Role Playing Games!

[Geano]

24 minutes ago, efaardvark said:

I don't really play RPGs anymore.  I used to though, back in the paper-and-pencil days.  I even have an original boxed set of the 3 D&D manuals from the 70s.  (Er, somewhere.  )  D&D, GURPs, Hero, Metamorphosis Alpha, Space Quest, Traveller... we played them all at one time or another through the 80s.

My first online RPG was on GEnie called Dragon's Gate. back in the text-only, pre-internet days.  (GEnie was a competitor to Compuserve and was eventually bought by AOL.)  I also ran my own CircleMUD server for a while when the internet was young. Unfortunately that turned out to be too much of an admin headache, and I didn't have the time for it anyway since by then I was in college.  But the original D&D gang scattered after school and life since then hasn't really allowed me the time to invest in an RPG habit.  Closest I get today is playing things like minecraft with a couple friends when I get the chance. 

I was just about to ask if you did text only games. I believe some people still play them over the internet today. They are called MUDs. There are also a lot of rp based forums for play by post games. Ones where everyone basically adds to a overarching story.

[efaardvark]

1 hour ago, ArchieKun said:

They are called MUDs

Yes, that's where CircleMUD got part of its name.  ("circle" was a reference to the code base running the MUD.   "Circle" was an offshoot of "diku".   Others might have been Diku, LP, LD, Tiny, Aber, etc.)   Text games were also called MOOs (MUD, Object Oriented), MUCKs (MultiUser Chat/Computer/Created Kingdom), and MUSHes (MultiUser Shared Hallucination/Hack/Holodeck).  Among other things.

The MUD connector used to be a good place to go for finding servers running old-school, text based RPGs.  I just typed in the URL and it looks like it is still functional if anyone wants to give that sort of thing a try.  If nothing else I guarantee it'll improve your typing skills.    I don't know what people are using for clients these days though.  I used to use tintin, but I don't think I'd want to inflict that on a beginner.  I liked it for its regex-based triggers and the ability to run shell scripts that could automatically queue up commands for you.   (So you could for instance have it scan the incoming text for things like "you are attacked by a xyzzy", and have it respond automatically for you with "dodge" or "attack" or "run" as appropriate for whatever xyzzy was.  You could also set it to load up a macro or set of macros appropriate to the circumstance, or automatically loot bodies, or greet friends, etc. etc.)  That made it really powerful if you knew how to write decent scripts.  I even had a storyteller character with a repertoire of tales that could be automatically invoked even if I was afk.  Today that sort of thing might be called a chatbot.   I used to park him at an inn or in a town square to entertain passers-by while I was waiting for my friends to log on.   But that was 20 years ago.   These days there's probably better, more user-friendly client options out there.