Ye Old BBS games

Recently I've be waxing nostalgic about the old BBS games I played as a kid. One of the games that I miss most is "Legend of the Red Dragon," a game that many would argue was a precursor to the modern MMO. I think it would be really cool to set up a game of "Legend of the Red Dragon" just for the Goodjer crowd. Is this possible? What would it take to set up, and would there be an interest?

Trade Wars 2002 > *

I still can't figure out why someone hasn't made a modern version of it. I heard something about them trying to make a Trade Wars MMO some years back, but it never ended up getting made. Oh well

I loved Legend of the Red Dragon!

The problem with LORD is that it's incredibly linear. There's really not much gameplay or freedom. I loved LORD back in the day just as much as anyone else, but it doesn't hold up nearly as well as a lot of the BBS door games do.

God those were the days!

I hosted LORD and TW2k on my BBS back in the day.

DrJonez wrote:

Trade Wars 2002 > *

I still can't figure out why someone hasn't made a modern version of it. I heard something about them trying to make a Trade Wars MMO some years back, but it never ended up getting made. Oh well :(

I'll have to look it up but i think some people made a HTML version of this.

DrJonez wrote:

Trade Wars 2002 > *

I still can't figure out why someone hasn't made a modern version of it. I heard something about them trying to make a Trade Wars MMO some years back, but it never ended up getting made. Oh well :(

I have a good clone of it on my Palm Pilot.

Why the heck would you ever play TW2002 by yourself? The thing that made it completely awesome was knowing that there were other players out there building their own little empires too. It was like Master of Orion, but multiplayer and via text, and in the BBS days. Awesome

Would this work?

You can still run some of those old BBS packages through an emulator; instead of calling them, you telnet to them. This was pretty common in the OS/2 days. I'm not sure how you'd do it under Windows. I have a vague memory that it's somehow related to a FOSSIL driver, which was some kind of advanced serial I/O protocol or something, but god... I haven't touched a BBS for probably twenty years. And I don't think all the BBS software packages supported FOSSIL.

Nice thing about BBSes is that they're low-bandwidth, pretty much by definition. Even the crappiest broadband will have 128k of upload, which will easily support six or eight 9600 baud connections, while still letting you use the net pretty much normally. (only reason to go faster, really, is for downloads, and it would be very silly to do that via this method. )

If you're really desperately interested, I could try to scare up some more info.

It's funny, really, when you think about it.... all these years, all these developments, a huge massive worldwide network that connects virtually everyone -- and BBS software has morphed into web-based message boards, but it's still fundamentally the same thing it was back then.

Advantage to doing it now, though, is that more than one person can use the system simultaneously. My single-line board was perpetually busy, and I remember being proud that we'd broken 100 solid messages in a day. Things were rather... slower.

My parents bought a second phone line back in the day for modem/BBS use.

Malor wrote:

If you're really desperately interested, I could try to scare up some more info.

Advantage to doing it now, though, is that more than one person can use the system simultaneously. My single-line board was perpetually busy, and I remember being proud that we'd broken 100 solid messages in a day. Things were rather... slower. :)

How hard would it be to set something up?

Check out themajorbbs.com -- this guy's rebuilding and reviving the MajorBBS software and related packages. There's a list of live, available MajorBBS hosts (with many of the games you grew up on!), all free to create an account and log in via telnet (or my preferred client mTelnet).

Man, I really miss the BBS days. Message boards are cool and even as great as places like GWJ are they still don't match the feeling of a good local BBS.

Barren Realms Elite (BRE) had to be my all-time favorite. I lost count of how many times I'd hop on at 11:55pm, get my turn in, wait for the BBS to do its nightly maintenance, hop on at like 12:02am and get my next turn it just to really wail on someone The local games were probably my favorite but we did have some great inter-BBS matches as well. It was fun getting everyone to work together and coordinate our attacks.

After that was probably Legend of the Red Dragon. It was just good fun, especially trying to assassinate others while they were sleeping.

