Usurper Reborn

Usurper Reborn is a persistent online text RPG with a living world where autonomous NPCs have full lifecycles and emergent events occur.

README

Usurper Reborn

A Persistent Online Text RPG with a Living World

v1.3.11 "Reckoning" | FREE AND OPEN SOURCE | GPL v2

Up to 200 autonomous NPCs (59 at the start of a new game) wake up, go to work, visit taverns, fall in love, get married, have children, age, and eventually die of old age, all while you're offline. Log back in, read the news feed, and discover that the blacksmith married the barmaid, the king was assassinated, or a new generation just came of age. The world doesn't wait for you.

Play now:

Download standalone: Latest Release | Report bugs: Discord or GitHub Issues or press ! in-game

Screenshots

Main StreetCombat
Main Street in the districts layoutA dungeon fight, with the combat status panel
A dungeon room and its mapCharacter status
A Catacombs room with its exits, features and the explored mapThe character status sheet
In the browser (usurper-reborn.net/play/)
Chronicle viewClassic view
Main Street in the Chronicle viewMain Street in the Classic view
A dungeon fight in the Chronicle view, with the monster picture and the party and enemy cardsA dungeon fight in the Classic view, with the combat menu and the round log

The Living World

The core of Usurper Reborn is a 24/7 agent-based simulation. NPCs aren't quest dispensers standing in place, they're goal-driven agents with personalities, memories, and opinions about each other and about you.

Autonomous NPCs: Each NPC has 13 personality traits, a memory system (30 memories per NPC, importance-weighted), and a goal-based AI brain. They choose careers, form gangs, visit shops, train at the guild, and develop relationships with each other independently of player action. NPCs react to neighbor density (Conway-inspired clustering), migrate when overcrowded, and form friend groups based on personality compatibility.

Full Lifecycles: Married NPCs can become pregnant, have children, and raise them. Children grow up over real time and eventually join the realm as new adult NPCs. Adults age according to their race's lifespan (Human ~30 days, Elf ~80 days, Orc ~22 days) and die permanently when their time comes. The population turns over. No one is permanent.

Emergent Events: Marriages, divorces, affairs, births, coming-of-age ceremonies, natural deaths, gang wars, and political upheavals all happen organically and appear in the live news feed on the website and in-game.

Persistent Multiplayer: Connect via browser, SSH, or any MUD client to a shared world backed by SQLite. Your actions affect other players. PvP arena, cross-player chat, leaderboards, guilds, group dungeons, world bosses, and a news feed that captures everything happening in the realm.

Cross-platform Discord bridge: In-game /gos lines mirror to a Discord channel and back, so the realm's gossip channel stays alive even when nobody is logged in.

The Game

Beyond the simulation, there's a deep RPG with 100+ hours of content.

Character Building
  • 12 Base Classes + 5 Prestige Classes (17 total): Warrior, Paladin, Assassin, Magician, Cleric, Ranger, Bard, Sage, Barbarian, Alchemist, Jester, Mystic Shaman, plus 5 NG+ prestige classes (Tidesworn, Wavecaller, Cyclebreaker, Abysswarden, Voidreaver) unlocked by completing different endings.
  • 10 Races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Half-Elf, Orc, Gnome, Troll, Gnoll, Mutant, with race-specific lifespans, stats, and lore.
  • Specialization System: Each base class has 2 specializations, and Paladin has 3 (25 total) selectable at the Level Master, shaping NPC AI ability priorities and giving role-specific stat bonuses (Tank, DPS, Healer, Utility, Debuff).
  • 100 spells across caster classes, 174 class abilities, plus 5 universal abilities. Meaningful stat scaling with diminishing returns past natural caps.
  • Romantic orientation (Straight / Gay / Bisexual / Asexual) selectable at character creation, affects NPC pool filtering for romance.
100-Floor Dungeon
  • Deterministically generated floors with boss encounters, treasure rooms, traps, hidden secrets, settlements, meditation chambers, puzzles, and lever rooms.
  • 7 corrupted Old Gods sealed in the depths (floors 25, 40, 55, 70, 85, 95, 100), each with multi-phase combat, channeled abilities, AoE mechanics, and meaningful dialogue choices. Aurelion, Terravok and Manwe wear divine armor that only their own counter enchant from the Magic Shop (Sunbane, Stonebane, Godbane) removes.
  • 7 Ancient Seals to collect, unlocking the truth about who you are.
  • 5 endings based on your choices: Conqueror, Savior, Defiant, True, and a secret Dissolution ending.
  • Floor-aware monster loot with full per-slot armor coverage (head, arms, hands, legs, feet, waist, face, cloak, body, weapons, shields, rings, necklaces).
  • Settlements at Floor 1 (NPC-built shops, services, vote-driven proposals).
Story & Narrative

You wake with no memory. A letter in your own handwriting warns you: "The gods are broken. Collect the Seven Seals. Break the cycle. You are not what you think you are."

