IdleRPG

Newest first. Lines marked Operators matter only to whoever runs the bot. Releases before 0.11.0 are in the git history.

0.29.0 - 2026-09-16

• The realm hears when someone takes the lead. Reaching a level nobody else has reached yet is announced, naming whoever was left behind, and the channel topic is updated then rather than waiting up to ten hours for its next refresh. Swaps within a level don't count: a single fight can change who is nearer the next level, which would make for an announcement every few hours. A player who is already alone at the top and levels up again isn't announced either.

0.28.1 - 2026-09-16

• The bot keeps its nick when services come back after it. If the bot connected while services were off the network, it never identified: its IDENTIFY went nowhere, and when services returned they moved it to a guest nick a minute later and left it there, so /msg idlerpg reached nobody. It now identifies when services ask, and if it is moved anyway it asks for its nick back, and asks again every five minutes until it has it.
• Operators: reclaiming the nick from a stale connection sent GHOST, which Anope 2.0 ships commented out; it sends RECOVER now. All of this needs IRC_NICKSERV_PASSWORD.

0.28.0 - 2026-09-12

• Your page says what happened to you. Every player's page now carries their own history - the calamities, godsends, hands of god, finds, fights, level-ups and quests the realm put them through, newest first. Asked for by antiroach, who remembered the old version having one.
• The events that happen to one person - the Hand of God, calamities, godsends, chaos, the scales of the realm, and Hallowtide's knock at the door - now record whose they were, as level-ups and finds already did. Older entries, and the ones with two people in them, are found by name instead, so a history reaches back past this release.

0.27.0 - 2026-09-12

• Logins follow your services account, not just your address. The bot now negotiates IRC capabilities, and where the network says who is identified to services it remembers that alongside the connection. A login is resumed by account first, which holds across a new address, a reconnect from anywhere, and a cloak applied a moment after joining. Nobody has to be registered: without an account the connection's nick!user@host works exactly as before.
• A vhost landing late no longer strands you. Services often apply a vhost after you have joined, which silently invalidated the address the bot had remembered - and nothing ever re-checked, so you stayed logged out until you logged in by hand. CHGHOST is now followed, and identifying after joining logs you straight in.
• When somebody the bot has seen play is not logged back in, it now says so in the log, with where they are and what it remembered. The miss used to be silent, which is indistinguishable from the bot being broken.
• Operators: capabilities are taken only if offered - account-notify, extended-join, chghost and multi-prefix - and a server that speaks no CAP at all registers exactly as it did before. One added column, platform_identity.login_account, applied on start like the others.

0.26.0 - 2026-09-12

• The eight uniques do something now. Each grants what its story suggests on top of being worth a great deal: the Lantern of Small Mercies softens calamities, the Kumquat of Ages quickens levels, the Last Honest Ledger and the Bell That Must Not Ring shrink penalties, the Moon-Rake strengthens godsends, the Crown of Minor Kings and the Door That Was a Mimic add battle strength, and the Seven-League Courser carries a quest party as it always has. The find announcement and your page on the site say what each one does.
• Grants are written as ranks of the prestige perks and added by the single function every rule already reads, so an item and a bought rank compose, and nothing that applies a modifier had to learn that items exist. Each unique now carries its own tag to key that on; nobody held one yet, so nothing was lost.
• Judgement, not measurement: these are 2-5% modifiers on items that turn up about once in a climb from 1 to 80, well below what the simulator can resolve - it cannot separate 2% from its own noise without far more seeds than the effect is worth. They are set by eye, and said so rather than blessed by a measurement that could not have failed. The one to watch is battle strength, where the Crown and the Door alongside five bought ranks reach +16%.

0.25.0 - 2026-09-12

• Items left lying on the map. The item you replace is no longer thrown away if it was worth keeping: a unique always, or gear better than your own average, is left where you stood. Anyone who drifts within fifty squares takes it if it beats what they carry, leaving theirs in its place. Nothing is created - a dropped item was already in play - so this is never a second source of loot on top of level-ups. About seven items a week are worth leaving, 46% of them are found, and the map carries nought to three at a time; everything else is discarded exactly as before.
• The world map updates as you watch it. It swaps in a fresh map every fifteen seconds without reloading the page, and draws what is lying about, each marker naming the item's level, what it is and who left it.
• The realm is told what a new version brought, once, when it comes up on one: the headlines from this file and a link to the rest. A restart says nothing, and neither does a version it has already announced, so a crash loop cannot spam the channel.
• Measurement: no measurable cost to the realm's pace. Over eight seeds the difference against a control with pickups switched off is -0.6% +/- 1.6%, which does not clear zero. An earlier four-seed run suggested a 1.4% drag and did not survive four more seeds, one of which swung 4.3% the other way. Alignment spread sits inside the harness's noise at this sample size, and nothing in the rule looks at alignment.

