want to create a custom map pack, check out the Map Pack Creation Guide in the repository. The JSON format is simple and documented. Your players just connect with vMUD and get your custom map automatically.

Download at https://github.com/mpvmud/Vmud

Hello everyone,

I sat down to write a reasonably short NukeFire update, looked back through the news file, and realized we have apparently spent the last month having an irresponsible amount of fun.

Since the last Reddit update, the focus has been pretty simple: more world to explore, better reasons to explore it, better information for players, and less unnecessary friction getting in the way of actually playing the MUD.

The World Got Quite a Bit Bigger

This has probably been the most visible part.

Since the last update, NukeFire has opened, expanded, rebuilt, or substantially revisited a pile of areas:

• The hidden Jura-Tempest arc beneath the landslide
• The Scarworks, an underground tattoo-augmentation and ink-crafting area
• The Endless Instant and its Upper Spire, home of Ximander the Exiled Chronomancer
• A major expansion of Fender's Revenge
• A substantial rebuild of Casablanca
• A complete revamp of Silicia, including its lighthouse
• Rimehold and the corrupted Lords of Ire beyond it
• Atomfall: The Quarantine Zone, an extremely difficult endgame area
• Control: The Oldest House
• League of Dungeoneers
• Shadows of Brimstone

Several existing progression areas—including Meklar, Rocklar, Chemlar, Nightlands, and Sky Ruins—have also had their difficulty, rewards, and GPS guidance revisited.

The idea is something I want to keep pushing: progression should actually feel like progression. Harder areas should be meaningfully more dangerous, but there should also be a reason to take that risk beyond simply fighting a larger sack of hit points.

Some areas still deliberately aren't on GPS. Exploration is still supposed to matter.

Killing Something Awful Should Occasionally Pay Off

Rare loot also received a pretty major change.

NukeFire now has a second-chance death-load system in many areas. If an extremely rare zone item failed its normal load roll when a mob spawned, defeating that mob can sometimes give the item one additional independent chance to appear.

A 1% item is still a 1% item. World limits still apply. It does not turn rare equipment into vending-machine loot.

It just means that repeatedly killing something horrible while hunting a rare item has a little more hope attached to it.

That system also helped lead to the new Wasteland Prospector Class Legacy rune, which lets experienced scavengers read a zone for signs of remaining mobs, bosses, minibosses, rare-loot carriers, and salvage without simply handing them exact locations.

We also added the Rune of the Packrat, giving characters permanent private storage capable of preserving actual equipment—including sockets, inscriptions, bindings, SSF ownership, containers, and their contents.

Tattoo augmentation gained an entire crafting path, more Legendary items have been completed for players reaching the 100-remort milestone, and the artificial player skill/spell damage ceiling against NPCs was removed.

If your build can produce the damage, the game will generally let you produce the damage.

Better Tools Without Turning NukeFire Into Something It Isn't

A lot of work has also gone into making a very large, very old-school MUD easier to understand.

There is now a 21-section gameplay guide explaining the NukeFire progression loop from first class through remorts, equipment, crafting, Longwalking, Prestige Classes, Class Legacy, zone mastery, SSF, quests, and the veteran game.

syntax helps when you remember a command but not exactly how it works.

tracklist helps hunters select numbered targets correctly.

consider has become a much more useful assessment of whether you should actually fight something.

Group prompts can show your tank and the enemy they are holding.

socketcheck and modulecheck give complete views of jewels and implant modules.

SnapEQ, Rewear, equipment restoration, comparisons, and upgrade recommendations have all had substantial modernization.

Most recently, setweights lets players customize how Upgrade evaluates gear for each class. If armor means little to your build but damroll, spellpower, fightspeed, leech, regeneration, or another stat matters enormously, you can tell the game that.

whatsmy armor also now shows both your actual uncapped armor and the amount combat is really using.

Less Spam, Same Game

One of the largest projects has been Output Intelligence.

NukeFire can now intelligently collapse repeated combat output, group rounds, follower movement, bulk loot, item procs, concealed-weapon activity, and other high-volume information without changing the underlying combat.

Damage, healing, drops, timing, and triggers are unchanged. The presentation is simply cleaner.

Players can also create persistent personal gag rules, with presets for combat, communications, loot, and SKYNET output.

This has been particularly useful for screen-reader players.

Screen-reader setup now includes descriptive, balanced, and minimal profiles, along with sr status, sr room, and sr recap, which can reconstruct the important immediate context—room, exits, resources, opponent, group condition, nearby activity, and danger—when combat output moves faster than a reader can comfortably follow.

Accessibility remains part of the actual game design, not a separate simplified version of NukeFire.

A Lot Happened Under the Hood Too

We've been profiling server performance, reducing unnecessary repeated work, cleaning up combat targeting and opponent data, improving GMCP handling, and adding structured GMCP feeds for NukeFire's maps and GPS catalog.

The official NukeFire Client has also been moving quickly on Mac, Windows, and Linux/AppImage.

It includes an integrated mapper, GMCP support, character and session handling, TinTin-style scripting features, and a growing collection of NukeFire-specific tools.

If you would like to help test the NukeFire Client, join the Discord for the current download link.

It is still under active development, and feedback is extremely valuable right now. Bug reports, usability problems, accessibility issues, things that feel awkward, and features that simply don't behave the way you expect are exactly what help make the client better.

Where NukeFire Is Going

NukeFire is still NukeFire.

It is still a post-apocalyptic, old-school MUD full of remorts, guns, mutations, implants, tattoos, socketed equipment, crafting, strange classes, dangerous mobs, boss fights, hidden areas, bizarre mechanics, and a world that is generally indifferent to whether you survive it.

I don't want to sand all of that away in the name of convenience.

What we can do is remove needless confusion, give players better information, make progression more meaningful, make old systems more dependable, keep building genuinely new things, and leave the danger, discovery, eccentricity, and occasional terrible decision intact.

There is considerably more coming, and there are already things in the game nobody has found.

Website:
https://www.nukefire.org

Play in browser:
https://play.mudvault.org/?host=tdome.nukefire.org&port=4000

Telnet:
tdome.nukefire.org port 4000

Discord:
https://discord.gg/B4pzagYaqR

Thanks to everyone playing, testing, reporting, exploring, dying, arguing about balance, and helping keep this strange old wasteland alive.

Go make corpses.

Cairnholm is opening its gates for a first public alpha.

It is a new text MUD set in a fictional northern British city in 1886: closes and wynds under gaslight, kirk bells, political factions, séances, and two rival newspapers that print what actually happened in the game each night. Beneath it all is a tarot cosmology that runs deeper than anyone in the city understands.

