Features
Rome: The Eternal City is a world being actively built as a genuine recreation of the Roman Empire and the neighbors, allies, and enemies that surrounded it - and it includes features you won't find in many other MUDs. Whether you want to fight your way up through the arena, craft your way up through the markets, or simply live a story, there's a real place for you.
Race & Class
Six races and eight classes - forty-eight real combinations, and race and class both genuinely change how your character plays, not just how they look.
Four Core Stats
Virtus, Agilitas, Ingenium, and Vigor drive real combat math - melee damage, accuracy, dodge, spell power, and max HP/MP all trace back to these four numbers, not hidden behind the scenes. As you level, you earn points to spend on them yourself.
Race Shapes the Build
A Minotaur and a Harpy playing the same class feel different in a fight - each race pushes your stats in a different direction from the moment you're created. Five races already have a real, usable signature ability on top of that.
Eight Distinct Classes
From the shield-wall discipline of a Legionary to the curse-laced rituals of a Haruspex to the battlefield healing of a Medicus, every class has its own full kit of spells or skills. See them all on the Classes and Skills & Spells pages.
On the horizon: the remaining races' signature abilities - already described on the Races page - are still being built out into real, innate mechanics, not just flavor text on top of the stat bonuses.
A Real Combat System
This isn't roll-a-die-and-hope combat. Rome runs on a full turn-based system with initiative order, wielded weapons, worn armor, status conditions, usable items, and a real spellbook - all tracked live with an HP, MP, and SP prompt that updates after every action. Gear, class training, and stamina all genuinely matter, and opponents make real decisions on their turn instead of standing still and waiting to be hit.
Position matters too: front and back rows change who can be reached, with polearms and ranged weapons able to strike a protected back-row target and spells always reaching past the front line. Fights that go badly can be fled - but fleeing can fail, and even a clean escape costs you something.
Progression, Quests & Titles
A real leveling system tracks your growth from your first day onward - and there's more than one way to earn your reputation.
Rank Titles
From Novice to Legend, your rank is visible to everyone who checks who's online - a permanent, public marker of how far you've come.
Real Achievements
From your first kill to escaping the Colosseum itself, real milestones are tracked and announced the moment you earn them - visible, permanent proof of what you've actually done.
Earned Titles
Achievements, quests, and true devotion to a god can each earn you a title that shows beside your name - a story you can wear, not just a number.
Quests With Named NPCs
Over a dozen one-time, story-driven quests from named characters across the city - some a single errand, some a multi-step chain. Each is open to everyone, and a matching class earns a little extra recognition. Errands that are all talking and travel are open to every kind of character.
The Bounty Board
For those who do want a fight: a repeatable board of hunting targets with real rewards, separate from the one-time quests.
Real Stakes
Combat here asks for real judgment, not just a panic button. Movement costs stamina over distance, so a long journey needs planning and rest stops.
Death, Companions & Camaraderie
Death Has Real Weight
Newer characters get a second chance - the gods aren't done with them yet. Seasoned characters face the Underworld itself: a real, explorable land of the dead with two genuine ways back - solve a riddle yourself, or find a healer willing to cross over and bring you home.
Companions & Pets
Certain classes can call a spirit, familiar, or beast to fight at their side, each with its own signature trick - and any character of enough standing can buy a permanent companion pet that follows them everywhere until it falls or is dismissed.
Stronger Together
A real party system rewards grouping up with a genuine XP bonus for fighting as a team, not just a shared kill count.
Not Here to Fight? Play a Pacifist
Some of the best stories in Rome never involve a sword. Choose pacifism and you step out of combat entirely - for good - while the whole city, and a real way to level, stays open to you. Built for players who want to focus on roleplay.
Genuinely Safe
A pacifist can never attack, and can never be attacked, by another player or any creature - anywhere. The wilderness roads, duels, ambushes: none of it can touch you. Roads that ambush other travelers simply leave you alone.
A Weighty, Permanent Choice
Like joining a faction, this is a real commitment, not a setting you flip back and forth. You'll see exactly what it costs before anything happens, and only a god can restore your right to fight afterward. It can't be chosen by anyone who has ever killed another player, mid-fight, or right after one.
Laying Down Arms
Every weapon and piece of armor you carry comes off, and you can never wield a weapon or wear armor again. What you can wear is clothing - and the Forum's tailor sells plain robes and tunics for exactly that. She'll be honest that they won't stop a blade.
Escape Without a Fight
Every character begins locked in the Colosseum's holding cells, and there's always a way out that never touches combat: sneak past the guard, then solve the riddle you find. No sword required.
Explore, Talk, Roleplay
The whole city is yours to walk. Quests built on visiting and talking are open to you, kill quests are simply never offered, and every social and roleplay system works exactly the same as it does for anyone else.
Your Skills Still Count
Not every spell and skill needs a fight. Anything that isn't combat-only still works for you, and the game tells you which is which before you spend a coin learning it. A built-in guide even points a pacifist toward what to do next, instead of toward the arena.
A pacifist levels through crafting, below - a real, repeatable path from your first day. In-game, help pacifism has the full details.
Crafting: Gather, Craft, Sell
A real, repeatable way to earn gold and experience without swinging a weapon - open to every character, and the natural path forward for pacifists.
