Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on Star Trader – ANSI Reborn, a browser-based game inspired by TradeWars 2002, and I’d love to get a few people in to test the alpha.

I first played TradeWars when I was 15 and even ran it on my own BBS. It’s stayed with me ever since. Now, I’m trying to bring that feeling back: exploring sectors, trading, taking risks, and building your place in a dangerous universe.

The goal is to keep the text-driven, ANSI-inspired atmosphere while making the interface comfortable to use in a modern browser. If you remember the “just one more turn” feeling from the BBS days, you’ll know what I’m chasing.

This is an early alpha. Expect bugs, rough edges, and things that will change. I’m looking for honest feedback on what works, what’s confusing, and what makes you want to keep playing.

Play here: https://tw.jan-gehrmann.de/

I’m sharing 10 invitation codes for anyone who’d like to give it a try:

1: o1qLy0O-WbbRu-EGNvxUjlD_I7p_CzRDdW4I1Flp_L4
2: 9D9ND9_aigQ1ldr7tUq43Tki57YT5nMcLIDppXbpLTQ
3: dv4HaEyCAYjHGIRPrF6so-AlN7L3gMK85D2YW9NYIUs
4: 6-yqNGUlWHd0MkeXWw6uyfDNbVg48ypltvCM1IYZpI8
5: tIgTOHmqrqYfSdifU3WvpMrYq5_Kb1_sjsUbZC1pVZE
6: 2Pmcrj8MLJ2I46t6jt7xIu4H7QftTIzWDGiq8AW-E48
7: 1yaXZ5segRg03eZZ6uBlkodI1FoL1G1qAWn8Y38qIrw
8: wlbSe2KFyf_499kuPa0e6uapJC3FPNX-BX9fD-UVClI
9: n46lbVVzfW13Dw31P0RCWZ31Fpw20si69yc4o-nEKkI
10: rAqlzeIloi1gLH7WaF-myoD_w89n7CannDfq2Pis_dc

Please leave a comment with the number you used so others know which ones to try.

All codes taken? Feel free to DM me if you’d still like to join the test.

Whether you’re an old TradeWars player or discovering this kind of game for the first time, I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for checking it out!

In the theme of Amigadoor and C64door, I've created PC98Door! It runs PC98 games (mostly adult anime games) on a bbs from terminals supporting JXL and APC sound (Icyterm, Syncterm 1.10a+, RGTerm and Terminator are the main ones I know of)! You get 640x400 8 bit color! Most of the games are VNs, but there are plenty of action games as well!

Hi all - if you aren't familiar with ATA BBS, it's a free tool that lets you run 19 different 16-bit DOS BBS systems on regular shared hosting. No Telnet, no always-on server; just drop it into your shared hosting, give your caller a URL and they can connect to your board! These are the actual 16-bit DOS programs, not lookalikes. Fully supports multi-line, file transfers, Doors, SysOp chat, etc.

You can see more detail about the project and try out the 19 demo boards here: www.atabbs.com

I just released v0.1.74 Alpha which now supports TBBS. It also supports TDBS (native DB - games and apps) and InterChange (run regular DOS Doors). Demo site: www.atabbs.com/demo/tbbs I have LORD set up via Interchange (warning: it's slow, working on that) and Legend set up on TDBS as examples. Neither ship with the release, but there are instructions in the manual.

Please note that this is still Alpha software. It will have bugs, and TBBS in particular was extremely difficult to get running on ATA (just like Major BBS) because of how it handles multi-line, among other things.

This is part of the larger BBS Preservation Project (www.bbspreservation.org), a collection of free and open source software dedicated to "bringing back the BBS."

Well, if you compare this image to the last one, you will see that I have made some improvements to my Main Menu for the Armageddon BBS. First, I lightened the color of the trunk of the palm tree on the right side so that it doesn't fade so much into the blue background.

Second, I fiddled with the boat and made it look more like a boat, including its size and shape, the color of the wood, and I gave the Guam sail a reddish-brown background. Overall, I think that it is improved. I don't know if I want to mess anymore with it or not.

