Getting Started

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

Rogue is a multiplayer fantasy game played through text commands. The game describes rooms, conversations and the results of what you do, and you answer by typing. The browser client adds a map and panels for equipment, skills and character information.

Characters and their progress are saved between sessions. Other players share the world with you, and creatures, resources and many encounters come back on the game's own reset timers.

Connecting#

There are two ways in. Both reach the same world and the same characters.

The browser client at rogue-mud.com/play is the easiest. It opens full screen, needs no download, and gives you the panels described in Interface: a live map, a character sheet, an inventory, cooldown timers and a skill bar on the function keys. If you are signed in to your Rogue account on the website, the client takes you straight to your characters without asking for a password again.

Any MUD client works too. Rogue takes ordinary telnet connections at rogue-mud.com port 6666 and port 4000. You lose the panels, but the game is the same, and the server asks a client that supports it for its window size and color support.

If port 6666 does not answer, try 4000. Some networks block the 6666 to 6669 range, and 4000 is the port those networks tend to allow. The browser client uses a secure web connection instead.

Turn on your client's window size reporting if it has one. MUSHclient calls it "Send window size changes to server"; Mudlet has it on already. Rogue draws its framed panels to the width your client reports. Without a report it assumes 80 columns.

An account is free. You make one by giving an email when you create your first character, or later in the game with account. It lets you sign in at rogue-mud.com, keeps all your characters under one login, and gets you back in if you lose a password.

Your first session#

Type the name you want at the first prompt. The game asks whether you are 16 or older and agree to the terms, and whether you use a screen reader. It then shows Rogue's naming rule: an original name that suits a world of gods and oaths, and nothing taken from books, films, games, memes or real history. You type agree to take the name.

From there you choose a password, an email if you want an account, your gender, your race, your body and looks, and the background your character lived before the game began. Character Creation goes through each question. You do not choose a class yet.

Every new character begins as an Explorer, from level 1 to level 10. That stretch is spent in and around the Training Grounds beneath the Explorer's Guild in Aurin, where a fight that goes wrong ends with Master Toren pulling you back to the Main Hall instead of a trip to the Underworld. At level 10 you join a guild. The Classes page explains the guilds and how to enter each one.

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

The commands you need on day one#

look describes the room again. north, south, east, west, up and down move you, and each has a one letter short form. inventory lists what you carry. score shows your character sheet, and hp gives the short version of your health, spell points and endurance. who lists everyone online.

help newbie covers the first commands, and help <topic> opens a reference page on any subject. tips controls the short pointers the game offers for your first thirty levels: tips now gives you one straight away and tips off silences them.

When you are lost, type ?. It prints a panel for the stage you have reached, with the commands to type next. guide is the long form.

New characters are put on two channels. newbie <message> asks a question of other players and staff, and chat <message> talks to everyone online.

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

Where to go next#

• Character Creation covers every question the game asks while you make a character, in order.
• First Steps covers the Training Grounds, your first fights, and getting to level 10.
• Interface covers the screen, the prompt, the client panels and the settings worth changing early.
• The World covers the five realms, the races and the places you can travel to.
• Classes covers the guilds you can join at level 10.