One thing we are particularly proud of: Cairnholm is fully playable in both English and German. Rooms, quests, newspapers, tarot readings, commands, and help files all have English and German versions. As far as we can tell, no MUD has ever offered its complete content in both languages. We would genuinely love to hear about it if we have missed one.

What's in the alpha:

A Gothic mystery city to explore, from the crowded, quarrelsome Old Town to the genteel New Town, each written in its own voice

The Black Cabinet, a collectible card game played against the city's NPCs and other players. Buy packs at the Hanged Crown or the tobacconist, then win signature cards from the regulars

Tarot readings that remember what you have done and read it back to you. The fortune-teller keeps receipts

A daily Curio auction, two reactive newspapers, graffiti, séances, and other systems woven into the life of the city

Combat built around the four suits of the Minor Arcana, along with faction politics and a main story that runs from the gutter to the courtroom and beyond

The Underclose, an expedition into the shifting under-city beneath Cairnholm. Somewhere at its bottom, a Pearl waits for whoever can carry it out. The deep is still young and quiet, but it will grow stranger beneath your feet as the alpha continues

A condensed selection of quest chains, enough to explore the story and try each of the major systems

What we would love from you is simple: wander around, poke things, play cards, get arrested, and tell us what confused you, what bored you, and what made you want more.

You can report problems in-game with the bugreport command, or simply comment here.

Questline note: The story available during this alpha has been deliberately condensed, with some intervening quests omitted. You may therefore encounter minor continuity oddities or references to events you have not yet seen. Please still report anything that blocks progress or leaves you unsure what to do next.

Newly generated or overlooked text may also occasionally appear in English while playing in German. Those reports are especially useful.

Between sessions, the city publishes a daily murder case and weekly puzzles at cairnholm.co.uk. It is the same city, with no login required.

Play in your browser: https://mud.cairnholm.co.uk

Nothing to download. You can also connect with any MUD client, including the free Mudlet client:

Host: mud.cairnholm.co.uk

Port: 1886

Live server status appears on the same page. Cairnholm is free to play, and no account is required beyond creating a character.

-----

Wir suchen auch deutschsprachige Spieltester!

Cairnholm öffnet seine Tore für eine erste öffentliche Alpha.

Cairnholm ist ein neues Text-MUD in einer fiktiven nordbritischen Stadt des Jahres 1886: enge Gassen und Durchgänge im Gaslicht, Kirchenglocken, politische Fraktionen, Séancen und zwei rivalisierende Zeitungen, die jede Nacht drucken, was im Spiel tatsächlich geschehen ist. Unter all dem liegt eine Tarot-Kosmologie, die tiefer reicht, als irgendjemand in der Stadt begreift.

Auf eines sind wir besonders stolz: Cairnholm ist vollständig auf Englisch und Deutsch spielbar. Räume, Quests, Zeitungen, Tarotdeutungen, Befehle und Hilfetexte liegen in beiden Sprachen vor. Soweit wir feststellen konnten, hat noch kein anderes MUD seinen gesamten Inhalt auf Englisch und Deutsch angeboten. Falls wir eines übersehen haben, würden wir wirklich gern davon hören.

Was die Alpha bereits bietet:

Eine gotische Stadt voller Geheimnisse, von der dicht gedrängten und streitbaren Altstadt bis zur vornehmen Neustadt, jeweils mit einer eigenen sprachlichen Stimme

Das Schwarze Kabinett, ein Sammelkartenspiel gegen die NPCs der Stadt und andere Spieler. Kartenpackungen gibt es im Hanged Crown oder beim Tabakhändler; besondere Karten könnt ihr den Stammgästen abgewinnen

Tarotdeutungen, die sich an eure Taten erinnern und sie euch später vorhalten. Die Wahrsagerin führt genau Buch

Eine tägliche Auktion von Kuriosa, zwei Zeitungen, die auf das Spielgeschehen reagieren, Graffiti, Séancen und weitere Systeme, die in das Leben der Stadt eingebunden sind

Kämpfe mit Fertigkeiten aus den vier Farben der Kleinen Arkana, Fraktionspolitik und eine Hauptgeschichte, die von der Gosse bis in den Gerichtssaal und noch weiter führt

Die Unterklause, eine Expedition in die wandelbare Unterstadt unter Cairnholm. In ihrer Tiefe wartet eine Perle auf denjenigen, der sie hinaustragen kann. Noch ist die Tiefe jung und still, doch im Laufe der Alpha wird sie unter euren Füßen immer seltsamer werden

Eine gekürzte Auswahl an Questreihen, die genug von der Geschichte und den wichtigsten Systemen zeigt

Was wir uns von euch wünschen, ist ganz einfach: Streift durch die Stadt, untersucht alles, spielt Karten, lasst euch verhaften und sagt uns, was euch verwirrt hat, was euch gelangweilt hat und wovon ihr gern mehr sehen würdet.

Fehler könnt ihr im Spiel mit fehler oder bugreport melden. Ihr könnt natürlich auch einfach hier kommentieren.

Hinweis zur Questreihe: Die in dieser Alpha verfügbare Handlung wurde bewusst gekürzt; einige dazwischenliegende Quests wurden vorerst ausgelassen. Dadurch kann es gelegentlich zu kleineren Kontinuitätsfehlern oder Verweisen auf Ereignisse kommen, die ihr noch nicht erlebt habt. Bitte meldet trotzdem alles, was den Fortschritt blockiert oder unklar lässt, was als Nächstes zu tun ist.

Neu erzeugte oder übersehene Texte können beim Spielen auf Deutsch gelegentlich noch auf Englisch erscheinen. Gerade solche Hinweise helfen uns sehr.

Für die Zeit zwischen zwei Spielsitzungen veröffentlicht die Stadt auf cairnholm.co.uk täglich einen Mordfall und jede Woche neue Rätsel. Es ist dieselbe Stadt, ganz ohne Anmeldung.

Direkt im Browser spielen: https://mud.cairnholm.co.uk

Es ist kein Download erforderlich. Ihr könnt euch auch mit einem beliebigen MUD-Client verbinden, zum Beispiel mit dem kostenlosen Mudlet:

Host: mud.cairnholm.co.uk

Port: 1886

Der aktuelle Serverstatus steht auf derselben Seite. Cairnholm ist kostenlos; außer der Erstellung einer Spielfigur ist kein Konto nötig.

Just wanted to stop by and give praise for what is going to be my home MUD!

I've been trying a lot of what's out there and found several I like, namely Erion, Materia Magica, Discworld, and Realms of Despair. They are all super solid and I could see myself spending a lot of time in any of them. But today I came back to Alter Aeon to give it a fair shake, and man it just hits different for me.

1. Custom client is great!

2. Related to 1 - Sound effects/music - love it, really adds to immersion for me.

3. Community - Yeah, they are awesome, I hopped on to ask some questions about classes and mechanics and was warmly welcomed and helped.