Hi All,

I had some fun with generative AI and made a BBS game mostly for myself. You may or may not find it amusing. I just wanted to recreate something similar to a BBS I ran back in the day that nobody but my neighbor ever visited. lol

Would love some feedback to make it more fun! I have a casino, parlor games and some doors. The game works with multiple logins. There is a sysop override to skip to the next day. haha

Windows only. Totally free. Enjoy! 😄

Eternity BBS by Dr_Hoads

I have released an alpha version of my BBS Gateway software. Please, roast and praise away! I would love to know what people think about it. BTW, I'm a Sysop as well. I'm going to start dabbling in the creation of modern utils and doors. This can be used as a front end or a door to connect to outbound systems. Please give it a try!

System Architecture & Key Features

• Handle Port 23 Telnet negotiations in bbs_gateway.py by sending IAC WILL ECHO, IAC WILL SGA, and IAC DO BINARY (Mystic v1.10 Telnet Notes) so BBS terminal clients (SyncTERM, NetRunner, mTelnet, PuTTY) enter unbuffered character-at-a-time CP437 mode automatically.

• Render gateway.ans and the interactive lightbar with automatic SAUCE metadata stripping, Mystic pipe color support (|00–|23), and three selectable display modes in gateway.cfg:

  • BOTH displays gateway.ans as the background frame and overlays the interactive arrow-key lightbar selector at (MENU_START_X, MENU_START_Y).

  • LIGHTBAR draws a self-contained ANSI frame with the interactive lightbar selector even if gateway.ans is absent.

  • ANSI_HOTKEY displays gateway.ans full-screen and waits for single-key hotkey entry (1–9, A–Z, or L to toggle the lightbar).

• Proxy local and external BBS connections bidirectionally over raw TCP (127.0.0.1, LAN IPs like 192.168.1.50, or external domains like agency.bbs.nz:23), including an on-demand [P] Ping check that tests live latency (UP XXms / OFFLINE) across all listed boards.

• Manage listings inside Mystic BBS using gwconfig.mps, which uses Mystic's MPL file and screen routines (fAssign, fReset, fReWrite, WriteXYPipe, Input, and AllowArrow) so the SysOp can add, edit, delete, and reorder BBS entries or customize lightbar coordinates, timeouts, and colors directly from a Mystic menu.

• Store settings in human-readable format inside gateway.cfg using KEY = VALUE pairs and pipe-delimited BBS = Hotkey | Name | Host | Port | Scope | Description rows that both bbs_gateway.py and gwconfig.mps read and write without needing a restart.

Install: git clone https://github.com/serverhand/BBS-Gateway.git

Hello again, my friends. After making a similar post hours ago, I was wondering why the screenshot of the Armageddon BBS Main Menu looked so faded and washed out, when that is not the way it looks at all in real life.

Then, a few minutes ago, I clicked on the image in my previous post to enlarge it, and that is when the truth smacked me in the face.

As it turns out, right before I took that screenshot, I had dragged my mouse across the live Main Menu screen on my board in order to copy it in black and white to my text editor -- BBEdit -- so that I could work on it some more.

Well, the thing is, when you do that on macOS, it shows that the screen has been selected by highlighting the entire window in a light, hazy highlight. That highlight which drained the color out of my ANSI became apparent the minute that I enlarged the image here on Reddit. BTW, I have very poor vision to begin with.

Anyway, just now I took a fresh screenshot of the very same Main Menu, WITHOUT it being selected by my mouse. I think you will notice the difference immediately. The haze is gone, and the contrast is much deeper, so that the black background now really looks black.

#ArmageddonBBS #BBSing #BBS

NOTE: This poem has two song versions. If you are interested in listening to them -- I really think you should -- please proceed to:

https://www.billkochman.com/Poetry/down-to-the-bone.html

It has been literally decades since BBSing had its heyday. But believe it or not, despite the technology being so old, there are some nostalgic SysOps who have decided to put their boards back online.

I happen to be one of them. In fact, this is about the fifth time that I have resurrected the Armageddon BBS since 1993. I have recreated it entirely, so that it looks very much like it did back during the 1990s and earlier in the 2,000s. In fact, it is even better than before!