0.24.0 - 2026-09-11

• A weekly recap, posted to both platforms on Sunday evening (18:00 UTC): levels gained, fights fought, quests finished and items found over the week, who climbed hardest, who won most, who is new, and who leads the realm. RECAP, or /recap on Discord, shows the week so far and when the next one lands.
• Duels, battles, finds and arrivals now record who they were about, the way level-ups already did, so a week can be attributed to whoever earned it. The site's per-player charts are unchanged: they read level-ups alone.
• Operators: nothing to do. The recap's window is a range of event ids rather than a span of clock time, so a restart can neither lose a week nor report one twice, and the first run after upgrading only starts the clock - the first recap covers the week that follows, not all of recorded history.

0.23.0 - 2026-09-11

• A battle on levelling, as the original does, from level 25 - where challenges stop being declined. In simulation it lifts battles from 21 to 30 a week each and the realm's pace from 0.900 to 0.917, and narrows the gap between alignments (4.9% to 3.1%). At the level-60 wall, where level-ups are rare, it changes almost nothing.
• The eight named uniques, each in its own slot behind its own level, worth far more than the curve can roll: the Lantern of Small Mercies, the Kumquat of Ages, the Seven-League Courser, the Last Honest Ledger, the Bell That Must Not Ring, the Moon-Rake, the Crown of Minor Kings and the Door That Was a Mimic. A climb from 1 to 80 turns up about one. The Courser is a mount: it carries a whole quest party, two ranks of Stride faster. Nameless uniques are gone - they out-numbered the eight and made their worth meaningless. Ones already found keep their value.
• Rivals and trophies. Whoever beats you most is named in WHOAMI, on the /whoami card and on your page; beating someone ten or more levels above you leaves a trophy to keep.
• Not shipped: the original's ±10% good-and-evil battle modifier. Good gains too much: the gap between alignments doubles (3.1% to 7.7%), with chaotic good +4.7% and neutral evil -3.0% beyond luck. At ±5% it is still +3.4% for lawful good and a 5.7% spread. The switch (MORAL_BATTLE) stays at 1.0 for everyone.

0.22.0 - 2026-09-11

• Slash commands on Discord. Every command is also a slash command - /register, /login, /whoami, /fight, /achievements, /align with its choices, /prestige, /perk, and /admin for admins - answered so only you see it. A slash command's options reach only the bot, so a password no longer needs a DM.
• A Play button on the pinned note opens a form to make a character, and I play on IRC one to log in as yours; a player who has one is seated at once. The buttons keep working across restarts.
• /whoami is a card: level, next level, alignment, items, prestige, achievements and keepsakes at a glance.
• The level charts go back to the beginning. Level-ups have been announced since the first day, and the old ones are read back out of the event log and linked to their characters, once, at startup - so a chart shows the whole climb rather than starting at 0.21.0.
• Operators: slash commands need the bot invited with the applications.commands scope. Without it they are skipped with a warning, and the ! commands work as before.

0.21.0 - 2026-09-11

• Achievements. Earned once and announced: reaching levels 10, 25, 40 and 60, a first and third prestige, taking a side in ALIGN, a first and a tenth fight won, beating someone five levels above you, completing one quest and five, a week without a single penalty, a unique item - and Loose Lips, for breaking a quest's silence. ACHIEVEMENTS lists yours; your page on the site lists them all, and how to earn each.
• Seasonal achievements and keepsakes, after the holiday achievements of long-running online games. Hallowtide: knock on doors, gather treats, collect every mask and costume, find the Horseman's lantern. Midwinter: gifts for everyone about on Midwinter Day, the longest night, a snowball fight, a full stocking. Springtide: an egg hunt, the golden egg, a full basket, five levels in the season. Keeping a season counts, and earning all of one grants its title - the Lantern-Bearer, Keeper of the Long Night, the Blossoming - worn beside the name. None of it touches a clock, an item or a fight.
• Level history. Level-ups now record who and which level, and each player's page charts it as it fills in.