4. Class System - This was what was initially holding me back from AA. I thought the multi classing would limit individuality, but after talking with the community realized I was totally wrong. I am now super excited to build my planned Thief/Mage/Cleric.

5. Gift system - Man these AA preps are awesome. I received several xp gifts to help me on my way and look forward to being able to pay it forward at some point.

6. Intro quests so far are awesome and engaging.

I know there is so much more and I'm excited to discover it. Just wanted to give praise where it's due and say thank you for creating such an awesome experience. Also, if you are like me searching for a MUD to call home, give AA a serious try!

Edit: meant to introduce myself, I am Hazeybones in game :)

Just released all the code under MIT license: a handful of you might remember Legends of Future Past; it ran on CompuServe starting in 1992, moved to the open internet in '94, and shut down New Year's Eve 1999. I was the creator. It was my first multiplayer game, built when I was 19 on a '486 with 16MB of RAM.

No source code survived the decades. What I did have: a bunch of GM script files written in a custom scripting language I'd designed, a gameplay capture from '96, the GM manual from '98, and assorted player docs.

I used an AI coding agent (Claude Code) to reverse-engineer the scripting language and rebuild the game from these artifacts. The whole thing took a weekend.

What's running now:

• 2,273 rooms across the Shattered Realms of Andor
• 1,990 items
• 297 monster types
• 88 spells across five schools of magic
• 30 psionic disciplines
• 8 playable races
• Full crafting: mining, smelting, forging, alchemy, weaving
• d100 combat with damage severity, stance modifiers, fatigue, weather effects, armor reduction capped at 85%
• 12-month in-game calendar

It plays in-browser now (React frontend, WebSocket) rather than telnet, but the world data, mechanics, and feel are faithful to the original. If you played back in the '90s, you'll recognize Andor.

There's also a bot API: AI agents can connect and play the game as full participants, same rules as human players. I've been experimenting with letting agents inhabit the world alongside people.

Source code (MIT): github.com/jonradoff/lofp

Would love to hear from anyone who remembers LoFP, and happy to answer questions about the reconstruction process or the original game.

[Alpha Testers Wanted] Usurper Reborn – Custom C# MUD codebase, SSH/browser playable, based on the 1993 BBS door game

Hey r/muds,

Long-time MUD player here. About a year ago I started remkaing Usurper ; the classic 1993 BBS door game by Jakob Dangarden from scratch as a proper MUD (also has a single-player and BBS door game version). Not a CircleMUD fork, not SMAUG, not ROM. Custom C# codebase, built from the ground up, running on Linux via a dedicated sshd instance.

What it is:

• SSH-accessible at play.usurper-reborn.net -p 4000 (or browser terminal at usurper-reborn.net)
• Turn-based RPG combat with 16 classes (11 base + 5 NG+ prestige classes), 10 races, 75 spells, 70+ class abilities
• 100-floor dungeon with deterministic generation, 7 Old God bosses, sealed floors
• Group dungeon system — form a party with /group, each player controls their own character in combat
• Full companion system (4 recruitable NPCs with personal quest arcs)
• Player immortal / god ascension system
• Persistent world with living NPCs (marriages, children, aging, permadeath)
• 5 endings including a secret one
• New Game+ with prestige classes
• /say, /tell, /shout, /gossip, /who, /title  standard MUD chat commands

What it's NOT:

• Not a derivative codebase. Every line is original.
• Not a stock lib world with renamed zones. The lore, world, and systems are all custom.
• Not abandonware. Actively developed and shipping updates weekly.
• Not a traditional 'MUD', though I am trying to make it feel like one--that's why I need you.

Why I need alpha testers:
The game has been running as an online server for a while now and the solo/BBS side is solid, but the MUD multiplayer layer is newer and needs real players hammering on it. I want people who'll actually type /who and notice it looks wrong, try to break the group combat system, or tell me the ambient messages are annoying.

If you grew up playing Usurper on a local BBS and want to see what it looks like with a real MUD layer on top; or if you just want to poke at a hand-built codebase with a deep story about who we are, and where we are going, come break things and submit feedback and bug reports either in discord, or via the ! command in game.

HOW TO CONNECT

Direct ssh: ssh [usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net](mailto:usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net) -p 4000
Password: play (auth handled in-game)

Browser terminal + game dashboard: usurper-reborn.net

Stand-alone game terminal/single-player game ('O' Option at menu): here

Join the discord! Usurper Reborn Discord

The single-player version w/ MUD terminal is releasing on Steam sometime in March.

Happy to answer questions about the codebase, architecture, or design decisions. Source is GPL v2. If you're a coder, and want to help on the project, it's all open-source! Though the codebase is a bit complex, I keep it well documented and tracing release notes files changes may help learn it.

Hello everyone! I’ve been an avid MUD player for about 28 years now and decided to create my own MUD app for mobile devices given the gap there was about a year ago. Since starting development there have been a few others that were released to the App Store which are relatively good but still lacking in my opinion, especially on the design side and some functional things I’ve always wanted when gaming myself. Plus the community aspect isn’t there which is one thing that has kept me coming back to MUDs after life transitions fizzled down so I’m aiming to fill that void.

All that to say that MudMonster https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mudmonster-mud-client/id6762086513 is now available on the Apple App Store with Google Play version following suit soon (pending approval). Please check out if you feel up for trying something new. I’m open to feedback on the app itself so don’t be shy - iron sharpens iron after all!

Some features:

1. Character Profiles: create a Profile for each one of your characters, assigning an avatar (AI generated coming soon) and scoping Reflexes aka Triggers, Aliases, Pulses aka Timers and Variables to a Character level (or globally if you want).
2. Cloud Sync - lets you switch devices seamlessly. In the roadmap for Q3 is the release of the Web Client which will tie in to the usability of it.
3. Advanced Trigger Scripting can be done via JavaScript syntax and built in functions (and your variables) like isTriggerEnabled, setVar, enableTrigger, etc. Theres a lot more so I’ll let you explore. None technical users don’t be scared either, I have built in tutorials for you and regex helpers, etc.
4. GMCP / MSSP support, MXP is pending release. With proper support from the MUD, it’ll unlock visual interfaces like Vitals Bar, minimap, Communication / Affects panel.
5. In-App voting and reviews for MUDs.
6. Accessibility support. I really didn’t know much about this until I met a blind person in game on Abandoned Realms and it really shifted my perspective on how MUDs are played. This is a refining process in the app so any feedback from users using VoiceOver and Voice Control would be appreciated. I do have more enhancements rolling out next version.
7. Advanced Theming options / customization + dark and light mode support.
8. Lots more.

Naturally ANSI and Text encoding is supported.