  • Ocean Philosophy: A Buddhist-inspired awakening system with 7 levels: "You are not a wave fighting the ocean. You ARE the ocean, dreaming of being a wave."
  • 5 Companions who can die permanently: Lyris, Aldric, Mira, Vex, Melodia, each with personal quests, real grief consequences, and signature combat abilities.
  • NG+ Cycle System: Each playthrough, you remember more. NPCs notice. Cycle 4+ players face stacking world modifiers (+monster HP/damage, +gold scaling).
  • 6 Town NPCs with story arcs, dream sequences, stranger encounters, and faction politics.
Relationships & Politics
  • Romance, marriage, children, divorce, affairs, polyamory.
  • Challenge the throne, recruit guards, manage treasury, navigate court factions, set tax rates and city-control turf.
  • 3 joinable factions: The Crown, The Shadows, The Faith.
  • PvP arena with daily limits, gold theft, and leaderboards.
  • Guild system with 12 chat commands, guild bank, member XP bonus, invite flow.
  • Knighthood with combat buffs and Sir/Dame title prefix.
Locations

30+ player-visitable locations: Main Street, Inn, Bank, Weapon Shop, Armor Shop, Magic Shop, Music Shop, Healer, Temple, Church, Dark Alley, Level Master, Marketplace, Castle, Castle Courtyard, Pantheon, Hall of the Ascended, Prison, Prison Walk, Anchor Road, Team Corner, Quest Hall, Dungeons, Home (with 5-tier upgrade system and tamed-beasts menagerie), Wilderness (with Druid's Shrines pilgrimage and beast-taming encounters), Outskirts settlement, Arena, and more.

Mod Support & Game Editor

Opt-in JSON mods drop into a GameData/ folder next to the executable: NPCs, monster families, dreams, achievements, dialogue lines, balance constants, custom equipment, and (since 1.2) the numbers on every built-in class ability and spell (abilities.json, spells.json, replace-by-key, a file with any invalid entry is rejected whole) are all overridable without a recompile. A bundled menu-driven editor (UsurperReborn --editor, or [G] Game Editor from the main menu in single-player) is the sysop-tool analogue of the DOS-era USEDIT.EXE: arrow-key / number-key navigation, edits saves and mods from one UI, auto-backs up before writes. See DOCS/MODDING.md for the full guide.

Accessibility
  • Screen reader mode: auto-detected on Windows for the standard console launch (NVDA / JAWS / Narrator), or pass --screen-reader explicitly. Strips box-drawing, decorative Unicode, color-bracketed menus; all locations have plain-text paths.
  • Compact mode: smaller terminals (mobile SSH, narrow windows). Toggle with [Z] on the main menu or /compact anywhere.
  • Steam launcher: Play.bat is the default; Play-Accessible.bat opts into screen-reader mode at launch.
  • 5 languages: English, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian. Swap via in-game preferences. Per-character language preference saved.
Graphical Client (Beta)

An optional Electron-based graphical client is in active development with Darkest Dungeon-style combat sprites, a dungeon map overlay, paperdoll inventory, party panels, status overlays, and an audio infrastructure layer (sound files filling in over time). Text mode remains the primary supported way to play.

Origins

Originally inspired by Usurper (1993) by Jakob Dangarden, a classic BBS door game. The original Pascal source was preserved by Rick Parrish and Daniel Zingaro. Usurper Reborn maintains compatibility with the original formulas while building an entirely new simulation layer on top.

Building from Source

This is free and open source software, you can build it yourself.

Prerequisites
Quick Build
git clone https://github.com/binary-knight/usurper-reborn.git
cd usurper-reborn

# Build and run (framework-dependent, requires .NET runtime installed)
dotnet build usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release
dotnet run --project usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release
Self-Contained Builds (No .NET Runtime Required)

Build a standalone executable that includes the .NET runtime. Always pass --self-contained so the binary runs on machines without .NET installed.

