TRON-themed hosted MUD. Full PvP. No deletion. Free to play.

Play | Features | Development | Docs

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What is GridWars.run

GridWars.run is a TRON-themed, hosted, online-only MUD where Users, Programs, and Daemons fight across a persistent cyber-grid. It is free to play, terminal-native, browser-friendly, and built around full PvP without character deletion or pay-to-win shortcuts: if you are derezzed, you respawn in Users' Sector with your identity intact, your faction still registered, and your disc progress preserved.

Quickstart

Connect to the live Grid:

telnet game.gridwars.run 4000

Or open the web client:

https://game.gridwars.run

New players should start with the Player Guide. It covers account creation, first-session commands, faction choice, lightcycle duels, ratings, disc leveling, sector capture, and daemon PvE.

Useful first commands:

Command	Purpose
look	Render the current sector.
scan	Tactical view: players, exits, faction control, local threats.
status	Identity Disc HUD: integrity, energy, XP, rank, faction, disc state.
faction	List factions and show your alignment.
faction choose <name>	Join Users, Programs, or Daemons. This is a one-shot choice.
@queue duel	Enter matchmaking for a rated lightcycle duel.
@leaderboard	Show the top-rated programs on the Grid.

Features

Lightcycle duels. Challenge a same-sector target with challenge <target> or enter open matchmaking with @queue duel. Accepted matches move both players into a private DuelArena. First to land three successful strikes wins; both players return to their pre-duel sector afterward.

Matchmaking, ELO, and rewards. The persistent matchmaking script pairs queued players automatically. Duel wins update ELO ratings, feed the public @leaderboard, award character XP, and grant equipped-disc XP through the post-duel reward hook.

Identity discs. Discs are equipment, not flavor text. equip <disc> slots one from your inventory, adds damage to strike, applies cooldowns, and tracks XP from combat. Discs level from 1 to 5, increasing their damage bonus as they grow.

Factions. Users, Programs, and Daemons have distinct lore, scan colors, combat messaging, and sector-control ambitions. Faction registration is persistent and intentionally hard to change.

Ownership and capture. capture claims the current sector for your faction. Control appears in scan and status, making the Grid's territorial state visible to everyone moving through it.

Daemon PvE. Daemon NPCs patrol, sense non-Daemon characters, strike with the same combat model as players, and respawn through scripted patrol and repop systems. They make the Grid hostile even when no players are waiting in-sector.

42 generated zones. Epic 19 added a seeded zone pipeline: eight archetypes expand into 42 deterministic, level-banded zones with generated rooms, exits, prose, spawn tables, and daemon palettes. Zone content is idempotent, so rebuilds skip existing rooms rather than duplicating the Grid.

No character deletion. Defeat derezzes and respawns; it does not delete. The core invariant is that a Character remains a Character. Mechanics that remove pressure should respawn, demote, debuff, exile, or move the player, never erase them.

Architecture and Development

GridWars.run is an Evennia v6.0.0 game on Python 3.12+. Evennia is vendored under vendor/evennia and treated as read-only. All game-specific code lives in gridwars: commands, typeclasses, world systems, server settings, web assets, tests, and generated content hooks.

The main extension points are straightforward:

Area	Path
Commands	gridwars/commands
Character, disc, daemon, exit typeclasses	gridwars/typeclasses
Combat, duels, factions, ownership, matchmaking	gridwars/world
Generated zone pipeline	gridwars/world/zones
Server configuration	gridwars/server/conf

Local setup is for contributors testing changes before review:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jsgerman-oss/gridwars.run.git
cd gridwars.run
make install
make migrate
make createsuperuser
make run

Then connect locally with telnet localhost 4000 or open http://localhost:4001. Run make test before opening a pull request. CI runs the same test target on push and PR.

Two Evennia details matter in this codebase. First, AttributeProperty fields are read and written directly (char.integrity, char.rating, disc.level); do not use raw attribute lookups for normal gameplay state unless a specific typeclass edge case requires it. Second, settings paths are relative to the game directory, so typeclass paths look like typeclasses.characters.Character, not gridwars.typeclasses.characters.Character.

World construction is idempotent. Core sectors are tagged during world.build_grid, generated zones are tagged under the shared world_build category, and character spawn resolves by tag instead of a hard-coded dbref. That keeps rebuilds and migrations predictable while the hosted Grid evolves.

Docs

Guide	Purpose
Player Guide	How to connect, survive, duel, level discs, and read the Grid.
Hosting Guide	Cloudflare Pages deployment plus operator snippets for queue, ratings, discs, and arena cleanup.
Zone Overview	Player-facing overview of the generated zone set.
World Content Runbook	Operator runbook for generated world content.
Contributing	Branch policy, review workflow, and project conventions.
Setup	Local contributor setup and world build procedure.
Conventions	SPDX and source-file conventions.

License

GridWars.run game code is licensed AGPL-3.0-or-later. Vendored Evennia retains its BSD-3-Clause license. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for attribution.

_{Built with Evennia. Logo and theming © 2026 Jay German.}