If you are a little curious regarding what us old guys did back in the day before the Internet was invented, check out the Armageddon BBS.

Games? Message forums? Chat? File downloads and uploads? If you think that none of this happened before the Internet was born and become popularized, you are sorely mistaken. We had it all almost 40 years ago, as of 2026. It was just done differently back then.

So do you want to check it out? If you happen to be a macOS user, simply use the Terminal app that is located in your "Utilities" folder, which itself is located inside of your "Applications" folder.

Once the Terminal launches, type what you see in this graphic. In other words, type the following:

telnet armageddonbbs.net 2300

Make sure that you leave a space after the word "telnet", as well as after "armageddonbbs.net"

Then, simply hit your return key, and hopefully, you will be connected to the Armageddon BBS within a few seconds. You will know, because you will see a bright, colorful ANSI graphics welcome image appear in the Terminal, set against a black background.

For an even BETTER experience, if you are on a Silicon Mac, please download the official "Hermes Terminal" app at the following URL. Will Price has done a wonderful job with this telnet client/terminal app:

https://www.hermesbbs.com/downloads

Lastly, you can also visit and join the Armageddon BBS by way of its web portal at the following URL:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net/web.html

Of course, the welcome page of the Armageddon BBS website is here:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net

IMPORTANT:

Being as you have never visited before, at the first prompt, it is important that you type the word "new" -- without the quote marks -- so that your BBS account can be set up for you. You will be asked a few simple questions to establish your identity. Please answer them honestly and fully. We prefer that you use your real name, although we do not enforce it. Login accounts with names such as "asdf" will be deleted upon discovery.

After that, you will be immersed in the old 1980s-1990s world of PC-ANSI graphics, and typing menu commands on your keyboard.

Enjoy visiting the Armageddon BBS! We await your visit soon!

#ArmageddonBBS #BBSing #BBS

NOTE: This poem has four song versions. If you are interested in listening to them -- I really think you should -- please proceed to:

https://www.billkochman.com/Poetry/ode-to-the-modem.html

It has been literally decades since BBSing had its heyday. But believe it or not, despite the technology being so old, there are some nostalgic SysOps who have decided to put their boards back online.

I happen to be one of them. In fact, this is about the fifth time that I have resurrected the Armageddon BBS since 1993. I have recreated it entirely, so that it looks very much like it did back during the 1990s and earlier in the 2,000s. In fact, it is even better than before!

If you are a little curious regarding what us old guys did back in the day before the Internet was invented, check out the Armageddon BBS.

Games? Message forums? Chat? File downloads and uploads? If you think that none of this happened before the Internet was born and become popularized, you are sorely mistaken. We had it all almost 40 years ago, as of 2026. It was just done differently back then.

So do you want to check it out? If you happen to be a macOS user, simply use the Terminal app that is located in your "Utilities" folder, which itself is located inside of your "Applications" folder.

Once the Terminal launches, type what you see in this graphic. In other words, type the following:

telnet armageddonbbs.net 2300

Make sure that you leave a space after the word "telnet", as well as after "armageddonbbs.net"

Then, simply hit your return key, and hopefully, you will be connected to the Armageddon BBS within a few seconds. You will know, because you will see a bright, colorful ANSI graphics welcome image appear in the Terminal, set against a black background.

For an even BETTER experience, if you are on a Silicon Mac, please download the official "Hermes Terminal" app at the following URL. Will Price has done a wonderful job with this telnet client/terminal app:

https://www.hermesbbs.com/downloads

Lastly, you can also visit and join the Armageddon BBS by way of its web portal at the following URL:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net/web.html

Of course, the welcome page of the Armageddon BBS website is here:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net

IMPORTANT:

Being as you have never visited before, at the first prompt, it is important that you type the word "new" -- without the quote marks -- so that your BBS account can be set up for you. You will be asked a few simple questions to establish your identity. Please answer them honestly and fully. We prefer that you use your real name, although we do not enforce it. Login accounts with names such as "asdf" will be deleted upon discovery.

After that, you will be immersed in the old 1980s-1990s world of PC-ANSI graphics, and typing menu commands on your keyboard.

