DOGMud — Delusions of Grandeur

Delusions of Grandeur is a text-based MUD set on Gaius, a colony world whose survivors have forgotten where they came from. A symbiotic organism called The Chrysalis infects the population, making belief literally become reality — it manifests as "magic," reshapes bodies into physical mutations, and slowly remakes the world around its hosts.

DOGMud is built on the engine but has been substantially extended: a distribution-based combat math, conviction-powered spellcasting, a 14-state grappling system, a living economy driven by caravans and foragers, NPCs that remember how you've treated them and faction reputation that travels between them, and a centralized messaging framework that paints every combat round in color-coded prose. Most of the world, all of the systems below, and the codebase architecture under them have been written specifically for DOGMud.

Combat sample from DOGMud's web client

The screenshot above is the chunk-7 messaging framework in action: per- swing weapon-band color (each weapon's narration in its own hue), a SKILL ADVANCEMENT banner mid-fight (spellcasting just advanced), the side-by-side minimap layout, and per-player line wrapping. See PATCH_NOTES.md for the full shipping log.

Systems

Combat

Distribution-based rolling. Every stat and skill check rolls a normal distribution around a target value via dice.RollStat, with a single RollSpread knob that rescales the variance across the whole engine. Z-scores feed crit (≥2σ) and fumble (≤−2σ) detection.
Three damage channels. Physical (Strength × weapon skill × weapon multiplier), magical (Willpower × spellcasting × spell multiplier), conviction (Charisma × rhetoric × 0.5). Each channel has its own mitigation field on armor and its own cap.
Multi-arm characters. Mutations (or the Extra Arms ladder) let a character wield up to six weapons simultaneously. The unified damage pipeline drains a single per-round AttackResult that carries per-swing analytics, defense-used flags, and per-line category tags for messaging.
Best-of-all defense. Dodge, parry, and block all roll independently each swing; the widest-margin defense wins. Stat- gapped fights still grant a configurable minimum defense floor.
Rich grappling. A 14-state Position FSM (Standing / Clinch / Mount / SideControl / Crucifix / Guard / etc.) with per-round opposed Strength + Unarmed-combat rolls driving a control axis. Position transitions cascade through threshold-triggered promotions; weapon reach matters (a longsword in mount swings short). Eat, drink, cast, flee — most non-grapple actions get gated or interrupted from controlled positions.

Magic & Mutations

Conviction-powered spellcasting. Spells cost conviction (not mana), accumulate folds over wait-rounds, and resolve through a per-school category pipeline.
Five schools. Elemental (fire / ice / lightning damage), Enhancement (buffs / shields), Mental (charm / illusion), Vital (heal / cure), Manifestation (summon / raise).
Spell deflection + concentration. Defenders roll to partially or fully unravel incoming spells. Position-aware concentration checks (chunk 4f) replace the old "knocked down = guaranteed fizzle" gate with Willpower-mediated odds; strong-willed casters can sometimes finish a spell from underneath.
The mutation graph. The Chrysalis reshapes players and creatures through a use-based cluster graph rather than a flat pool: nine identity clusters (Colossus, Ironhide, Ravener, Stalker, Ethereal, Manifester, Zealot, Weaver, Trickster) arranged in a Body/Belief ring around a generalist Center and a crafter's path, stitched by shared bridge nodes. The skills you use drift your affinity toward matching clusters; mutations unlock keystone-by-keystone along prerequisite spines toward a single earned apex transformation each. Species carry themed intrinsic kits (a wraith is Ethereal, a golem Colossus); machines are mutation-immune. Progression is entirely use-based — no picking from a menu, no levels.

NPC Aliveness

Opinion store. Every NPC remembers how individual players have treated them (attacks, gifts, quest outcomes), banded into tiers with anchored half-life decay. Reputation isn't reset on logout.
Faction system. NPCs are tagged into factions (thornwall_guards, warren, etc.) with ally/enemy graphs and shared reputation. Attacking one warren mob bumps your rep with every warren mob; quest outcomes can shift entire factions.
Crime / wanted state. Witnessed assaults and thefts persist as crimes with faction-scoped resolution. Guards remember; bounties accumulate.
Disposition decay. A configurable half-life smooths out short-term spikes — punching a guard hard once doesn't permanently brand you a criminal across the realm.

Living Economy

Dynamic vendor pricing. Shop stock and demand drive prices on a 0.25× – 5× curve. Overstock = bargain; near-empty = inflated.
Per-vendor specialization. Shops have category tags (food, weapons, alchemy reagents, etc.) and stock caps that scale with item rarity tier.
Caravans + foragers. Six-mob caravans physically haul goods between Thornwall and Stillwater. Three foragers gather raw materials in the wild (Tova / Halix / Kessa) and deliver them to local shops. Stock isn't conjured from thin air — supply chains matter.
Crafter output. Player-crafted items can be sold to participating shops as supply.

Stats, Skills & Progression

Six stats. Strength, Dexterity, Perception, Vitality, Willpower, Charisma — all centered at 100 (human baseline). Soft cap with diminishing returns above 150.
Nine skills. Use-based progression only — no XP, no levels. Every skill use rolls a chance to advance; the chance bends down past the soft cap. Skills cap softly at 50.
Three moons (Swiftmoon, The Wanderer, The Eye) orbit Gaius, modulating stat values by phase. The Eye specifically tunes Perception → folds-per-round for mutated traditional casters.
Resource depletion penalties. Smooth curve: stamina drains hit rate + attack count, health drains melee damage, conviction drains taunt + spell damage. No hard cutoffs.

