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Getting Started

What Rogue is, how to connect to it, and what to expect in your first session.

Rogue is a MUD: a persistent fantasy world played entirely through text. You type what you want to do, and the game describes what happens. There are no graphics and nothing to install. Everything the world knows about, it tells you in words.

The world is shared. Other players are in it at the same time as you, and the things you do stay done. Characters are saved between sessions, the market runs on player money, and reputation follows you across every realm.

Connecting#

There are two ways in, and they connect to the same world with the same characters.

The browser client at rogue-mud.com/play is the recommended route. It opens full screen, needs no download, and gives you the panel interface described in Interface: a live map, a character sheet, an inventory list, cooldown timers and a skill bar bound to the function keys. Sign in with a Rogue account and your session carries straight through.

If you prefer your own client, Rogue accepts ordinary telnet connections at rogue-mud.com port 6666, and at port 4000 as well. Any MUD client will do. You lose the panels, but the game itself is identical, and the server negotiates terminal size and colour with clients that support it.

Both ports lead to the same game, so use whichever connects. Try 4000 first if 6666 never answers: ports 6666 to 6669 are the old IRC range, and a lot of home routers, workplace networks and internet providers block them outright. That block happens before anything reaches Rogue, so a client pointed at 6666 sits there timing out while the browser client, which uses an ordinary secure web connection, works perfectly on the same machine.

Turn on your client's window-size reporting if it has one. MUSHclient calls it "Send window size changes to server" and Mudlet has it on already. Rogue draws its framed panels to the width your client reports, so with it on the display fits your window exactly, and without it the game has to assume 80 columns.

An account is free. You can play without one, but you will be asked to register before you pass level 10, and an account is what links several characters together under one login.

Your first session#

The very first thing the game asks for is a name, and it is worth thinking about before you type. Rogue enforces a naming policy: original names that suit a dark fantasy world, and nothing drawn from books, films, games, memes or real history. You will be asked to agree to it before creation continues.

After that you build the character. That process is covered in detail in Character Creation, but the short version is that you choose a race, roll and accept a spread of seven statistics, describe your character's appearance, and pick the background they lived before the game began. You do not choose a class yet.

Every new character begins as an Explorer, and Explorer runs from level 1 to level 10. That first stretch is meant to be spent in the Training Grounds beneath the Explorer's Guild in Aurin, learning to fight somewhere that death costs you nothing. Once you reach level 10 you choose the class you actually want and join its guild.

You start at sea, on the deck of the ship bringing you to Aurin, carrying a Tideglass Compass, a Grim Satchel and a handful of silver. You are met at the dock and walked to the Explorer's Guild; a run of short chapters takes it from there, and quest always names what to do next. First Steps walks through what to do from there.

The commands you need on day one#

look describes the room you are in again. north, south, east, west, up and down move you, and most clients let you abbreviate them to a single letter. inventory lists what you are carrying. score shows your character sheet, and hp gives the short version of your health, spell points and endurance. who lists everyone online.

help is the largest thing in the game. help newbie is written for exactly this moment, and help <topic> reaches several hundred others. The tips command controls the short pointers the game offers as you play: tips now gives you one immediately and tips off silences them.

A bare ? is the fastest thing to type when you are lost. It prints a panel describing the stage you are actually at and the exact commands to type next; guide is its long form.

chat <message> speaks on the global channel. New characters are put on it automatically, and asking a question there is usually the fastest way to get an answer.

quit saves and leaves cleanly. Use it rather than closing the window, so your character is written to disk before the connection drops.

Where to go next#