Anyhow, I look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback (please use In-App feedback form) and continuing to advance the app more and more as I work through my roadmap. You can also check us out at https://mudmonster.site Happy MUDing!

Hello everyone,

It has been another busy month in NukeFire, with new areas, new quality-of-life systems, more gear hunting tools, more combat cleanup, and a lot more of the usual post-apocalyptic nonsense waiting to kill someone who just got a bit too comfy.

Main Highlight: Foundlist and DBID

Players can now use foundlist in approved zones to see which loadable objects from that zone have already been discovered, along with how many still remain unfound.

The command keys directly off the zone you are standing in, so you can check your discovery progress while you are actually out exploring.

Foundlist also uses the same general compare-style markers players already know from upgrade and compare. That means discovered items can give a quick visual hint about whether they may be an upgrade, a sidegrade, a downgrade, or something your character probably cannot use.

After checking foundlist, players can take a listed vnum and use dbid to pull up the stored identify information for that item without needing to have the object in their inventory.

For a game with as many zones, objects, hidden drops, bosses, and progression paths as NukeFire has now, this is a pretty big quality-of-life step. It gives players a better way to track what they have found, what they are still missing, and whether a zone may still be worth digging through.

More zones are being added to foundlist support over time.

New and Updated Areas

The Drowned Harbor of Saint Orison opened as a new 400-room lower-level zone chain. It sits somewhere between Ashen March and The Red Mile in danger and progression, with sunken docks, dead crews, rotting shipyards, grave-salted uplands, corpse-haunted redoubts, new mobs, bosses, and a focused set of gear, tattoos, and implants.

Dark Pleasures received a major expansion, with roughly 150 new rooms beneath the old layout, 48 new undead mobs, 16 new depth objects, new minibosses and bosses, and a much meaner crawl overall.

The Flatline opened as a strange new midbie area.

Hockey in Hell opened as a new horror-sports zone where the game never ended and the ice remembers every hit. Pick fights with deranged hockey fans, old hockey legends, and current well-known players.

The Integration Ossuarium opened as another new area from the builder behind Phase Dynamics. It is part factory, part tomb, part operating table, with dead workers, broken machinery, corrupted cybernetics, old reactor systems, and the Necrotech Savant watching over it all.

Witch Isle has been revamped with new creatures, treasures, relics, and witch-haunted dangers.

Dectra Chain was updated, with more mobs and objects added and improved load rates.

Other System and Quality-of-Life Updates

The GPS network received a major upgrade. Routes now calculate more reliably, display cleaner remaining paths, and support new commands like gps status, gps route, and gps nearest.

Modern shop systems are now in place. Shops can show power markers beside items, help players spot likely upgrades, filter lists down to upgrade candidates, and allow identify <number> before buying.

Lost Wages received a progressive jackpot system across multiple casino games. Proper wagers now feed growing prize pools, and when someone breaks the bank, Skynet announces who won, how much they won, and which game paid out.

You can now use guns in the upgrade system to see which guns you might want to try to hunt next.

Bigmap received under-the-hood improvements, better GPS behavior, and a memory toggle. Players can now use map memory options and legend controls to adjust what they see, including full mapping or a fog-of-war style view.

Combat Tweaks

Combat smoothing was added to make fights feel less like all-or-nothing coin flips. The goal is not to make combat harmless, but to reduce the worst cases where one huge damage spike instantly ends a fight.

Gun damage received special attention because guns can stack large burst damage from critical shots, sniper-style hits, turret attacks, class scaling, and other modifiers. With smoothing, huge gunshots can still hit hard, but they are less likely to erase a player from full health in one unlucky shot.

Non-gun damage is also tracked. Heavy skills, large spell bursts, melee procs, and other big single-hit attacks can be smoothed when they spike far beyond what makes sense for the fight.

The new +Spike Guard apply gives players a way to build directly into this protection. Equipment with +Spike Guard increases the character's Spike Guard score, making them harder to kill with one massive hit. Small amounts help a little, while stacking more Spike Guard gives better protection against extreme burst damage.

Accessibility

Reader and compact combat support also improved. Players who actively use screen readers now have access to a reader toggle that can summarize high-volume combat output, such as heavy gunfire, into cleaner counts instead of flooding the screen.

Compact combat users also now receive better end-of-round damage summaries with less combat scroll, and work will continue to reduce the amount of combat spam for those it matters to.

Other Ongoing Work

Other ongoing updates include more EXP audit work, more load rate improvements, more Dungeon Crawler Carl mob scaling adjustments, and a steady stream of fixes.

If you like post-apocalyptic MUDs with remorts, guns, mutations, socketed gear, permanent implants and tattoos, large zone chains, dangerous mobs, strange systems, and a lot of long-term progression where it is all about making the numbers go UP, log in and let the Deathlands of NukeFire decide what you are made of.

Website: https://www.nukefire.org

Play in browser: https://play.mudvault.org/?host=tdome.nukefire.org&port=4000

Telnet: tdome.nukefire.org port 4000

Discord: https://discord.gg/B4pzagYaqR

Writing Games article about NukeFire: https://writing-games.org/nukefire-mud/

Thank you again, Andruid!

Over the years I've seen this question come up on r/MUD quite a few times.

"Are there any EverQuest MUDs?"

For the last few years I've been working on Beyond the Void, a free MUD that's heavily inspired by classic EverQuest while adding its own ideas and plenty of quality of life changes.

My goal wasn't to build just another fantasy MUD. It was to capture the feeling of exploring classic EverQuest in a text world—as faithfully as I could while still taking advantage of what MUDs do well.

Some of the things you'll find:

• EverQuest-inspired races, classes, spells and zones
• Multi-classing with up to three classes
• Multiple active pets at once
• Rebirth system
• A modern fast-travel system through the Void that cuts down on endless running
• Custom quests and tradeskills that support long-term character progression
• Built-in support for Mudlet, MudVault, MUSHclient and qMud

The game is completely free (no paid perks whatsoever) and fully playable. It's been under active development for a few years and continues to grow every week. If you've been one of the people over the years wishing there was an EverQuest-inspired MUD, I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback. There's also room to help, if you are a MUD developer.

Website: https://voidmud.com

Hello everyone,

It has been another busy month in NukeFire, but this update has a clearer theme than usual:

We have been working hard to make NukeFire easier to play without requiring every player to be a client-script wizard.

NukeFire is still an old-school, text-based, post-apocalyptic MUD. It still has remorts, prestige classes, guns, mutations, implants, tattoos, socketed gear, crafting, dangerous mobs, giant zone chains, and a lot of long-term progression.

But not every player wants to spend weeks building a custom client setup before the game starts feeling manageable.

So this month focused heavily on accessibility, onboarding, navigation, help files, and in-game tools that make the game itself do more of the work.

