Short answers, pulled from the story.
RPGnet was founded in 1996 by Emma Antunes, Sandy Antunes, Shawn Althouse, and Brian David Phillips. The four strangers launched the site as a unification effort for transient game sites that were constantly appearing and disappearing.
The RPGnet forums began in 1997 using Matt's WWWBoard script, a simple threaded message board system that prioritized game design and industry news above all else. The site later migrated to vBulletin software in 2002 and to XenForo 2 software in November 2018.
The site maintains an active archive of approximately 13,000 reviews today. The review system was overhauled in early 2003, introducing cross-references to improve navigation of the large review archive.
Prior to 2008, Columns Editing was handled by C.W. Richeson, Shannon Appelcline, Michael Fiegel and Sandy Antunes. Shannon Appelcline took over as editor in January 2008.
As of the 13th of November 2018, the site has 19832 games, 3250 additional editions, and 2245 magazines. These figures account for 1458 unique game systems.
In 2024, RPG.net was sold to RPGMatch, who would take over development duties while the administration of the forums remained independent. This sale marked a new chapter in the site's history.