Then there was Trade Wars 2002. I didn't get into that quite as much as the others but still had a lot of fun with it.

I also played Falcon's Eye and Solar Realms Elite which were both basically variants on BRE. There were a few others I played as well although their names escape me right now.

I've tried playing some web-based games that are similar to the old BBS door games but the interfaces are usually not as good, nor is the gameplay. For awhile I had been thinking of writing my own Windows-based BRE game but I never did get very far with it.

I've tried playing a few games via telnet before and had fun for awhile but ultimately lost interest; the people left playing are pretty hardcore and know how to exploit the games to the max. If someone were to set up a telnet BBS for us goodjers I would absolutely play!

Trade Wars was simply the most fun. God, I loved playing the bad guy, even though your ship was hopelessly outclassed by the good guys. Hopelessly.

I miss the BBSes. The sense of community online was simply amazing. They were the reason I bought a 14.4k modem for $100 bucks.

Ah, I loved Trade Wars and BRE but I know I'd probably loathe them now. I still have good ol' war stories about the TW and BRE days. Creating an ascii map of the sector layouts in TW, having a friend log on for me in BRE while I was on vacation so that I didn't get behind in my turns and maintenance. Rolling over all the players from Australia and Canada by myself in BRE. Ah, good times, good times.

Holly cow I had completely forgotten about legend of the red dragon. I used to play it on my local BBS all the time. At least anytime I could get my dad to let me use the computer. I remember we had to always wait until I think after midnight if we wanted to get on because the BBS was a long distance call but was a local call from like midnight to 6 a.m. Which was always kinda stupid because we lived like 2 miles from it but it was just where the phone company decided to draw the line.

MajorMudd

Oh my first addiction

I met my husband on a local BBS, back in the day.

I didn't get into the door games too much, though I did a bit of PBEM gaming -- 2nd edition AD&D and Paranoia.

Judge_Digger wrote:

I have a good clone of Trade Wars 2002 on my Palm Pilot.

What's it called? I'd love to give it whirl on my Centro.

I don't know anything about it, but here's Trade Wars Rising, a browser-based game.

I used to play some BBS games but damned if I can recall which ones. There was one around '92 that you'd wander around killing things -- and the hit mechanism was a counter that you had to press the space bar at the right time or something -- and you could create remote outposts with weapons and such. Ring any bells?

I used to log into BBSes (back in the early 80s), but I never really got to try out any of the BBS games. I had to be careful of toll calls etc.

There was this one BBS... Dragon BBS(?) or something like that. The guy running it was out of NJ somewhere. It was for amateur writers of fantasy stories. It was probably a lot like a modern-day message board. Folks would dial in on their 300baud(!) modems and contribute stories of characters they created, interacting within this one central inn. There was a back and forth as folks would integrate each others characters and stories within the the goings on of the Inn.

I dont think any record of it exists anymore, but it was cool and the whole community-centered writing aspect was very creative.

Aye, I ran a pretty popular BBS back in the day and LORD was a brilliant time sink for my daily guests That, and all the Claudia Schieffer and Cindy Crawford swimsuit photos of course.

I seriously wax nostaligic sometimes about how cool it would be if the internet as we know it never took off, there was just something so personal about BBSs that was never replicated in the tubes.

I loved TW2002. I've tried some of the telnet servers, but I can never seem to get in on a new game and always end up outclassed.

Swat wrote:

I seriously wax nostaligic sometimes about how cool it would be if the internet as we know it never took off, there was just something so personal about BBSs that was never replicated in the tubes.

Personal... that was the part where the sysops fell all over themselves to give me extra board privileges when they realized an actual girl had dialed in, right?

Katy wrote:
Swat wrote:

I seriously wax nostaligic sometimes about how cool it would be if the internet as we know it never took off, there was just something so personal about BBSs that was never replicated in the tubes.

