Our Vision

Reign MUX is a literary roguelike: a text-based, multiplayer world where every roll of the dice can change a life, and every life can found a dynasty. It’s part MUX, part RPG, part roguelike – a long-form story told through risky choices, brutal consequences, and the slow rise and fall of families in the ruined city-state of Cradle.

We’re building this for people who want stakes. People who enjoy character death as much as character victory; who care about scars, secrets, and legacies more than loot; who want their writing to actually matter in a shared world where competition and cooperation exist in equal measure.

This page exists to make a simple promise:

Reign will stay intentional, transparent, and high-impact. Big & bold, but never bloated.
Quality, tone, and consequence will always come first. Immersion and standards above all.

Why “Literary Roguelike”?

Most online roleplay worlds reset nothing and risk nothing. Characters grind for months, then shrug off consequences. They tell stories with no conclusion. Reign is the opposite.

Time marches forward. Years pass in real time; the city changes whether you log in or not. Actions have momentum, and neglect has a cost. Characters age, families grow, and the city declines.
Survival is hard, success is meaningful. Wounds, maiming, and death are always on the table in combat, plots, and @actions. When you win, it feels like you earned it.
Legacy outlives the character. Your bloodline, achievements, and artifacts can pass to future characters—yours or someone else’s. Death is not a reset button; it’s a handoff.

We want you to feel like you’re playing Crusader Kings in a living, written world: every scene a page, every week a new chapter, every death a story people actually remember.

The Spirit of Cradle

Reign takes place in Cradle, a monolithic crater-city carved into a dead colossus of stone and sorcery. Castes are cruelly defined through the harsh generational churn of life and death struggle:

Slaves & Lowborn fight, labor, and scramble just to see another sunrise.
Gentry are literate but landless, clawing their way upward with coin, courage, or quiet knives.
Nobles wage cold wars against each other under a new king’s rule, trying not to be the next house dragged into the dust. A single life can define the ebb and flow of your dynasty.

It’s a grimly lit, violent world of war, plague, famine, slavery, necromancy – but also of friendships, families, bastard dynasties and unlikely uprisings. Your character is one more ember thrown into that furnace. What you do with their brief life is the name of the game.

How Play Works (In Plain Terms)

While full rules live in their own section, our vision shapes every system:

d100 @checks. Actions are resolved with a Warhammer-style roll using stat + skill as your target, with degrees of success/failure and brutal criticals.
@actions as turns. Each in-game year (2 rl weeks), your character commits to a handful of risky @actions: political maneuvers, heists, expeditions, duels, work, worship, and worse. They cost resources and energy, and they always carry risk. Every victory and defeat defines your fate within a world in flux.
No grind. There is no mindless farming. We want a lean ruleset that pushes you toward scenes, choices, and consequences – not repeating the same command for hours.
Roleplay first. Mechanics exist to give weight to your writing and to resolve conflict fairly, never to replace the story. Every system is built to serve narrative, not the other way around.

If you like scheming for a whole week over a single decision, then rolling the bones and living with what happens, this is your home for impactful, fun storytelling.

Community, Whitelisting & Culture

Reign is not meant to be a giant open MMO. It’s a curated, whitelisted community.

We whitelist to protect three things:

Tone. Cradle is harsh, adult, and emotionally intense. We want mature players who embrace that without cruelty or edgelord nonsense; embracing loss, love, victory & vengeance in equal measure.
Trust. You will lose fights, lovers, children, and sometimes your head. We need players who can separate character conflict from OOC respect. Sometimes the dice will not roll in your favor.
Commitment. Time in Reign is precious. We value people who show up to write, accept consequences, and leave the world richer than they found it. This world is a living tapestry. Treat it with care, and leave it more detailed, articulate and strangely beautiful than when you first began your exploration.

Joining the whitelist isn’t about “proving you’re elite.” It’s about making sure we’re aligned on expectations: mature, collaborative, hungry for story, and comfortable with failure being part of the fun.

Support, Tears & Transparency

Reign is free-to-play at its core. You can create characters, join the world, and earn Tears, our in-game premium currency, simply by showing up and playing consistently. Good players are rewarded with it, particularly for embracing failure, death & defeat. This is how we keep things fair and transparent.

Patreon tiers exist for people who want to help keep the lights on and unlock extra faces:

Higher tiers open up new castes and options (Gentry, Nobility, special lineages and races).
Tears earned monthly can be spent on things like extra character slots, founding a landed dynasty, or unlocking prestige concepts—never on instant power or immunity from consequence.

The vision is simple:

Supporting Reign should feel like investing in a story you love, not paying to win it.

We will publish clear documentation on what each tier offers, what Tears can and can’t buy, and how we intend to keep the game fair for free and paid players alike. This is meant to improve the experience for everyone, not detract from the overall experience.

What We Promise You

If you join Reign MUX, we promise to:

Treat your time, creativity, and characters with respect.
Keep mechanics transparent and actively iterate with community feedback.
Encourage bold play and reward risk-taking, even (especially) when you fail.
Protect the tone and integrity of the setting, even if that means staying smaller.

In return, we ask that you:

Play like a co-author, not a main character.
Accept loss and setback as part of the experience.
Communicate like an adult, especially around intense themes.
Help us make this the kind of game you’ve always wanted to play.

If that sounds like the kind of world you want to build with us, you’re in the right place.

Request your invitation to an exclusive, whitelisted community.

Reign MUX: A Literary Roguelike