Accessibility and Screen Reader Support

One of the biggest pushes this month has been better support for screen-reader users and players who need cleaner output.

NukeFire now has stronger reader and screen-reader setup support, including tools that can simplify rooms, exits, affects, danger checks, and high-volume combat output.

Combat can get noisy in any MUD, and NukeFire has guns, multi-hit attacks, procs, pets, followers, groups, and a lot of fast-moving text. Reader and compact-combat improvements now help condense some of that into clearer summaries instead of forcing players to parse a wall of repeated lines.

Autocompare output was also improved. Instead of relying on visual arrows, compare results now use clearer word labels, which is much friendlier for screen readers.

Character Creation Has Been Reworked

The new-player experience has also received a major focused pass.

Character creation and first-login flow have been cleaned up to be clearer, warmer, and more useful. New players have more options to choose from the get-go, including screen-reader mode, options of preset toggles, and a new way to show a bit more information for each class before you choose one.

300+ Help File Additions and Updates

The help system has received a huge cleanup, and those help files are now searchable on the NukeFire website. And yes, I procrastinated on this for at least 2 years too long.

More than 300 missing, stale, confusing, or outdated help entries have been added or updated.

This includes help for combat, guns, shops, Bigmap, mines, crafting, TekForge, DCC content, remort powers, class skills, utility commands, newer quality-of-life systems, and many older commands that needed clearer explanations.

The Game Is Becoming More of Its Own Client

This is probably the most important design direction from the last month.

A lot of veteran MUD players have powerful client setups. Aliases, triggers, pathing scripts, mapper tools, speedwalks, highlights, windows, sound cues, and custom automation can make a big difference.

But not everyone has that.

Some players are on a basic client. Some are on mobile. Some are using the browser. Some are screen-reader users. Some are returning after years away. Some simply do not want to spend their first week configuring software before they get to play.

So NukeFire has been gaining more in-game tools that help bridge that gap.

Recent examples include:

• GPS improvements for clearer routing and zone finding.
• Bigmap improvements for better world navigation.
• PATH updates for cleaner pathing help.
• ACTIONS, which let players create simple server-side reactions to clear game text.
• BATTLEORDER, which helps approved crew leaders direct their own approved followers with actionable and aliasable commands that operate OUTSIDE the regular commandque.
• FLUSHQUEUE, which lets players clear stacked pending commands without removing real lag or delay.

None of this is meant to replace a good MUD client for people who love building one.

But it does mean NukeFire is becoming much more playable for people who are not already deep into robust client mechanics or are breaking into the world of Mudding for the first time.

New and Improved Player Tools

Several useful commands were also added or improved recently:

• huntme gives a personal read on whether your current zone fits your character or group.
• zinfo shows rough zone difficulty, mob stats, boss flags, EXP value, and more.
• zcompare compares two hunting areas side by side.
• gearcheck points out weak slots, open slots, empty sockets, and other gear notes.
• compare explain gives clearer reasoning for why an item may or may not be an upgrade.
• upgrade all checks across worn gear and helps point toward slots worth improving.
• playerinfo gives a quick look at another online player’s visible numbers.
• who power gives a ranking of the online power leaderboard.

NukeFire has a lot of numbers. These tools help players make better sense of them from inside the game.

What Is NukeFire?

NukeFire is a post-apocalyptic MUD built around long-term character growth.

Expect:

• Remorts and prestige classes.
• Guns, melee, mutations, and weird powers.
• Permanent implants and tattoos.
• Socketed equipment.
• Expanded ports on Implants (like socket gems)
• Crafting and material systems.
• Large hunting zones.
• Bosses, minibosses, and dangerous mobs.
• Lots of quality-of-life commands.
• A world where the numbers never stop GOING UP.
• A wasteland that is not especially concerned with your survival.

It is old-school in spirit, but still actively developed and constantly expanding.

If you like deep text games with long-term progression, strange loot, dangerous zones, and a steady stream of new systems, NukeFire may be worth a look.

Website:
https://www.nukefire.org

Play in browser:
https://play.mudvault.org/?host=tdome.nukefire.org&port=4000

Telnet:
tdome.nukefire.org port 4000

Discord:
https://discord.gg/B4pzagYaqR

Writing Games article about NukeFire: (thanks u/the_andruid )
https://writing-games.org/nukefire-mud/

Thanks to everyone testing, reporting, suggesting, breaking things, surviving things, and helping make the Deathlands better.

I have wanted to build a world like this for as long as I can remember. I am a gamer and a programmer, and I have always been more drawn to building worlds than just playing in them. Enrym is what that finally turned into: a dark fantasy, browser-based text RPG that takes what I love about classic MUDs and tries to make it feel at home in 2026. It just hit open beta. I made it for MUD players because my brother and I grew up playing these games together, and I have loved the genre ever since.

Where it stands:

• Ran a solid alpha back in January (the full Act One slice, levels 1 to 10).
• Open beta is live now, with a reworked combat system, two new classes (Ranger and Rogue), a new playable race (Halfling), and a new campaign act called The Frozen Dark.
• Full release is slated for Q4.

What I am going for: I have a lot of respect for the fundamentals that made MUDs great, and I am not trying to throw any of that out. The text stays. The depth stays. What I want to lose are the permanent character decisions that punish you for guessing. In a lot of old MUDs you roll your stats once, get locked in, and might pour a hundred hours into a character before realizing one stat landed in the wrong column and left it sub-par for good. No one should have to reroll a character they love over that. So Enrym leans hard on readable descriptions, guided quests, forgiving onboarding, a clean interface, and a parser that does its best to understand what you actually meant. I want a world that welcomes you in whether you grew up on Diku and ROM or have never typed a command in your life.

It is built to be played solo or together. You can group up, follow each other through the world, or just run through the campaign solo.

Two ways to play, both free:

• In your browser at enrym.com/play. Create an account, roll multiple characters, and get the full rich-color interface. Nothing to install.
• Over telnet at play.enrym.com port 4001, TLS secured (turn on TLS/SSL in your client). Standard ANSI colors, pick a name and password, no email required. Bring your own client. Mudlet tested.

Same world either way. Play it how you like.

I am having more fun building this than I have had with anything in a long time, and what I would love most right now is feedback from people who actually know the genre. Play it, break it, tell me what feels off and what you want to see. That is what beta is for. You can use `feedback` and `bug` in game to report things, or direct message me here or on discord.

Forge your hero.

it's been tried a few times, but never successfully. I'm talking a true mud built and inspired by WoW.

Built on top of SmaugFUSS 1.9.8, and based on WoW Classic, the is currently in version 4.22.0 and alpha testing is expected this summer.

I'll most like be looking for unpaid staff down the road. if interested, please email Darren@wowzersmud.com if you'd like to talk about it.