0.20.0 - 2026-09-11

• Seasons bend a rule. Hallowtide brings trick or treat - now and then a small treat or trick, even odds, worth up to 5% of a level. Midwinter's long nights have everyone earning 5% faster. In Springtide's fresh starts, anyone below the middle level of those about earns 10% faster.
• Seasonal honours. When a season that ran its course ends, the realm names its three most devoted idlers - the most progress toward their next levels, so a newcomer can beat a veteran - and everyone who idled through half of it wears its badge, 🎃 ❄ 🌱, beside their name on the site. WHOAMI lists a character's honours. NPCs are not honoured, a prestige keeps what a season gave, and a season an admin forced honours nobody.
• The site says when the next season begins, from two weeks before it, and what it brings: "Hallowtide begins on 1 October: until 31 October, a third of the realm's calamities, godsends and quests will come with headless horsemen, pumpkins with ambitions and trick-or-treating goblins." While a season lasts, its banner says when it ends.
• The how-to-play page explains seasons, with each one's dates and what to expect.

0.19.0 - 2026-09-11

• Seasons. In Hallowtide (October), Midwinter (15 December to 6 January) and Springtide (20 March to 20 April) a third of the realm's calamities, godsends and quests come from the season's own creatures, helpers, treasures and cargo. The realm is told when each begins and ends, and the site shows a banner while one lasts. Only the words change: how often events happen and what they do stay the same.
• Admins: SEASON shows the season; SEASON <name> forces one, auto follows the calendar, off has none.

0.18.0 - 2026-09-11

• Meetings on the map. Two characters from level 10 who land on the same tile fight, as in the original, on FIGHT's terms - at most once a day for any pair, and never two questers on the same quest. Tested first: about two meetings a week each, and no level or strategy gained or lost beyond luck, in a realm like the live one or at the level-60 wall.
• Names that pass for others are refused. A new name, or an admin's rename, may not mix alphabets, and may not pass for an existing character's or an admin's name by case, accents, width, digits for letters or letters of other alphabets that look Latin. Names already taken stand.

0.17.1 - 2026-09-11

• Only the logged in speak in the game channel. With IRC_MODERATE the bot keeps it moderated (+m) whenever it holds ops, so the voice that marks a logged-in player is also what lets them talk, and anyone who joins logged out is told, once, why they cannot and how to play.
• The how-to-play page says what the + by a name means.
• Operators: IRC_MODERATE=true turns moderation on.

0.17.0 - 2026-09-11

• Fights. Once a day, from level 10, FIGHT <name> (!fight on Discord) challenges someone in the game and no more than 5 levels below you. The winner takes 5% of the loser's remaining time, at most 5% of their own level's cost; whoever is challenged is shielded for a day. FIGHT alone shows who is in reach.
• The rules were settled in simulation first: python -m idlerpg.fairness pits candidate rules against bullies, underdogs and prestiged veterans in a realm shaped like the live one, and at the level-60 wall.

0.16.2 - 2026-09-11

• Voice on IRC. Players are voiced while they are logged in and in the channel, and lose it when they log out, as in the original. It takes ops in the channel, which the bot already has for the topic.
• The bot paces what it says on IRC - a few lines at once, then one every two seconds, with replies to players ahead of channel news - so a busy moment can no longer get it disconnected for flooding.
• NPCs that join together no longer level up in the same moment ever after.
• Operators: IRC_VOICE=false turns voicing off.

0.16.1 - 2026-09-11

• The map has a heartland. Characters drift through the middle 80% of the map and wander back in from the wilds at its rim, instead of vanishing off one edge and reappearing at the other. New characters start inside it, and the realm's places - so its journeys - now lie inside it too.
• The website has a changelog: what's new, linked from every page.