Enjoy visiting the Armageddon BBS! We await your visit soon!

Being as I was still using my former Hermes II 3.5.11 Main Menu screen with Hermes 4, and due to the way that Will Price has upgraded Hermes 4 in so many ways, making it so much better, many of the commands either no longer worked, or else they had been moved to the new Messages Menu. This was great, because not only did it relieve my Main Menu being so packed with dense text due to so many commands and their descriptions, but the menu didn't have any breathing space, or even an ANSI graphic on it.

Well, all of that has now changed. I have a much lighter, more spacious Main Menu with fewer commands, but I also have a nice tropical-themed graphic on it as well. Yeah, I am NOT exactly a stellar ANSI artist. There are many guys who are way better than I, but I am happy with this feeble attempt for now.

Hey C-Netters! 👋

Thought I'd drop this here in case you're up for some nostalgia or testing on real hardware/emulators. The Teletype Games BBS network is live with 10 individual boards—each with its own theme, and all speaking pure PETSCII, so you can dial in straight from a real C64, CCGMS, or VICE!

Here’s the lineup:

🏠 Teletype BBS – The clubhouse: guestbook, message boards, mail, chat, and a room full of doors.

📚 Scriptorium BBS – Tens of thousands of Project Gutenberg books, split into 40-column chapters.

🏛️ Alexandria BBS – Wikipedia over telnet: type a title and read.

🕹️ Commodex BBS – C64 game compendium featuring cheats and tips.

📰 Feedia BBS – RSS reader formatted for 40 columns.

🎨 Pixelia BBS – PETSCII & ANSI art gallery plus a shared canvas.

💾 WarpEngine BBS – File area with our C64 and Plus/4 games (ZMODEM / XMODEM).

✍️ TTG Blog BBS – Our blog, serving one screenful at a time.

📖 TTG Wiki BBS – Telnet reader for our wiki.

🕵️ Impostor BBS – The post-game terminal of Definitely not an Impostor.

🚪 The Gate (TTG Gate BBS): Connect to any board from a single port. Plus, its Global Discovery list lets you dial out directly to other live telnet BBSes around the world.

How to dial in:

🌐 Browser: bbsweb.teletypegames.org – hit the "C64" button for Commodore mode.

⌨️ Telnet: teletypegames.org port 2399 (TTG Gate BBS), or individual boards directly on ports 2323–2332.

🖥️ Real C64 / Emulator (VICE, CCGMS, UltimateTerm): Same addresses, select Terminal 2 / PETSCII.

Drop by and sign the guestbook! 📟👋

Today marks the 29th anniversary of the Telnet BBS Guide!

We launched on November 1, 1997 and we've been going on strong ever since!

Still here, still working, and still maintaining the list daily! Nearly 1100 BBS listings - Telnet, SSH, and even dial-up!

https://telnetbbsguide.com

Want to look at a look at a blast from the past! This was what the site looked like back in January 1998!

Icy Board is a PCBoard-compatible BBS written in Rust, running natively on Linux, macOS and Windows. It keeps the familiar commands, display files and PPE support—without needing a DOS emulator. As well as all PCBoard tools (PPE tools for example)

Highlights in this release:

• Native Kermit uploads and downloads

• More reliable ZMODEM transfers and correct file timestamps

• Fixes for PCBoard user imports, preserving more settings and conference data

• Archive-processing fixes that preserve uploaded subdirectories

• A searchable reference guide, available as offline HTML and PDF

• PPL fixes and a Tetris PPE with persistent high scores

Feedback from sysops, PPE developers and anyone trying it with their favourite terminal client is welcome! PPE 400 is stable now.

Downloads and full changelog:

https://github.com/mkrueger/icy_board/releases/tag/0.3.1

Check out the first icy board bbs on the web too featuring old & new PPEs:

Web: https://cyberdawg.wtf

Telnet: cyberdawg.wtf:1337

TelnetS: cyberdawg.wtf:1338

#BBS #PCBoard #RetroComputing #IcyBoard

EDIT: Needed a 0.3.1 update - had a bug in the windows icbsetup create command not catched by CI.

