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First demo shot...

Editing the town map of Dragon's Reach

Welcome to the Dragon's Reach!

Hard Core D&D?

Thanks for your interest in this little project. Dragon's Reach is a real gamer's implementation of the Dungeons and Dragons rule set. You will find no sympathy here for panti-waist gamers who say things like: 'I don't want to manage my food supplies', 'I want to get my levels automatically when I have enough experience', or 'Why can't I carry out these 10,000 copper pieces I found just lying here?'.

This is hard-core D&D.

When can I play Dragon's Reach?

The server is fairly stable if incomplete. After typing make in the top directory you will have the 'dr1server' executable. You can connect to the server with telnet on port 2300 to test it out.

Don't get too attached to your characters, the file formats will definitely change between now and final release, but you can see how the barter and combat routines are coming along.

To build the project you will also need the Gnome libxml2 library. The graphical client is also coming along, and requires some extra libraries all which are listed in the README that you get when you check out the CVS tree.

When will the project be completed?

Currently other projects are taking priority (like getting the house ready for my first child), but I am making some sporadic progress on the game. I might have something playable by winter, but no promises.

Why another D&D project?

Dragon's Reach is interesting to me on a couple of points. First it is a test bed for several ideas I am experimenting with in distributed systems programming (which is what I do professionally.) Secondly, I enjoy it; it is a hobby, and hobbies don't have to be rational uses of your time.

There are a number of projects that are farther along than I am, both in networked and single player game versions. See the most excellent RogueLike News if you are interested in trying some out. Crossfire in particular is a very impressive multi-player graphical MUD.

Dragon's Reach will stress a couple of elements that others haven't yet worked on such as in-game area building, and progressive introduction to the full game rules. Like Dragon's Reach, Crossfire also takes a no whiners approach to game rules, but introduces (in my opinion) far too many initial choices of class and race for the first time player. If DR ever introduces races like the Fireborn it will almost certainly be something that is done by an artifact or major curse. In other words, something that you find after you already know the basic rules of the game.

Can I contribute?

In the unlikely event that you want to add your talents to this little project, I'd be happy to accept your help. Just write to the mailing list. Or if you are having problems with that list, write to me directly. (Sorry, I've disabled the the Sourceforge Forums since I think they are crap, and following postings there takes away time from coding.)