USURPER
REBORN

THE 1993 BBS CLASSIC, REBUILT

The town of Dorashire does not wait for you. Its people marry, raise children, grow old, scheme, and remember what you did -- to them, and to their parents. Beneath their streets lies a 100-floor dungeon; sealed within it, seven broken gods who would rather talk than fight. This is a text RPG where the world carries on without you, where death is permanent, and where your name -- for glory or for infamy -- is carved in stone.

No download. No signup. Two minutes from now you will be fighting for your life.

Also on Steam · Download for Windows / Linux / macOS · Play over SSH or telnet

If you remember the shriek of a 14.4k modem handshake: welcome home. If you don't: this is the kind of world we fought over before MMOs existed, and it has lost none of its teeth.

usurper-reborn.net
Click "Play Now" to connect...

// THE WORLD, RIGHT NOW

What follows is not a screenshot. It is a live window into a running world. Every name below belongs to someone the simulation is living for at this very moment, with or without an audience.

Loading world data...

// WHY I MADE THIS

The short version.

I grew up dialing into BBSes on a 14.4k modem. Most people remember LORD. I remember Usurper. It was deeper, weirder, harder. Jakob Dangarden wrote it in Turbo Pascal in 1993 and open-sourced it under the GPL in 2004. I found the source code years later and couldn't stop thinking about what it could be with modern tools. That turned into this project.

The World Keeps Going

This was the thing I most wanted to get right. The NPCs aren't just standing around waiting for you to show up. They've got birthdays, personalities, opinions. They get married on their own, have kids, those kids grow up and become new NPCs. People die of old age. If you don't log in for a while, the town will look different when you come back -- people you knew might be gone, and there'll be new faces you've never seen. It's a bit like checking in on a fish tank, except the fish have drama.

NG+ That Isn't Just Harder Numbers

When you beat the game, it loops. But the NPCs start to remember. First cycle it's subtle -- "Have we met before?" By cycle three they're asking uncomfortable questions about why everything feels like it already happened. The five endings aren't ranked by difficulty. They're five different takes on the same problem, and honestly I don't think any of them are "the right one."

The Gods Talk To You

There are seven bosses sealed in the dungeon, but they're not really bosses. They're gods who used to mean something and got corrupted. Before you fight each one, they'll talk to you, and your dialogue choices actually change the combat -- different stat modifiers, different abilities. The guy at the very bottom of floor 100 doesn't even want to fight. He's just tired and he has a question for you. What you tell him determines how the game ends.

Why Text

The original was a text game and this is a text game. I get asked about this a lot. Partly it's staying true to the source material, but honestly, some of the stuff in this game hits harder as words on a screen at 2am than it would as a cutscene. There's also a shared online server where other players' choices affect the same world, and you can play from literally anything with a terminal -- browser, SSH client, telnet, even an actual BBS.

Free. No ads, no microtransactions, no loot boxes.
GPL v2 licensed. Source code is on GitHub if you want to look at it or fork it.

Server's up 24/7. Drop in whenever.

// A WORLD THAT REMEMBERS YOU

Most games build a world that waits for the player. This one does not. Six truths that hold here and almost nowhere else:

Everyone you meet is living a life

Every citizen carries a personality, goals, memories, and a mind of their own. They shop, train, fall in love, pick fights, and mount their own expeditions into the dungeon, whether or not anyone is logged in to witness it.

Grudges outlive you

Kill a man in a dark alley and the matter does not end there. His daughter will grow up knowing your name, and she will not forget it. Some remember across your lifetimes; in New Game+, they begin remembering things they should not be able to.

Families, not spawn points

The townsfolk marry, raise children, grow old, and die of it; their children inherit the shop. So can yours: court someone, raise heirs, and when you finally fall, your estate passes to your eldest, who remembers exactly how you raised them.

Death is real

Online, you carry a small number of lives. Lose the last of them and your character is erased: mourned in the town news, the name carved forever into the Temple's Hall of the Fallen, the heirloom passed to whoever comes after. Consequence is the entire point. A game without stakes teaches nothing.

The gods want to talk first

Seven bosses guard the descent, and every one of them has something to say before the fighting starts. What you answer changes the battle itself. And the thing waiting at the bottom of floor 100 does not want to fight at all. It has one question, and your answer is the ending.

The world writes its own history

Marriages, murders, births, coups, plagues: a running chronicle of events, most of which no player caused. Scroll up to the live window. It is being written right now, mid-sentence.

Beneath all of that stands everything the 1993 original had: 12 classes, 10 races, 75 spells, throne politics, factions, PvP, a shared economy, and a 100-floor dungeon that stops being polite around floor 50.

// THE STORY

The setup. No spoilers past what you learn in the first hour.

