Terminal RPG

Claude narrates. The engine owns truth.

A simulation-grounded campaign RPG where Claude stages the story, the engine preserves truth, and worlds evolve through rumor, pressure, faction, relationship, economy, and arc systems toward meaningful conclusions.

Get started Read the Handbook

Play

npx claude-rpg play --world fantasy

Generate

npx claude-rpg new "A flooded gothic trade city"

Simulation-first design

Every turn runs through a deterministic simulation before Claude narrates the result.

Deterministic truth

The engine resolves combat, movement, and dialogue. Claude only narrates what the perception layer allows the player to see. No hallucinated outcomes.

NPC agency

NPCs act on goals, track obligations, and retaliate when loyalty breakpoints shift. Consequence chains ripple across factions and districts.

Campaign arcs

10 arc kinds detected from accumulated state. 8 endgame resolution classes trigger when thresholds are crossed. Deterministic finale rendering with LLM epilogue.

Living districts

Commerce, morale, and safety shift from player actions, faction moves, and NPC consequence chains. District mood flows into narration.

Player leverage

Spend influence, favors, and intel on social, rumor, diplomacy, and sabotage actions. Strategic map analysis and move advisor guide political play.

Equipment provenance

Items carry history. A sword that kills enough becomes a relic with an epithet. NPCs recognize equipped items and react to their reputation.

Campaign archives

Browse completed campaigns, export chronicles as markdown or JSON, and share standalone finale documents. Every campaign leaves a record.

Streaming narration

Text arrives incrementally at the terminal. The engine resolves first — streaming is presentation only. Interrupted streams cannot corrupt game state.

API retry + autosave

Transient API failures retry with exponential backoff. Game state autosaves periodically. No more lost progress from crashes or disconnects.

NPC conversation memory

NPCs remember what you told them and reference past exchanges. Voice archetypes give each NPC a distinct speech pattern — scholarly, gruff, merchant, noble.

Terminal polish

ANSI colors, animated spinner during LLM calls, tab completion for commands/names/items, turn separators, and structured announcement blocks.

Swarm-hardened

625 tests across 53 test files. 67 bug fixes + 22 proactive hardening passes covering error containment, graceful degradation, and observability.

Quick start

Install and play

# Install globally
npm install -g claude-rpg

# Set your API key
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Play a starter world
claude-rpg play --world fantasy

Generate a custom world

# Create a world from any prompt
claude-rpg new "A flooded gothic trade city
  ruled by three merchant houses"

# Load a saved game
claude-rpg load

10 starter worlds

Each world comes with factions, NPCs, districts, and genre-specific modules.

World	Genre	Theme
Chapel Threshold	Fantasy	A mountain monastery under siege by the faithful and the fallen
Neon Lockbox	Cyberpunk	Corporate arcology where data is currency and trust is a weapon
Gaslight Detective	Detective	Victorian streets hiding a conspiracy that reaches the crown
Black Flag Requiem	Pirate	A dying pirate republic choosing between freedom and survival
Ashfall Dead	Zombie	Post-outbreak colony where the living are more dangerous than the dead
Dust Devil's Bargain	Weird West	Frontier town where every deal has a supernatural catch
Signal Loss	Sci-Fi Colony	Deep space colony that lost contact with Earth three years ago
Iron Colosseum	Gladiator	Arena politics where every fight is a transaction and every champion has a patron
Jade Veil	Ronin	A masterless warrior navigating clan feuds in a land where honor is currency
Crimson Court	Vampire	Immortal aristocrats scheming through centuries of debt, blood, and betrayal

Three modes

Play, inspect, or replay.

Play mode

Immersive narrated RPG. Type freeform text, explore, fight, negotiate, scheme. Perception filtering means you only see what your character perceived.

Director mode

Inspect hidden simulation truth. See NPC beliefs, faction cognition, rumor networks, obligation ledgers, and consequence chains. Understand exactly why things happened.

Campaign conclusions

Arc detection tracks your trajectory. Endgame triggers fire at pivotal moments. /conclude renders a structured epilogue with faction fates, NPC outcomes, and your legacy.