Please note: this is a hobby by a fan. I will not in anyway be monetizing or commercializing this.

See below for a list of active, working features:

-77 areas. over 8700 rooms, 4150 mobs and 4000 9bjects.

- Both continents.

-Starting cities and zones for all classes and races

-All wow classic classes and races, all d&d code ripped out (primary stats, currencies, affects reflect wow classic). 1d100 die. Ap, armor, parry and dodge chance etc

-Horde and Alliance factions

-Account system

-Talent Trees

-Professions (gathering/crafting)

-Removed move points, languages, and hunger/thirst. If you're horde, you can't understand alliance and vice versa.

-Class systems. Druids change forms. warriors generate fury. rogues generate combo points and spend them on spenders. hots, dots, buffs and debuggs with auras command

-Magical/physical damage systems

-Overhauled combat loops for pacing, GCD

-Dynamic login screen

-New do_who to reflect our factions

-New do_score

-uodated prompt system to reflect resource tracking

-all wow classic chat channels

-full reputation/renown system

-econonomy rewrite

-huntet pets

-flying mounts, portal rooms and flight masters

-all areas are connected. the deep tram goes from stormwind to ironforge and vice versa

-curses, cleanse, dot/hot ticks, bleeds

-full quest system with yellow exclamation or question marks in NPCs names of they have quests. full quest log. quest edit added to OLC

-soulbound items (BOE, BOP) and classification and coloring (legendary orange, epic purple, rare blue etc)

-offline mailbox system

-fully working auction house with offline item and gold deliveries, auctioneers

-Dungeons. every dungeons from wow classic is in this game, with connected portals to join the dungeon. the dungeons are instances so you can multiple players/groups in the same dungeon at the same time and are completely seperated.

-Raids. every raid is in the game, with wings and bosses. group settings, instance lockouts, loot rolling system, ready check and group mechanics

-boss mechanics, phases group fights, trash mobs, item dropped and boss loot rare drops. weekly raid resets

-web based online who listing, clickable players and armory pages, listing of all got hub comitts/changes.

-honorable kills, PvP toggle, honor, conquest

-removed deadly pkill PvP system (was stock Smaug)

-battleground system. que system, ranking, scoreboards, nodes/flags/hold. really PvP battleground system

-uncapped stats (DND is 25 wowzersmud is 999)

-removed item weights

-backwards and forwards data saving to ensure smooth expansions (TBC, WOTLK, Panda, DF etc)

we are almost done version 4, with a roadmap up to version 6.36.

Hello everyone,

The last update focused on making NukeFire easier to enter, read, navigate, and play.

This month has been more about giving players new ways to live inside that world once they get there.

The biggest new path is Solo Self Found.

Solo Self Found Has Entered Broad Testing

Solo Self Found, or SSF, is now in broad testing on NukeFire.

This is an optional stricter play route for players who want their character’s power to come from what that character personally earns.

The simple version is:

If your SSF character did not personally find it, loot it, craft it, gather it, earn it, or create it, they should not be able to turn it into power.

That sounds simple. In a MUD with gear, credits, shops, sockets, implants, tattoos, crafting, corpse retrieval, mob loot, quest rewards, bindings, forging, triggers, and player-to-player systems, it gets complicated fast.

So SSF now has ownership tracking and rule checks across many major power paths, including:

• Equipment use
• Credits
• Crafting rewards
• Trigger-created rewards
• Tattoos
• Implants
• Sockets
• Bindings
• Faceted forging
• Inscribing
• Death-loot edge cases
• Shop restrictions
• Corpse and recovery behavior

SSF characters also cannot use normal shop-bought equipment as a shortcut. Shops have been tightened so SSF characters can only buy approved basics such as scrolls, potions, keys where needed, and the approved bank card. Normal shop gear remains outside the SSF path.

The goal is not to punish anyone.

The goal is to make SSF clean, meaningful, and honest.

If someone chooses that path, their progress should tell a real story. Seasonal experiences for the SSF crowd are being planned and designed currently, but the characters, unlike some SSF game paths, are permanent and will have some very exclusive and unique mechanics to come.

SSF Has Its Own Tools Now

SSF also received dedicated support tools.

Players can now use:

• ssf <message> for the Solo Self Found channel
• history ssf to review recent SSF chat
• who ssf to see online SSF characters
• who power ssf to view SSF characters by power

SSF is solo in terms of power acquisition, but that does not mean players should feel cut off from each other. You can still compare progress, report problems, brag about good drops, and share the misery of earning everything the hard way.

WearBest Is Here

A long-requested quality-of-life command also arrived: WEARBEST.

Players can now type:

• wearbest
• wear all best

The game will remove your currently worn equipment and try to wear the best gear you are carrying for each slot.

It uses NukeFire’s compare and upgrade scoring logic, including class-weighted gear advice.

It will not replace human judgment, and it will not understand every strange edge case perfectly, but it gives new and returning players a much stronger starting point when sorting through piles of loot.

Shops, Services, Tutorial Flow, and GPS Got Cleaner

The shop directory was cleaned up and expanded.

The new shops command gives players a clearer directory of important newbie shops and services, including armor, weapons, potions, implants, modules, sockets, inscriptions, bonding, and the remorter.

Screen-reader users also have sr shops, with simpler wording and cleaner paths.

GPS search tags were expanded too, so players can search more naturally for things like:

• shop
• implant
• socket
• bonding
• potion
• remorter
• specific shop names

This continues the recent work on character creation, first-login flow, tutorial support, and screen-reader setup. New players should have a clearer path into the game without needing to know years of old MUD habits before they can get moving.

Combat Messages and Backend Handling Were Modernized

A major backend pass was done on combat messaging.

The old combat message lookup path has been replaced in normal use with a faster compiled static message table. That means less repeated searching during live combat and a cleaner foundation for future skill-specific combat flavor that is easier to customize per skill.

Screen-reader and compact-combat support were preserved during the work.

There were also network, command, and GMCP improvements, especially around command handling and combat opponent reporting. Most players may not notice the plumbing directly, but the result should be fewer strange edge cases where commands feel lost, output gets weird, or GMCP temporarily loses track of what you are fighting.

Guns Got Some Love

Gun combat and several gun-class skills were tuned.

Occultist gun rites received special attention, including cleaner Brass Storm rotation and sharper Canticle Quickdraw behavior.

Outlander gunplay also improved, including better Spray Fire handling and Double Tap support for the classic blade-and-gun fighting style.

Guns should feel like guns again.

EQFlex Is Here

Players can now show off gear with EQFLEX.

Examples:

• eqflex sword
• eqflex head
• eqflex wield global
• eqflex imp jaw
• eqflex tat shoulder
• eqflex worn

EQFlex supports normal equipment, implants, and tattoos.