0.16.0 - 2026-09-11

• NPCs make up the numbers in a small realm: they join while it is quiet and leave as people arrive, keeping their level for next time. They idle, talk and wander off like an average player, never fail a quest, never prestige, and are marked NPC on the site.
• Prestige. From level 60, PRESTIGE shows what starting over would do and PRESTIGE confirm does it: back to level 0 with fresh items, keeping name, alignment and perks, for a ★ on the site - where prestige now ranks first - and points: two for reaching 60, one more for every five levels past it. PERKS lists what they buy and PERK <name> buys a rank: swiftness, composure, fortune, warding, heirloom, stride and champion, and endurance, which opens only after ten ranks elsewhere.
• Level 60 is a wall. Past 60 each level costs a quarter more than the last, where it used to add a day: 70 is now about seven months past 60, and 80 six years. Endurance eases the wall back toward the ordinary curve. Penalties past 60 grow as before.
• Smaller penalties at high levels. They now grow 10% a level, not 14%, which outran the levels themselves. A typical player keeps about 40% more of each day, and no alignment gains much more from it than another.
• The website's climb table follows the realm's actual curve.
• Fixed: the help said good lands the most critical strikes; evil does.
• Fixed: the website logged a traceback whenever a visitor hung up early.
• The simulator runs many seeded realms at once, reports how sure it is, and models kinds of player (--profile quiet|average|chatty) and curves (--rp-step, --penalty-step, --post-cap-step).
• Operators: RP_POST_CAP_STEP (default 1.25; linear for the original). NPC_MAX (default 0, none) and NPC_REALM (default 12) turn NPCs on.

0.15.0 - 2026-09-10

• Admin commands, by /msg on IRC and by DM on Discord: INFO, PAUSE, SILENT, TOPIC, RESTART, DEL, DELOLD, MKADMIN, DELADMIN, CHPASS, CHUSER, CHCLASS, PUSH, MOVE, HOG, PIT, and EVENT to fire any event on demand. ADMIN lists them.
• Pause and silence survive a restart. While paused, nothing earns and nothing costs anything.
• A balancing simulator: python -m idlerpg.simulate runs the real engine with simulated players and reports how each alignment fares.
• Operators: IDLERPG_ADMINS names the characters that are always admins. A listed name cannot be registered by anyone else.

0.14.0 - 2026-09-10

• Nine alignments. Alignment gains a law-chaos axis: ALIGN lawful good, ALIGN chaotic, ALIGN true neutral. Everyone starts neutral on it.
  • Lawful: 10% smaller penalties, calamities and godsends half as hard, and likelier to be chosen for quests.
  • Chaotic: calamities and godsends half as hard again, will fight at any level, and attracts the odd random event.
  • True neutral: tugged now and then toward the realm's middle level.
• Every line of game text taken from the original bot is reworded in the realm's own voice.
• Fixed: three messages from 0.13.0 ran words together ("towardlevel").

0.13.0 - 2026-09-10

• The realm's own lore: thirty named places on the map, and composed calamities, godsends and quests - tens of thousands of distinct lines.
• Times read as durations, like 3d 4h, everywhere. A level-up says when the next one is due.
• On IRC a penalty tells you what it cost; on Discord the message gets an ⏳.
• NEWPASS and REMOVEME on both platforms.
• Logins are announced to the realm. The bot answers CTCP VERSION, and the website shows the running version.
• Operators: EVENTS_FILE mixes in lines from your own copy of the classic events.txt, which cannot be bundled.

0.12.1 - 2026-09-10

• Names and classes can no longer garble the channel with right-to-left overrides or colour codes. New names are letters and digits in any script, plus - _ . ', up to 16 characters.
• Everything the bot says is cleaned on the way out, and Discord announcements cannot ping anyone.
• Fixed: looking up a name treated _ and % as wildcards.

0.12.0 - 2026-09-10

• Journey quests walk the party to each waypoint, and give up after a day without blame. Before, a journey could never finish.
• A failed quest sets back the party only, and then the gods rest for 12 hours.
• War moves clocks: the winners 15% closer to their next level, the routed 15% further.
• You earn only while in #idlerpg, and a second login from one nick ends the first.
• The bot takes a stand-in nick when its own is in use, and takes it back.
• Operators: the website reads the bot's map and curve settings.

0.11.3 - 2026-09-10

• ALIGN good|neutral|evil and !align. Alignment had effects, but nothing could set it.

0.11.2 - 2026-09-10

• IRC logins survive the bot restarting: it logs you back in by nick!user@host. A netsplit costs nothing.
• Reacting to the pinned note DMs anyone without a character how to register.

0.11.1 - 2026-09-10

• The pinned note on how to join survives restarts and channel moves without reposting.

0.11.0 - 2026-09-10

• Logging in on the other platform links your character to it. MERGE takes a name and password.
• On Discord, holding the game role is what makes you idle, and registering grants it.