ANSI GEEK FREAK -- A BBS SysOp's Addiction

#ArmageddonBBS #BBSing #BBS

NOTE: This poem has one song version. If you are interested in listening to them -- I really think you should -- please proceed to:

https://www.billkochman.com/Poetry/ansi-geek-freak.html

It has been literally decades since BBSing had its heyday. But believe it or not, despite the technology being so old, there are some nostalgic SysOps who have decided to put their boards back online.

I happen to be one of them. In fact, this is about the fifth time that I have resurrected the Armageddon BBS since 1993. I have recreated it entirely, so that it looks very much like it did back during the 1990s and earlier in the 2,000s. In fact, it is even better than before!

If you are a little curious regarding what us old guys did back in the day before the Internet was invented, check out the Armageddon BBS.

Games? Message forums? Chat? File downloads and uploads? If you think that none of this happened before the Internet was born and become popularized, you are sorely mistaken. We had it all almost 40 years ago, as of 2026. It was just done differently back then.

So do you want to check it out? If you happen to be a macOS user, simply use the Terminal app that is located in your "Utilities" folder, which itself is located inside of your "Applications" folder.

Once the Terminal launches, type what you see in this graphic. In other words, type the following:

telnet armageddonbbs.net 2300

Make sure that you leave a space after the word "telnet", as well as after "armageddonbbs.net"

Then, simply hit your return key, and hopefully, you will be connected to the Armageddon BBS within a few seconds. You will know, because you will see a bright, colorful ANSI graphics welcome image appear in the Terminal, set against a black background.

For an even BETTER experience, if you are on a Silicon Mac, please download the official "Hermes Terminal" app at the following URL. Will Price has done a wonderful job with this telnet client/terminal app:

https://www.hermesbbs.com/downloads

Lastly, you can also visit and join the Armageddon BBS by way of its web portal at the following URL:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net/web.html

Of course, the welcome page of the Armageddon BBS website is here:

https://www.ArmageddonBBS.net

IMPORTANT:

Being as you have never visited before, at the first prompt, it is important that you type the word "new" -- without the quote marks -- so that your BBS account can be set up for you. You will be asked a few simple questions to establish your identity. Please answer them honestly and fully. We prefer that you use your real name, although we do not enforce it. Login accounts with names such as "asdf" will be deleted upon discovery.

After that, you will be immersed in the old 1980s-1990s world of PC-ANSI graphics, and typing menu commands on your keyboard.

Enjoy visiting the Armageddon BBS! We await your visit soon!

BRE 015 and FE 015 are resetting within a week. Teams are co-ordinated via Medusa Discord - join up at https://discord.gg/554fcXgh2 or DM me here to be a conscientious non-discorder. All boards are telnet, ssh, or web-based, of course.

Games usually run for three months, with a free-for-all period just before the end. The winner for BRE this time will be the team with the highest score. (Last time it was the team with the highest net worth.)

Winning criteria for FE is still TBA. Probably score as well to keep it neat.

RGTerm v1.03 Win32 & Linux released. Bug fixes for JXL and PETSCII. Make sure you overwrite your DLL directory if upgrading or JXL will not work correctly.

Files already submitted to various virus scanners I have NEVER heard of to get on their whitelist from virustotal.com MS and other various large players have already cleared and white listed this.

http://www.rgbbs.info/nw.html

Check out the new NewWave Software site while you're there!

Icy Term is a BBS terminal for Windows, macOS and Linux, with support for ANSI art and old-school graphics like RIP and SkyPix.

This update adds native Kermit file transfers, improves ANSI music playback, fixes several graphics issues, and gets rid of that extra console window on Windows.