Windows (64-bit)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained -o publish/win-x64
# Run: publish/win-x64/UsurperReborn.exe
Windows (32-bit, BBS sysops)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r win-x86 --self-contained -o publish/win-x86
Linux (x64)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r linux-x64 --self-contained -o publish/linux-x64
chmod +x publish/linux-x64/UsurperReborn
# Run: ./publish/linux-x64/UsurperReborn
Linux (ARM64, Raspberry Pi, etc.)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r linux-arm64 --self-contained -o publish/linux-arm64
chmod +x publish/linux-arm64/UsurperReborn
macOS (Intel)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r osx-x64 --self-contained -o publish/osx-x64
chmod +x publish/osx-x64/UsurperReborn
macOS (Apple Silicon)
dotnet publish usurper-reloaded.csproj -c Release -r osx-arm64 --self-contained -o publish/osx-arm64
chmod +x publish/osx-arm64/UsurperReborn
Self-hosting an online server

The full multi-player stack (game server + SSH gateway + web proxy + Nginx) is documented in DOCS/SERVER_DEPLOYMENT.md. A Docker-based 3-container stack is available via docker compose up -d (DOCS/DOCKER.md).

Technical Details

  • Runtime: .NET 8.0 (LTS) | Language: C# 12
  • Codebase: 350,000+ lines across 300+ files, 160+ game systems
  • NPC Simulation: Goal-based AI with 13 personality traits, importance-weighted memory, lifecycle aging, neighbor-pressure migration
  • Platforms: Windows (x64/x86), Linux (x64/ARM64), macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon)
  • Multiplayer: SQLite shared backend, SSH gateway, raw-TCP MUD interface, GMCP for Mudlet/MUSHclient/TinTin++, WebSocket browser terminal
  • Save System: JSON (single-player file backend) / SQLite (online) with autosave, in-place repair for bloated saves, and 7-day archived restore for permadeath
  • Website: Live stats API, SSE event feed, xterm.js terminal, real-time admin snoop, banned-IP / banned-account moderation tools, founder-statue hall, leaderboard
  • Discord bridge: Bidirectional /gos mirror, login/logout announcements, live #server-status embed, !who/!help commands
Project Structure
usurper-reborn/
├── Scripts/
│   ├── Core/           # Character, NPC, Item, Monster, GameEngine, GameConfig
│   ├── Systems/        # 160+ game systems
│   │   ├── OceanPhilosophySystem.cs
│   │   ├── AmnesiaSystem.cs
│   │   ├── CompanionSystem.cs
│   │   ├── GriefSystem.cs
│   │   ├── SevenSealsSystem.cs
│   │   ├── StoryProgressionSystem.cs
│   │   ├── PuzzleSystem.cs
│   │   ├── EndingsSystem.cs
│   │   ├── GuildSystem.cs
│   │   ├── WorldBossSystem.cs
│   │   ├── PermadeathHelper.cs
│   │   └── ... (many more)
│   ├── BBS/            # BBS door mode (DropFileParser, SocketTerminal, BBSTerminalAdapter)
│   ├── Server/         # MudServer, PlayerSession, GroupSystem, MudChatSystem, GmcpBridge
│   ├── Locations/      # 30+ game locations
│   ├── AI/             # NPC AI (Brain, Memory, Goals, Emotions, Personality)
│   ├── Data/           # NPCs, Equipment, Monsters, Old Gods, FounderStatueData
│   └── UI/             # Terminal emulator, ANSI art, accessibility detection
├── Console/            # Bootstrap (Bootstrap/Program.cs), console engine and terminal
├── Localization/       # en.json, es.json, fr.json, hu.json, it.json
├── electron-client/    # Optional Electron graphical client (beta)
├── web/                # Website (index.html, ssh-proxy.js, admin.html, language packs)
├── DOCS/               # Documentation, release notes, BBS setup, server deployment, modding
├── docker/             # Docker images for the web proxy and nginx (docker-compose.yml is at the root)
└── .github/            # CI/CD workflows
Quest & Bounty System
  • Quest Hall: Central hub for viewing quests and bounties.
  • Starter Quests: 11 pre-made quests spanning levels 1-100.
  • Open Contract Bounties: Kill any NPC with a bounty and get paid immediately.
  • King's Bounties: The reigning monarch posts bounties on criminals and NPCs.
  • Auto-Refresh: Completed bounties are automatically replaced.
  • Difficulty Scaling: Easy / Medium / Hard / Extreme tiers.
Achievement System

79 achievements across Combat, Progression, Economy, Exploration, Social, and Challenge categories. Tier-scaled Fame rewards. Server-wide broadcasts for Gold-tier and above unlocks. Steam achievements wired through the same path.