Crafting, Alchemy, Salvage

Five trades. Tailoring, blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, alchemy, ... each gated by skill rank + ingredient component tags.
Alchemy with aging + toxicity. Witcher-flavored potions ferment, peak, decline, and spoil over rounds. Toxicity accumulates and decays; over the threshold, you suffer regen + perception + dexterity penalties.
Bottle tiers. Clay flask (fast aging) → glass vial (baseline) → sealed phial (half) → crystalline decanter (quarter). Choice of bottle is a real tradeoff between alchemist skill and patience.
Salvage. Break crafted items (or items tagged with salvage_returns) down to raw materials. Multi-round activity gated by Perception + Salvage skill.

World

Roughly 515 rooms across 21 zones. Sanctum Basin (the starter zone), Thornwall City, Stillwater, Ironwind Steppe, Fernway and Fernway South, Dustwalk, the Labyrinth, North Road, Lake Iron, Stillwater Marsh, plus instanced arenas and planar oases.
226 mobs + 41 species. Each mob carries a default disposition, optional faction membership, idle behavior tree, and (for hostile archetypes) drop tables.
21 quests running through the quest engine — branching dialogue, flag-based state, faction-aware grants, multi-step task chains.

State Machines (chunks 0-6)

Seven FSMs underpin character behavior:

Combat Phase — Idle / Engaging / Engaged / EndOfRound, surprise attack handshake
Awareness — Unaware / Concealing / Hidden / Revealing / Visible
Life — Alive / Dead / Respawning (different paths for players vs mobs)
Activity — what the character is busy doing (crafting / casting / consuming / etc.)
Position — the 14-state grappling taxonomy described above
Presence — Active / Idle / AFK / Dormant; mob hibernation when no players nearby; AFK players in safe rooms are un-attackable
Perception — Sighted / Blinded; consumed by the messaging pipeline's sight gate

Most are invisible to the player but underpin every interaction between characters and the world.

Messaging Framework (chunk 7)

Every player-facing line of text routes through one pipeline: compose → normalize → anonymize → color → wrap → deliver.

Color-coded combat. Each swing colored by weapon damage band (warhammer warm orange-brown, sword dusty rose, claws dark red, bows sky blue, wands lavender, fists sandy brown). Defenses in greens (dodge / parry / block).
Five-school spell palette. Elemental red, enhancement gold, vital sage, mental lavender, manifestation rose pink. Fold-cast lifecycle in steel-cyan; disruptions in amber.
Progression banners. Skill and stat advancements render as boxed banners with a tier-crossing line on quality-band transitions.
Per-player line wrapping. set linewidth N (40–240). ANSI-aware: color tags don't count against the budget.
Infrared anonymization. Players with infrared vision in a dark room see "red figures" instead of named characters.

Companions & AI

Player-summoned companions with two AI archetypes (tank, damage), auto-follow, regen ticking, and combat assist.
Mob behavior trees for hostile / lookout / forager / caravan / shopkeeper archetypes — each with its own decision logic.
Autonomous AI tester characters. Three test roles (feature-tester, bug-finder, feel-tester) connect to the MUD via LLM-driven agents and play the game to surface bugs and UX issues.

Admin & Operator Tooling

Faction list / show / set / bump / reset
Opinion show / set / bump / reset
Economy health dashboard (/admin/economy/)
Knowledge subsystem for tracking who knows what
Live combatstats for per-character analytics

Connecting

Telnet: connect to localhost on port 33333 with a telnet client.

Web client:

Default credentials for a fresh checkout: username admin, password password.

Environment Variables

When running the server, several environment variables alter behavior:

CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/alternative/config.yaml — Path to a config containing only values you wish to override, so you don't have to modify the original config.yaml.
LOG_PATH=/path/to/log.txt — Write all logs to a specific file (default: stderr).
LOG_LEVEL={LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH} — Verbosity. Log files rotate every 100MB.
LOG_NOCOLOR=1 — Strip color from log output.

Documentation

world.md — full world-design document (lore, factions, zones, species).
DEVELOPMENT_PLAN.md — current implementation roadmap.
PATCH_NOTES.md — dated shipping log; see this for the chronological detail of what was added when.
MOB_ALIVENESS_ROADMAP.md — long-term roadmap for NPC memory, schedules, motivations, equipment- awareness, and mob/player command parity.

Built on GoMud

DOGMud is built on , an open-source MUD engine written in Go by . GoMud provides the networking, templating, scripting, web-client, and world-loader engine that DOGMud builds upon. If you're interested in building your own MUD, the original project is well worth checking out:

GoMud Guides

GoMud Feature Demos

ANSI Colors

Colorization is handled through extensive use of .

Why Go?

Why not? Go gives us:

Compatible — high compatibility across platforms and CPU architectures.
Fast — both runtime and build.
Opinionated — established style + patterns.
Modern — relatively new, without decades of accumulated complexity.
Upgradable — Go's backward-compatibility promise keeps upgrades painless.
Statically linked — if you have the binary, you have the working program.
No central registries — library includes straight from their repos.
Concurrent — concurrency built in as a language feature, not a library.

Delusions of Grandeur

About Delusions of Grandeur