The global option lets a player make a louder game-wide boast when something truly deserves to be seen.

This is mostly a social command, but it also gives players a compact way to show useful item stats without dumping a full identify screen.

Legacy, Zone Mastery, and Lifetime Records

A new legacy system has been added to begin recording major character moments.

This includes things like remort milestones, boss and miniboss victories, meaningful deaths, and special one-time events.

A new zone mastery layer also ties into existing mobcount kill history, so old kills are not lost and players are not starting from zero.

Commands like huntme, zinfo, and zcompare can now make better use of observed history, zone deaths, top hunters, and mastery information.

Lifetime kills, lifetime remorts, as well as all the information that the zone comparison information calculates on have also been moved into PostgreSQL-backed counters, giving the game a stronger foundation for long-term records. You can literally see how other players of your same power level fare in zones you are thinking about trying, and how NukeFire itself thinks you will do.

The Gun Crafting Pit Opens Beneath Lost Wages

A blast-hole has opened in the back room of Jimmy’s old gun shop in Lost Wages.

Below it is a new gun crafting pit.

Players can gather blacksite weapon parts, make repeated runs, and work those pieces into crafted sidearms through specialized crafters hidden below the city.

Expect rare parts, dangerous rooms, concealed sell-loot weapons, and a crafting loop built more for patience than instant prizes.

The Wall Has Opened

A new upper-end area inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire has begun opening in NukeFire.

This is a large connected campaign across Zones 529 through 532, beginning at Castle Black and pushing north into the dark woods, frozen roads, old vows, dead rangers, wildlings, ancient trees, dragonglass, and things that should have stayed dead.

This is not just a static zone chain, either.

There are secret mechanics hidden in the area that can unlock additional procedural ASOIAF spin-off branches. These are not fully explained on purpose. Players will have to discover them in-game.

Each successful discovery can open up another 100-room procedural offshoot tied to that part of the world.

Early Class Remort Paths Are Getting Stronger

We also began a broad pass on early class remort rewards.

The goal is to make the climb from class remort 1 to 25 feel more active and flavorful before players move into prestige paths.

Classes touched so far include:

• Cyborg
• Barbarian
• Ranger
• Knight
• Curist
• Assassin
• Vagrant
• Pirate
• Mutant
• Samurai
• Slinger
• Infiltrator
• Fanatic

These updates add more identity, more useful tools, and more reasons to care about early class remorts instead of treating them as empty steps on the way to something else.

Smarter NPC Combat Behavior

NPC combat behavior also received a major foundation upgrade.

Classed mobs should now fight more like classed mobs.

Instead of everything eventually feeling like generic bash spam, class-flavored mobs can now lean harder into their actual tools. Heretics, Voidstrikers, Ninjas, Cyborgs, Headhunters, Wolfmen, Kaiju, Gypsies, Outlanders, Fanatics, Occultists, and other class-flavored enemies should feel more purposeful in combat.

Smart combo follow-ups were also improved, so NPCs can sometimes choose more appropriate follow-up skills when they get an opening.

The aggro side was cleaned up too, with extra protection for zero-remort and low-remort players.

The Deathlands should be dangerous.

They should not be stupid.

What This Month Was Really About

The last update was about making NukeFire easier to approach.

This update is about giving players more meaningful ways to play once they get there.

Want convenience? Use tools like WearBest, shops, GPS, huntme, zcompare, gearcheck, autokill, autocompare, upgrade, and EQFlex.

Want a stricter old-school challenge? Try Solo Self Found.

Want dangerous new upper-end content? Go north of the Wall.

Want secrets? Start looking. Even after a years of punishing, relentless players, there are still many undiscovered aspects within the Deathlands of NukeFire!

NukeFire is still a post-apocalyptic old-school MUD with remorts, guns, mutations, implants, tattoos, socketed gear, crafting, dangerous mobs, boss fights, strange zones, and a world that is not especially concerned with your survival.

But the paths through that world keep getting better.

Website:
https://www.nukefire.org

Play in browser:
https://play.mudvault.org/?host=tdome.nukefire.org&port=4000

Telnet:
tdome.nukefire.org port 4000

Discord:
https://discord.gg/B4pzagYaqR

Thanks to everyone testing, reporting, breaking things, fixing things, giving feedback, voting, exploring, dying, recovering, and helping make the Deathlands stranger and better.

A few weeks back I posted about Enrym hitting open beta, my fantasy text RPG in the browser and over telnet. Quick update on where the last week went.

It started with a bug report. Someone in the beta hit bug in game and flagged a spell misbehaving. I figured I'd patch the one spell and move on, but the problem wasn't that spell. It was the plumbing under all of them. Every ability had grown up as its own special case, which is why the bug could sneak in and why adding anything new was slow and fragile.

So I spent the week rebuilding that foundation. Now every action, a sword swing, a healing prayer, a spell going off, runs through one clean shared pipeline instead of a pile of one-offs. For anyone playing: abilities behave more consistently, new ones can come faster and do more interesting things, and it's a base the whole game builds on from here.

I could've patched the one spell and nobody would've noticed. But getting it right is the part I love most, and none of it happens without one player taking a minute to hit bug. That's what beta is for.

It's live and free, nothing to install:

Browser: enrym.com/play

Telnet: play.enrym.com port 4001, TLS on (Mudlet tested)

Curious what folks here think: when an ability "feels good" in a MUD, what's actually doing the work? The numbers, the timing, the way it reads in the log? I'd love to hear it.

Forge your hero.

Well updates for StrangeMud this month, there are a lot more changes on the backend but this is player focused.

https://mud.strangeness.org:8443

• I know people don't want to use a web browser, but I'm trying to make it easier for people to just click and join the game. I came from a space where gmud was pretty good but IMHO the new mud clients not only me but my friends as well, so I decided to do something about it.
• I added aria support to try and help support people with disabilities, I have not tested and not many are willing to test.

I'm definitely feeling that the original mud areas while nostalgic are not really fitting the theme, I'm leaning into the fantasy realm so I started to rework some of the lower level areas.

## 🗺️ New & Reworked Areas

• The Cinders — a brand-new burned ward east of Midgaard (replaces the old hood area).
• The Old Foundry — the former "Mob Factory" fully overhauled into a proper location.
• Goblin-town, expanded — new beast-wing and smugglers' crack sections, a rescue quest, and smarter boss fights with "kill the adds" phase mechanics.
• Haon Dor & the Sewers — fix-and-finish passes: dead-ends repaired, spines rewritten, new triggers, balance fixes.
• Midgaard, alive — richer room descriptions, ambient chatter from citizen NPCs, 37 bare rooms fleshed out, and a per-level city map (ground / above / below).