~ The Golden Age ~

There used to be seven gods watching over the world. The god of war taught honor in battle. The goddess of love blessed unions. The god of light kept truth alive. Things were good, or at least the legends say they were. Nobody alive remembers it firsthand.

~ The Sundering ~

Then something went catastrophically wrong. Nobody agrees on what exactly happened -- maybe mortals got too proud, maybe one of the gods betrayed the others. The result was the same either way: all seven gods were corrupted and imprisoned underground. The war god lost his mind. The love goddess started fading. The god of truth went quiet. One by one, they all broke.

~ The Age of Avarice ~

Centuries later, the old gods are just stories people tell to scare kids. The dungeon where they're sealed -- the Halls of Avarice -- became a place where adventurers go to get rich or die trying. Most of them are just there for gold and glory. But some of them, if they go deep enough, start hearing things. Voices in the dark, from something very old, calling them further down.

~ You ~

You show up with nothing. Pick a race, pick a class, figure the rest out as you go. Fight monsters in the dungeon, make friends or enemies in town, get involved in local politics, maybe fall in love. If you get strong enough you can challenge the king for his throne. If you go deep enough you'll find out what's actually down there. The gods at the bottom will talk to you before the fight, and what you say matters. The whole ending changes depending on those conversations.

// THE SEVEN OLD GODS

Seven gods sealed in the dungeon. Each one used to stand for something. Now they're broken. You decide what happens to them.

Floor 25

Maelketh

The Broken Blade
War & Conquest

First one you'll run into. Used to represent honorable combat. His mind's gone now, he just fights on loop. Doesn't even know why anymore. Depending on what you say to him beforehand, the fight plays out very differently.

Floor 40

Veloura

The Withered Heart
Love & Passion

She's fading. Not angry about it, just... going away. You can save her if you prove something to her, but I won't spoil what.

Floor 55

Thorgrim

The Hollow Judge
Law & Order

God of justice turned tyrant. His arguments are technically correct and completely deranged at the same time. You can try to reason with him if you want. Good luck.

Floor 70

Noctura

The Shadow Weaver
Shadow & Secrets

You've actually been running into her the whole game in various disguises. She orchestrated most of what happened to you. Won't say more than that.

Floor 85

Aurelion

The Fading Light
Light & Truth

Used to be the god of truth. He gets weaker every time someone lies in the realm above. By the time you reach him he can barely talk.

Floor 95

Terravok

The Sleeping Mountain
Earth & Endurance

He's been asleep. For a very long time. The oldest of all seven. Waking him up is an option, but "should you" is the actual question.

Floor 100

Manwe

The Weary Creator
Creation & Balance

He made everything. He's at the bottom of the whole dungeon and he doesn't want to fight. He's just tired of existing and he has one question for you. Your answer is the ending of the game. This is the encounter I spent the most time writing.

// CHOOSE YOUR SHAPE

12 classes, 10 races, and 5 prestige classes reserved for those who have seen an ending. There is no meta and there are no wrong answers: a Troll Shaman and a Gnome Assassin are both honorable careers here.

Warrior -- steel and stubbornness
Paladin -- the shield that prays
Barbarian -- anger as a strategy
Ranger -- death from a distance
Assassin -- one knife, no witnesses
Magician -- glass cannon, real cannon
Cleric -- keeps everyone breathing
Sage -- knows too much
Bard -- fights with a song
Jester -- chaos, grinning
Alchemist -- science, loosely
Mystic Shaman -- storms and totems

Races: Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Troll, Orc, Gnome, Gnoll, Hobbit, Mutant. Yes, Mutant. Trolls regenerate. Gnolls bite.

See an ending and five prestige classes open on your next life: Tidesworn, Wavecaller, Cyclebreaker, Abysswarden, Voidreaver. Each one is shaped by the ending you chose.

// COMPANIONS

Five recruitable NPCs with their own quest lines. They fight with you in the dungeon and they can permanently die, which matters more than you'd think.

Lyris

The Wandering Star
She knows things she shouldn't know. Talks in riddles sometimes, which is annoying until you realize she's usually right. There's a reason she doesn't age.
Was a priestess of Aurelion before the gods got corrupted. She's been wandering since, looking for a way to fix things. She's the only companion you can romance and there's a reason for that, but it's a spoiler.
Hybrid (Magic/Healer) Recruits: Level 15 Romance: Available
"There is something... familiar about you."

Aldric

The Unbroken Shield
Old soldier. Covered in scars. Doesn't talk about what happened to his unit but he's clearly carrying it. Earliest companion you can recruit (level 10) and probably the most reliable one in combat.
Used to be captain of the King's Guard. Everyone under his command died in a demonic incursion. He made it out. He'll protect you because that's all he knows how to do anymore.
Tank Recruits: Level 10 Quest: Ghosts of the Guard
"I've failed people before. I won't fail you."

