RPGnet

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  RPGnet began in 1996 as a solution to a problem the early internet kept creating: gaming communities that sparked to life and then simply disappeared. Emma and Sandy Antunes, Shawn Althouse, and Brian David Phillips built it specifically to unify a scattered collection of transient game sites into something more permanent.

  What they created outlasted nearly every comparable forum of its era. By the time the site passed through a corporate acquisition, survived multiple software overhauls, and accumulated more than 13,000 reviews, RPGnet had become something its founders perhaps never fully anticipated: a primary record of how tabletop roleplaying culture argued with itself, celebrated its favorites, and documented its own history.

  How did a site dedicated to dice, fantasy worlds, and game theory turn into one of the internet's more durable communities? The answer runs through volunteer moderators, an archive that refuses to die, and a gaming index that aims to catalog every English-language roleplaying product ever published.

• 2. Origins and Ownership

  ›

  Sandy Antunes was among the four founders who launched RPGnet in 1996, and the site's early ambition was straightforward: give scattered gaming communities a stable home. Five years later, in 2001, the site was acquired by Skotos Tech, though it retained creative and editorial independence throughout that transition.

  Shannon Appelcline of Skotos eventually took over day-to-day operations, supported by a network of volunteer moderators and administrators. That combination of corporate ownership alongside editorial autonomy shaped how the site developed. It could draw on institutional resources without surrendering the community-driven voice that made it worth visiting in the first place.

  In 2024, RPG.net was sold again, this time to RPGMatch, who assumed development responsibilities. Forum administration, however, was structured to remain independent of the new owner. The pattern of separating the platform's commercial stewardship from its community governance had become a defining feature of how RPGnet changed hands.

• 3. Forum Life

  ›

  The 1997 forums ran on Matt's WWWBoard script and carried the threaded look typical of early message boards, focusing mainly on game design and industry news. That changed in 2002 when a move to vBulletin brought new sections for the broader player audience. For sixteen years the site ran on vBulletin, until November 2018, when it migrated to XenForo 2.

  Tabletop Roleplaying Open, the general game discussion forum, draws the highest daily post count of any section on the site. Discussions of Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, and GURPS run regularly alongside threads devoted to smaller indie games. Exalted is specifically noted for generating an unusually large number of discussion threads.

  Moderators hold broad authority. The written policy states they can do what they feel is necessary in their best judgment to promote the well-being of the forums, going even beyond written rules to keep things friendly and welcoming. A public list of sanctions and bans gives the community visibility into how that authority is exercised. Other platforms have drawn on RPGnet's policies when shaping their own conduct rules.

• 4. The Review Archive

  ›

  Reviews have been part of RPGnet since it launched. The archive now holds approximately 13,000 entries, the majority covering roleplaying games and supplements, with a growing number dedicated to board and card games.

  The review system was rebuilt in early 2003, and since then entries have appeared with cross-references designed to help readers navigate such a large collection. The publication schedule is regular: RPG reviews appear on Mondays and Fridays, while reviews of other products publish on Wednesdays.

  Movies, books, music albums, and comics are also covered, though less often. The sheer volume of the archive means it functions as something close to a historical record of what the roleplaying community paid attention to across nearly three decades.

• 5. Columns and Commentary

  ›

  Around twenty regular columns run on RPGnet at any given time, published on a four-week Monday-to-Friday schedule. Most offer advice from gamemasters to other gamemasters, but the range extends further. The site developed a reputation as a source for player theory, with many columns written by authors with academic backgrounds.

  "52 Pickup" promised a new game every week for a full year; it reached about a dozen entries under the first author before stalling, then another dozen under a second before stopping. "Behind the Counter" continued to document the operations of a gaming retail store. "Freelancing is Not Free" described what it actually takes to work as a freelancer in the gaming industry. Game industry veterans Ross Winn, Chad Underkoffler, and Matt Drake were among the notable contributors.

  Sandy Antunes, one of the original founders, has run a monthly column without interruption since the site's inception. The columns software was upgraded in 2006 to include RSS feeds and deeper integration with the forums. Certain columns attracted attention well beyond the site itself, with pieces including "Gaming Girls of GenCon" and "A History of Wizards of the Coast" referenced on Slashdot.

• 6. Catalog and Wiki

  ›

  In early 2005, RPGnet added a wiki built on MediaWiki. Originally conceived as a space for jointly designing roleplaying supplements and game systems, it expanded to include an encyclopedia of roleplaying terms and a record of ongoing forum campaigns.

  A year later, in 2006, the site launched the Gaming Index, a catalog intended to hold every English-language RPG product ever published. Users can search by publisher, author, or game line, and the index connects directly to RPGnet's own reviews of each product. Users can add products, rank them, and leave comments.

  As of the 13th of November 2018, the Gaming Index contained 19,832 games, 3,250 additional editions, and 2,245 magazines, accounting for 1,458 unique game systems. That figure suggests the index had grown from an ambitious idea into one of the more comprehensive public catalogs of roleplaying material in existence.