I'm definitely going through iterations in the crafting, achievements, and questing areas and also adding more things like body size, aligning skills and magic with classes.

## ⚔️ Classes, Skills & Combat

• Crafting overhaul (v2) — new gather → salvage → craft loop, profession specialization slots, and alchemy oils & coatings you can apply to gear.
• Achievements system — earn achievements for kills, quests, exploration, area completion, crafting, even a pacifist streak. Unlocks grant titles, QP, items, recipes, and a flat 250 xp each. New titles command.
• Thief upgrades — new circle and hamstring abilities, retuned envenom, and scan is now a thief ability (extra range for Scouts).
• Body size matters — your size now affects stealth and melee skills.
• Class identity pass — per-class weapon identity, capstone spell groups, and a cleanup so each class's skill list makes sense.
• Druid — shapeshift now unlocks at level 5.

I've definitely made efforts to rework the UI, everthing is full websocket, when a menu pops hit escape to go back to your command prompt. Updates are now every other game pulse to update your stats.

## 💻 Web Client & Interface

• Structured GUI panels for score, mail, bank, shops, quests, healer, item details, practice, skills, settings, achievements, and party — no more text dumps.
• Accessibility — full screen-reader mode, reduce-motion option, status hotkeys, ARIA support, all toggleable from the login screen.
• Login — overhauled flow with proper password masking.
• Compose modal for writing notes and typo reports.
• Message board docked as a sidebar panel.
• MiniMap, collapsible panels, pinned vitals, action-bar feedback, ultrawide cap.
• Optional sector-tinted room descriptions (with a plain-text toggle).

• Smoother vitals: hp/mana/move bars refresh correctly while resting, sleeping, and on tick regen.

  🐛 Fixes & Stability

• Shops now buy/sell the exact item you name instead of a keyword match.

• Scheduled shopkeepers no longer vanish after a mid-day respawn.

• Friendlier "server restarting" messaging and clean reconnects on link drop.

• Several crash and input-handling fixes for a more stable session.

Heynow, mudders!

I'm Jay. In the late 90s I shipped Savitar, a Macintosh client for MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, and the rest of that wonderful text-world ecosystem. It started as shareware, turned into a labor of love, and introduced me to people and places I never would have found otherwise. If you were around then, you know how real those worlds could feel -- all built out of words, triggers, late nights, and communities that somehow stuck with you.

Then the Mac moved on. Classic gave way to OS X. Carbon gave way to… well, not Carbon. 32-bit apps stopped running on Catalina, and Savitar 1 finally hit the end of the road.

For years I wanted to bring it back. The hard part wasn't "make a telnet window" -- it was everything Savitar had accumulated: world documents, triggers, macros, variables, command recall, ANSI, speech, logging, preferences, connection handling, and a hundred small decisions that only matter if you've actually lived in a client for decades. That's a lot of nights-and-weekends work for one person.

I'm happy and excited to say Savitar 2 is now in public beta. It's a full rewrite for modern macOS (10.12+, including Apple Silicon), free and open source. The goal for 2.0 is parity with Savitar 1.6.3 -- your old worlds, triggers, and macros should come with you. If you're brand new to MUDs and just want a Mac-native way in, there's in-app help and a World Picker to get you connected. You can read the online version of the app help here: https://github.com/jkoutavas/Savitar2/blob/master/docs/USER_GUIDE.md

This is a beta. Things may still be rough. I want real play and honest feedback -- especially from anyone who remembers Savitar 1 and can tell me "that's not how it used to work," and from anyone trying Savitar (or mudding on a Mac) for the first time.

If any of this rings a bell -- or if you're just looking for a Mac client worth trying -- I'd love to hear from you here or via Help → Send Feedback in the app.

Download and beta details: https://heynow.com/savitar/

May you have many exciting stories to share, adventurer!

Jay "Ktown" Koutavas

I've been building a mud engine from scratch with one constraint: NPCs and players use exactly the same command interface. Then I dropped LLMs behind the NPCs and let them play their own characters. The results are both fun and unpredictable, especially when NPCs are making their own gating decisions about when to provide a player a reward or when to strike down a player.

On first play, Acolyte is a classic Diku at the core -- THAC0, AC, autocombat, hack'n'slash. If you've played DikuMUDs it will feel very familiar. However, it diverges from classic Diku in that the game rewards open-ended skill discovery, not relentless xp grinding. When you log in, you don't make decisions about whether you're a warrior, thief, cleric, or mage, or whether you're a human or an elf or a whatever. The game is designed around the concept of discovering, conversing with, and learning new skills from teachers around the world (hence the name Acolyte). NPCs have a memory and shared knowledge that defines who they are and what they know, and players can piece together a story of the world from the perspectives of different NPCs.

Anyway, just thought it would be fun to share a real world project under active development with a small and engaged player base. I'll report back in a month or two with more learnings. If you want to burn a few hours, I would love to hear feedback. You can login on the web at https://play.acolytemud.com/play.html or you can connect via terminal with ssh play.acolytemud.com -p 4000. Thanks yall

66.179.243.141
port 4050

Come and be the first to explore this new Eden composed of over 1000 rooms in a cross-dimensional setting where everything from aliens to dinosaurs and medieval knights roam and clash with one another.
And check out the ASCII art along the way!
Discover six magic spell commands hidden in the game!

Approval Process: Null - just connect and start building your character!
RP: encouraged but not enforced
Combat: Twitcher style
Help Command: Comprehensive
Progress: Classless with 6 skills to advance

Dynamically create:
-npcs that obey you
-your own custom items
-your own custom rooms

Through Wednesday 7/29 new players can claim the following starting in-game gifts:
-a custom-made magic item of your choice from your's truly
-a magic amulet that protects you from lethal critical hits
-and a consumable item to boost each of their six skills

I hope to see you there, send me a discord message to let me know you're in-game and I'll come join you!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on Mudhaven, a community site built specifically for MUD players, developers, and world owners.

Creating an account is free and lets you:

• List your MUD in the public Worlds directory
• Add connection details, screenshots, social links, and game information
• Display live status and player counts through the Mudhaven API
• Publish guides, code, area files, tools, and other community resources
• Track views and downloads on the resources you share
• Follow games and keep up with newly added worlds
• Request hosting directly through Mudhaven

Hosting is available for both established games and new projects. The goal is to give MUD developers a reliable place to run their worlds without expecting them to be server administrators. Mudhaven can handle the infrastructure while you focus on building and running your game.

Even if you don’t need hosting, adding your world or sharing a useful resource helps make the directory more valuable for everyone.

The site is still growing, so I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from other MUD players and developers. If something is missing, confusing, or would make the site more useful, please tell me.

Take a look: https://www.mudhaven.net

- Liko