Personal... that was the part where the sysops fell all over themselves to give me extra board privileges when they realized an actual girl had dialed in, right?

Nope, no special preferences, although the girls did get plenty of sexy propositions in LORD I'm sure

I recall there being a newish official remake of TW2002 that allowed you to telnet into it. It was redone in a lot of ways to make it playable/hostable on modern machines.

Ok, I'll make this easy for you all, since I went through this nostalgic effort 2 years ago (right around this time, even):

  1. download mTelnet
  2. Install, then launch mTelnet
  3. Press Alt-Q (quickdial) and plug in "bbs.retrobbsgames.net" as the hostname to call.
  4. Create a free account and head over to the [G]ames section.

Games available:

  • Legends Of the Red Dragon
  • Kyrandia
  • FAZUUL
  • Galactic Empire
  • TradeWars 2002
  • ...and a few others...

Note: I have no affiliation with either the folks that built mTelnet, nor the folks running this MajorBBS (or the MajorBBS software in general) -- just trying to spread the nostalgia.

merphle wrote:

Ok, I'll make this easy for you all, since I went through this nostalgic effort 2 years ago (right around this time, even):

  1. download mTelnet
  2. Install, then launch mTelnet
  3. Press Alt-Q (quickdial) and plug in "bbs.retrobbsgames.net" as the hostname to call.
  4. Create a free account and head over to the [G]ames section.

Games available:

  • Legends Of the Red Dragon
  • Kyrandia
  • FAZUUL
  • Galactic Empire
  • TradeWars 2002
  • ...and a few others...

Note: I have no affiliation with either the folks that built mTelnet, nor the folks running this MajorBBS (or the MajorBBS software in general) -- just trying to spread the nostalgia. :)

1.) How hard would it be to set up a GWJ host?
2.) Does anyone know of a good telnet extension for Firefox?

This reminds me of a funny story involving a BBS game I believe it was called "Immortal." You went around killing monsters and other players at a certain point in the game you became immortal, and could only be killed by another immortal, (think highlander.) The game had a bug were you could keep looting bodies after the initial stuff was gone. The loot you got had some wacky stats which could either be really good or really bad. Long story short a found a piece of armor with some crazy stats like -239586238756 damage, in short no one could touch me. I quickly rose to the #1 spot and then went on a quest to kill off all other immortals. However, if you ended your days turn in an inn you couldn't be attacked. I spent weeks hunting down/stalking the #2 player but she would always be in an inn. I then started to send her messages challenging to a duel, which she wisely ignored. Thus we were in a stalemate.

Back to the real world, I was playing said game on a BBS ran by a family that went to my church. I was talking with one of the daughters about the game and told her my problem. Before hand we didn't know who are characters were, but as we were talking it dawned on here and she said in a incriminating voice "That's you?" It turned out she was the #2 player that was avoiding me, and we had a good laugh about it. Shortly thereafter the game was taken down due to the amount of bugs.

I ran very popular local BBS for 10 years. TW2002, BRE, etc., were all popular door games among my users. I only had one node so some folks would rush to make their move before midnight only to stay online past midnight to get that much farther ahead of everyone else.

While the Internet certainly has tremendous advantage(s) over BBS's, there's something more personal about a BBS. As a Sysop, I felt I was inviting guests over to my house for a short stay and always enjoyed popping into chat for a short BS-session.

I also ran one BBS and was Cosys for two others. It was amazing how each one, like different local nightclubs, seemed to take on their own unique personalities and create their own niches. Because the media sensationalized the whole 'BBSes are for pedophiliac predators!,' my sign ended up being The Necrophiliac. Guess since I like L4D now, it fits.

If we're gonna play TW2002, one rule: NO MACROING!

I run two BBS systems

http://eob-bbs.com , an underground style files/msg oriented bbs

and

http://dsbbs.net a gaming bbs that's pretty active but i'm looking for fresh blood.

datastream as lord, bre, fe, all the popular games.