Mira

The Faded Light
Your healer. She's good at it. She doesn't believe in anything anymore but the muscle memory is still there. There's a quest line about whether she finds her faith again or not, and it goes to some dark places.
Healer at Veloura's temple her whole life. When the goddess got corrupted, the healers in the temple turned on each other. Mira escaped but she left everything she believed in behind.
Healer Recruits: Level 20 Quest: The Meaning of Mercy
"I heal because I don't know what else to do. Is that enough?"

Vex

The Laughing Shadow
Thief. Funny guy. Makes jokes about everything including dying. You eventually find out why he's like that and it's not a funny reason. Last companion you unlock (level 25) and he hits hard.
He was born with a wasting disease. He's been slowly dying his entire life. He deals with it by stealing things and laughing about everything. His quest line ("One More Sunrise") has a time limit and it's real.
Damage Recruits: Level 25 Quest: One More Sunrise
"Life's too short to take seriously. Trust me, I know."

Melodia

The Songweaver
A bard who runs the Music Shop until you convince her to travel with you. Her songs buff the whole party in a fight. Support and healing wrapped in performance.
She lost the other half of a duet a long time ago and has been chasing an unfinished song ever since. Her quest line, "The Lost Opus," is about finishing it. Recruit her from the Music Shop once you are established.
Support (Bard/Hybrid) Recruits: Music Shop Quest: The Lost Opus
"Every song needs an ending. Even mine."

// FIVE ENDINGS

Not listed here. Deliberately.

The game ends when you answer the Weary Creator's question at the bottom of floor 100. There are five answers. Power is one. Compassion is another. Two of them cannot be reached until the world has looped and the people in it begin to remember that it looped. No one agrees on which ending is the right one; the man who wrote them does not agree with himself. That is the design.

Each ending you reach unlocks a prestige class for your next life. The loop is the game.

// HISTORY

How a 1993 BBS door game became this.

BBSes (1978-1999)

If you're under 35 you probably missed this entirely. Before the web, people ran Bulletin Board Systems out of their houses. You'd use your phone line to dial into someone else's computer with a modem. It made this awful screeching noise during the handshake and then you were in -- ANSI art, message forums, file downloads, games. There were something like 25,000 BBSes in the US by 1992, each one run by a "SysOp" on a dedicated phone line in their spare bedroom.

Door Games

BBSes could run external programs called "door games." Totally text-based, running over a phone line at 2400-14400 baud, and you only got limited play time per day because other callers needed the line. The constraints were insane by modern standards, but that's exactly what made people creative. Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, Usurper -- these games had persistent worlds where what one caller did today affected what the next caller found tomorrow. Before the term "MMO" existed, these were it.

Usurper (1993)

Jakob Dangarden wrote it in Turbo Pascal. LORD was the big one at the time, but Usurper went way deeper -- real class differences, 10 races, a 100-level dungeon, team warfare, throne politics, complex progression. Set in Dorashire, you explored the Dungeons of Durunghins and the whole point was to get powerful enough to take the throne. It was harder and darker than most door games. Not as popular as LORD but the people who played it really played it.

Who Kept It Alive

Jakob Dangarden open-sourced Usurper under the GPL in 2004. Can't overstate how important that was -- without that, this remake literally could not exist.

Rick Parrish at R&M Software ported the Turbo Pascal source to run on modern systems. He also wrote GameSrv, which is the BBS server software that a lot of the surviving door game community still runs on. Huge amount of work.

Daniel Zingaro did a ton of bug fixing on the ancient Pascal code. Edge cases from 1993 that nobody had bothered to track down until he went through it methodically. Version 0.20e is stable because of him.

Usurper Reborn (2024-Now)

I (Jason Knight) started this project because I kept coming back to Usurper and thinking about what it could've been if the 90s hardware constraints weren't a factor. The original game had so much going on under the hood -- race mechanics, class abilities, political systems -- but the BBS environment limited how far any of it could go. I wanted to see what happened if you took that foundation and built on it with modern tools.

It's written in C# on .NET 8.0. All the original gameplay is in there. Then I added about 60 unique NPCs with an autonomous world simulation, a companion system, New Game+ where the NPCs gradually become aware of the loop, seven god encounters with branching dialogue, and five endings. The world simulation runs on the server 24/7 and keeps going whether anyone's logged in or not. It still runs on BBSes too -- there are a couple boards on the BBS list below that have it installed as a door game right now.

// PLAY

► Play in Browser

No install, no download. Opens a terminal right here in your browser.

