Hey everyone! I'm the long-time admin of RolePlayGateway (RPG) and RPG Chat, running since 2005. Hard to believe it's been over 15 years! I'm a bit of a historian when it comes to text-based roleplay, even going back as far as the old BBS-based MUDs and MUSHes. I'm eager to meet more folks who can share old stories and lore from the early days, lest it be lost to bitrot! We've made the promise to our users that anything hosted on RPG will be hosted forever, and we've got some really powerful tech in the works to make this a reality. If you have some old lore or stories that you feel are worth sharing, please don't hesitate to reach out and say hello. Stop by our roleplaying forum if you want to take a dive into the history of online roleplay, or connect with us otherwise! Excited to be here and eager to meet other like-minded roleplayers!
Whoa, welcome! I remember a much older incarnation of RolePlayGateway. What would have been your first text-based RPG?
Wow, nice to be recognized! We have a few open-source projects now that aim to integrate roleplaying communities net-wide, so maybe there's something we could collaborate on. Most likely it was Federation II, through AOL, but since I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time it's hard to recall. 14.4 kbps modems FTW!
I still remember Effie in the old header, haha. But yeah, Ramath-lehi (now known as Shadowlack), used to be listed there in the earlier 00's. Really cool. :) I'm aiming for more ActivityPub standards for the next version of RPGfix, so it'll be able to hook into the greater fediverse. And my code ought to be all open source by then. This site ended up with too much proprietary code due to time constraints. I'd totally be down for some collabs. Haven't played Federation II, but that's awesome. I learnt way too late that you could control the modem sound... silly kid me was blocking the sound by surrounding the PC with pillows. >_>;; I'm not too sure what my first text game was, but I used to live on telnet.
Really great to hear that you're aiming for ActivityPub! The system we've built is centered around this standard, so it should be pretty easy to integrate. Along the way, it should be fairly straightforward to build a "bridge" of sorts (stealing from the Matrix terminology) that connects everything together — we're aiming for a completely peer-to-peer system, on the extreme end of federation. I have a robust array of experience with these bridges, so I could probably help set up a bridge with your Discord (a platform I otherwise avoid due to their entanglement with China and refusal to implement E2E encryption). On that note, we've also put in a lot of time on replicating the connectivity of classical MUDs, going so far as to build a full-on game engine that our chat client runs while also adding support for IRC and telnet! The biggest challenge has been to build a friendly user experience (basically making it visible to the web), but now that we've nailed that down I think we might have some potential for a proper metaverse :D
I've been on a "reclaiming my data" stint for about the past two years, so totally get the extreme end of peer-to-peer. It'd be cool to move at least parts of the site fully in that direction. I'm not sure if I'll be keeping my Discord integration around. Though now you have me curious about Matrix again, lol. The last time I looked at it, it was still super new. I'm totally game for helping build a proper metaverse. Centralization has killed too much of the good things about the internet. :/
Come stop by our implementation, and I can walk you through what we've done: https://chat.roleplaygateway.com I can probably pitch in some developer time to help you set up something similar, especially if you're interested in collaborating on more than just code. I have a few ideas and some behind-the-scenes projects I think you might enjoy!