Statistics Tracking

Total monsters killed, gold earned, time played, peak gold, deepest dungeon floor, quests completed, world boss kills, MVP count, achievements unlocked, and dozens of combat / economy / social counters.

Difficulty Modes
  • Easy: 150% XP, 75% monster damage, 150% gold
  • Normal: Standard balanced experience
  • Hard: 75% XP, 125% monster damage, 75% gold
  • Nightmare: 50% XP, 150% monster damage, 50% gold, permadeath
Family System
  • Marriage via the Church, multi-spouse polyamory supported.
  • Children inherit traits from both parents, age over real time (about 9.6 real hours per year, so about 7 real days to come of age).
  • Per-child stat bonuses (HP, Strength, Charisma, daily gold).
  • Coming-of-age at 18 turns children into adult NPCs that join the world.
  • Custody, divorce, infidelity, and child rearing all carry mechanical weight.
  • CK-style parenting (24 scenarios with moral choices that shape your child's alignment).
Game Preferences

Quick settings via the Preferences menu (compact, screen-reader, language, font size, date format, character/monster art, hide intimate scenes, etc.). All preferences saved per character. Main Street opens in the classic layout; the districts layout is a choice in Settings, and on the web client so is whether menu keys act on one press (the default) or wait for Enter. The Share combat data line (opt-in telemetry, see below) is there too; its answer covers the copy of the game, or the account on a BBS or server.

Estimated Playtime

PlaystyleHoursDescription
Casual40-60Main story, reach level 50-60, see one ending
Full Playthrough100-150All seals, all gods defeated, multiple endings
Completionist200-400All achievements, all companions, all quests, level 100, multiple NG+ cycles

Playtime varies based on difficulty mode and exploration style.

How to Connect (Online)

The official server is play.usurper-reborn.net. Multiple connection paths:

  • Browser: usurper-reborn.net with an embedded xterm.js terminal, or the full page client at /play/ (with a tap pad on phones). No install. Easiest for new players.
  • SSH: ssh usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net -p 4000 (gateway password play). Once connected, you'll see the in-game register/login screen.
  • MUD client: play.usurper-reborn.net 4000 raw TCP. Mudlet, MUSHclient, TinTin++, etc. GMCP enabled (live HP/MP/SP gauges, room info, character status, chat capture).
  • Steam: Usurper Reborn on Steam, use the in-game [O] Online Play menu.
  • Standalone client: Same as Steam, the [O] Online Play menu now opens a server picker (Official server pre-selected at [1], or [2] to enter a custom hostname/port for a friend's server).

Each player has 3 free resurrections. Once those run out, the next death is permanent: the character is erased server-wide and the news feed records it. (Single-player saves are unaffected by online permadeath.)

BBS Door Mode

Run Usurper Reborn as a door game on modern BBS software:

  • Auto-Detection: Reads DOOR32.SYS and auto-configures. No special flags needed for most setups.
  • Fully Tested: Synchronet (Standard I/O), EleBBS (Socket), Mystic BBS (Socket + SSH).
  • Should Work: WWIV, GameSrv, ENiGMA, Renegade (NFU stdio).
  • Native Winsock I/O: Bypasses .NET socket finalizers to fix the long-standing relaunch bug on EleBBS / Mystic.
  • DOOR32.SYS & DOOR.SYS: Both drop-file formats supported.
  • Multi-Node Support: Each node gets isolated session handling.
  • BBS-Isolated Saves: Saves stored per-BBS so users on different BBSes don't conflict.
  • CP437 Auto-Detection: Synchronet stdio mode automatically switches output encoding to CP437 for correct box-drawing.
  • SysOp Console: In-game admin console for player management, difficulty settings, MOTD, online-play toggle, the combat data sharing switch, and auto-updates.
  • In-Game Bug Reports: Players press ! to submit bug reports directly from a BBS session, posted to Discord with player context.
  • Cross-Platform: Windows x64/x86, Linux x64/ARM64, macOS.

Quick Setup for Sysops:

UsurperReborn --door32 <path>      # Just point it to your DOOR32.SYS
UsurperReborn --door32 <path> --online    # Local SQLite-backed shared world for THIS BBS's players
UsurperReborn --verbose            # Detailed debug output for troubleshooting

For detailed BBS setup, see DOCS/BBS_DOOR_SETUP.md.

BBS Online Play: A BBS player can pick [O] Online Play from the main menu to connect to the public game server (or any other Usurper Reborn server with a hostname they know). As of v0.60.8 the connection requires a normal username + password (the previous trusted-passthrough was removed for security; the BBS handle is pre