► SSH (Recommended)

Best experience. Use any terminal or MUD client that supports SSH.

ssh usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net -p 4000 click to copy

Password: play / then login or register in-game

► Telnet

For MUD clients that don't do SSH. Unencrypted but works fine.

telnet play.usurper-reborn.net 4000 click to copy

No password needed / login or register at the welcome screen

► Download

Standalone builds for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Play offline or connect to the online server.

Latest Release on GitHub

► Steam

Usurper Reborn is available on Steam. Includes bundled terminal and fonts.

Get on Steam

► The Observatory

Track NPC relationships, personality data, demographics, and live events as they happen on the server.

Open Dashboard

// BBS LIST

BBSes that are running Usurper Reborn as a door game right now.

BBS Name Software Address
Shurato's Heavenly Sphere EleBBS shsbbs.net
The X-BIT BBS Synchronet x-bit.org :23 (telnet) / ssh -p 22222
The UNIX-BIT BBS Synchronet x-bit.org :1336 (telnet) / ssh -p 1337
Lunatics Unleashed Mystic lunaticsunleashed.ddns.net:2333
A-Net Online Synchronet bbs.a-net.online :1337 (telnet) / ssh -p 1338
Nite Eyes BBS Mystic bbs.lizardmaster.com
Looney Bin BBS - looneybinbbs.com:2023

Running Usurper Reborn on your board? Let me know and I'll add you.

// ROADMAP

Built in the open since 2024. The source, the issue tracker, and this list are public, and half of what ships begins as a player report. A plan is only as good as its execution; judge for yourself:

NOW -- Version 1.0 is live

The Beta label is off. Renewable lives and burst-death protection have broken the death spiral, five languages stand at full parity, the entire population runs on real AI brains, and the Hall of the Fallen keeps the names of the dead. The world is open, and it is running right now.

Launch week -- The crowning

A launch event on the live server: world bosses, a Blood Moon, and the crowning of the first monarch of the new age. If you played in the early days and drifted away, understand two things: the flaws that drove you off have been repaired, and your grudges are still remembered.

1.1 -- Gear worth coveting

The reward loop deepens: gear set bonuses, faction vendors with exclusive stock, allies who rally to your banner when your renown warrants it, and darker games in the Dark Alley for those who walk the other path.

Beyond

A graphical client already runs in the repository. More languages. And more of the world growing on its own: settlements, wilderness, families, and whatever the simulation surprises us with next. Bring ideas to Discord; they have a habit of shipping with your name in the release notes.

// THE TOWN OUTSIDE THE GAME

Small, friendly, and unusually effective: bug reports here become patches in days, and player ideas ship with credit. Come tell us how you died.

// SPONSORS

Free forever, GPL forever. No ads, no microtransactions. These people keep the server standing anyway. Thank you.

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Somewhere below floor 90, the god who made everything is waiting to ask you one question.

The town will remember your answer. So will their children.

or read the story first

// CREDITS

Jakob Dangarden

Original Creator (1993)

Wrote Usurper in Turbo Pascal. JAS Software. Made the decision to GPL it in 2004 which is the only reason any of this is possible.

Rick Parrish

Preservation & Porting

Ported the original Pascal to modern systems. Created GameSrv. If you've played a door game in the last 15 years, Rick's software was probably involved.

Daniel Zingaro

Bug Fixing

Went through the 1993 Pascal source line by line fixing bugs nobody else had bothered to track down. v0.20e is the stable version because of his work.

Jason Knight

Usurper Reborn

That's me. Built the C# remake, wrote all the story content, the NPC system, the world sim, the god encounters. Still actively developing it.

xbit

ANSI Art

Race and class portrait art seen during character creation. Beautiful ANSI art from x-bit.org.

Sudden Death

ANSI Tools

Creator of rez2ans, the ANSI conversion tool used to bring portrait art into the game.

Cozmo

ANSI Knowledge

ANSI art knowledge and guidance from Lunatics Unleashed.

fastfinge

Code Contributions

Community contributor helping improve the codebase.

maxsond

Code Contributions

Community contributor helping improve the codebase.

evanofficial

Code Contributions

Accessibility improvements including persistent screen reader preferences.

LowLevelJavaCoder

Code Contributions

Community contributor helping improve the codebase across many systems.

Coosh

Code Contributions

Community contributor. Found and fixed an XP-formula desync regression by tracing his own soft-locked Lv.73 character to 12 duplicated copies of the same function across the codebase, then centralizing them into one canonical implementation.

TestingBytes

Code Contributions

Community contributor helping polish the game's menus.

Thanks to every SysOp who kept a board running, and every kid who dialed in to explore Durunghins.

Join us on Discord