Go and Find It
Timber and healing herbs turn up in the woods flanking the wilderness road out of Rome; iron ore lies deep in a sprawling mine at the Germanic Stronghold. Walking somewhere never guarantees a find - keep exploring until the game tells you something is there to take. (The road has its own dangers, unless you're a pacifist.)
Work at a Real Workshop
Crafting happens in a real place. Smiths work at the forge in the Germanic Stronghold's Smithy; herbalists brew at the apothecary's mortar in the Subura's Market Row. Just say what you want to make - the game finds your materials in your pack.
Two Professions
Faber turns iron ore and timber into weapons and armor - a shortsword, a lorica, a war-spear. Herbalist turns healing herbs into potions - a healing tonic, an antidote. Each has its own skill that only grows by practicing it.
Skill You Can Feel
Your craft is described in words, not numbers - from bad through poor and average to superb, and finally mastered. A failed attempt keeps your materials and still teaches you something, so there's never nothing to show for trying.
Tiers That Reward Ambition
Each profession's first recipe is free for anyone to try - no gold, no teacher. Harder recipes are learned in person from a trainer. A tougher recipe makes a stronger item and pays a better reward, so grinding the easy work forever gets you nowhere.
Sell Where It Pays
Sell your work to any merchant - crafted goods pay both gold and experience. Go farther from Rome and merchants pay more, and a merchant who deals in your kind of goods (a weaponsmith for arms and armor, an apothecary for potions) pays a bonus on top.
On the horizon: more professions, and a player-to-player marketplace where you can leave goods for sale while you're away. In-game, see help crafting, help faber, and help herbalist.
Built for Storytellers
Rome is a roleplay-enforced world, and the tools are built around that.
Descriptions, Masks & Recognition
Characters are known by short descriptions until someone learns their name, and a mask can keep you a stranger. Who you are can be something you reveal, not just a label above your head.
Languages You Have to Learn
Several languages can be learned from real teachers around the city. Speak one that a listener doesn't know, and all they hear is a scramble of sound.
Socials & Mail
Eighty single-word social commands - smile, wave, bow, and many more - keep small gestures effortless, and in-game mail lets characters write to one another, online or not.
Factions, Cults & Divine Devotion
Eight Orders and Cults already have a real place in the world, from the disciplined ranks of the Imperial Legion to the banned, ecstatic rites of the Cult of Bacchus. See who's who on the Factions page.
Real, Weighty Membership
Joining a faction or cult in-game is a genuine, permanent commitment, not a cosmetic label - once you're in, only that faction's own leader (or a god) can release you. Membership grants its own small set of abilities on top of whatever your race and class already give you.
Devotion to the Gods
Beyond Orders and Cults, you can devote yourself directly to one of the pantheon's fourteen gods. Real devotion brings real, tangible favor - Mars sharpens a devotee's blade, Mercury sweetens a deal, Apollo's touch heals deeper, and Pluto's faithful face a lighter hand from death itself.
On the Horizon: More Gods, More Blessings
Not every god rewards devotion with a concrete mechanical blessing yet - expanding that roster of real, tangible favor is ongoing.
The World: Recreating Rome
Rome isn't a handful of static rooms - it's a real place, built to be walked through, not just described. Over eight hundred rooms and counting, from the arena floor to the edge of the known world.
The Colosseum & the Ludus
A genuine multi-level landmark, from the tunnels and animal dens of the Hypogeum beneath the sand, up through every tier of seating - senators closest to the action, the poorest citizens highest and most exposed. Beside it, the gladiators' training school, and the deeper sands for those who last.
Rome Proper
The Forum Romanum and the Capitoline Hill with its temples and Senate, the crowded Subura, Trajan's Market and the great Library, the Aventine, the Palatine, the Baths, the Pantheon and the Campus Martius, and the homes of noble families - each a real district to walk through.
Beneath the City
Nero's buried Golden House lies under the hill, the Cloaca Maxima's sewers run in real, ever-deeper tiers beneath the streets, and the Underworld waits for those who fall.
Beyond the Walls
Through the Porta Flaminia, a long and dangerous wilderness road leads to the Germanic Stronghold - four rival warbands and a sacred grove - and, farther still, the Amber Coast, a harbor town at the edge of the known world.
A Work in Progress, by Design
The ambition is every major landmark of ancient Rome, built district by district rather than faked with placeholder rooms. A great deal of it stands today - and there's plenty still to come.
Built to Last Beyond Rome
The road out of Rome has already begun to reach past the city's own walls, and the long-term vision extends to other great cities of antiquity - shaped by what the people actually playing want built next.
Accessible By Design
No installs required to get started - play instantly through our web client, or connect with Mudlet, a MUSH client, or a mobile client if you'd rather have triggers, mapping, and macros. See every option on the Play Now page. New characters even get a built-in guide: type journey any time and the game suggests your next step.
Already In Your Pocket
A real economy lets you buy and sell gear, learn spells, skills, recipes, and languages from in-person trainers, sell what you craft, and trade safely with other players.
On the Horizon
A broader player-run marketplace, more crafting professions, and expanded world systems are still to come. Features are added frequently through playtests and community feedback - what ships next is genuinely shaped by the people playing now.