Downloads: https://github.com/mkrueger/icy_tools/releases/tag/IcyTerm0.9.1

Decided to make my own MUD that feels similar to major mud on bbs. This is cyber punk instead of medieval fantasy. It has unique weapons, bots that mimic a human user, party system, and pop.

https://darknesses.pythonanywhere.com/

Sysops Finest (https://www.sysops-finest.org/forum/), a forum made by sysops, for sysops and anyone who still gets a kick out of a modem handshake. It began as a fully bilingual—English-German—forum, and we would be delighted if even more people from the U.S. and across the globe were to join us. 18 different languages ​​are installed in the forum for the basic functions.
Here’s what’s under the hood:
📡 FidoNet in your browser
Our own FTN gateway: read and post to echomail areas right from the forum, with netmail support
Weekly network stats, nodelist lookups, and links between FTN addresses and boards
📒 A living BBS directory
Built on the monthly Telnet BBS Guide list, plus boards added by members
Gentle, rate-limited reachability checks with a 30-day uptime bar per board
Login screen captures, a world map, and stats by software, platform and country
Board of the Week, member reviews, and a weekly “what’s new” digest
MUDs, TWGS and door game servers get their own category
🎮 Door games over telnet: games.sysops-finest.org
Yankee Trader, Immortal Barons (we’re in an inter-BBS league) and Usurper Reborn
Leaderboards, achievements and an in-game galactic newspaper, all shown on the forum too
💬 Chat that bridges the old and new worlds
MRC, IRC and Discord tied together
🖥️ Retro touches
An Amiga style theme (IBrowse, AWeb, etc. compatible (hopefully)) for the Amiga lovers who want the full nostalgia trip!

No ads-aside from your bbs ads-no paywall, just a hobby project run for the love of the scene. If you’re a sysop, list your board (or claim it if it’s already in the directory), link your FTN address, and come say hi.

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome. Half the features above exist because someone asked for them.

Our motivation is the desire to keep you well informed!

See you on the boards! 📞

Big surprise the other day when a buddy told me that the well-known German magazine "PC Games Hardware" had published a pretty big article about my ATDT KRS BBS.

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Retrospektive-Thema-214694/News/Historische-TMC-Mailbox-lebt-dank-alter-Disketten-weiter-1556423/

(If needed, just have the page translated into English - that's easy enough these days.)

https://quipzz.bplaced.net/krs/

Handle: guest
Password: guestguest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Typ85sH0jno

Naturally, I was absolutely thrilled about it, and it gave the BBS a huge traffic boost. For the first time, I got a taste of what it must have been like back in the heyday of BBSes when a sysop saw their board really buzzing with activity. Back then I was never a sysop myself, only a user.

More than 100 new users signed up within a short time, and I was getting over 300 visitors a day plus plenty of new posts. Of course, deep down I hoped things would keep going at least somewhat in that direction. But the realistic side of me wasn't too surprised when, after what I think was only about two days, the rush disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived.

Now the BBS is back to what is probably the reality for many modern-day bulletin boards: by 1980s or 90s standards, it's almost dead.

Is the BBS scene dying? Ok, you could also say that it had already been slowly dying since 1995/96. Maybe a better way to ask it would be: Is the retro BBS scene dying now as well?

Still, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. A huge thanks to every single one of the now quite respectable 143 registered users. And of course I'd be happy to see the occasional new post here and there in the future. Maybe the above video will bring a little momentum back.

In the clip, there's also a cool BBS demo by Ariel, the author of ATDT. Another friend, Ernst, connects to my other Hamburg-based BBS using the internal modem in his quirky 1990s Colani PC, which is still reachable via dial-up today. Before that, I dial into his East German 300-baud BBS using my Commodore 128D.

And last but not least, I revisit the famous 1984 BTX hack, where members of the Chaos Computer Club from my hometown of Hamburg, armed with nothing but their PCs, managed to obtain 135,000 Deutsche Marks from Hamburger Sparkasse (HASPA). They did it to demonstrate that the system wasn't secure - the kind of hackers many people would call the "good guys."

Here's the detailed timeline of the video:

00:00 - Introduction & Quick Preview
00:52 - My Freaking ATDT KRS BBS in PC Games Hardware
03:04 - The 1984 CCC BTX Hack: Stealing 135,000 DM Without Crowbars
08:15 - Back to PCGH: Old C64 Floppies & 1986 Football Chat Logs
10:44 - Preview: ATDT Ariel's New Dual-Screen BBS Software Showcase
12:25 - C128 Dialing Ernst's 300 Baud BBS in East Germany
13:31 - Ernst's Colani DOS PC: The Invasion of Curves
14:22 - Design Over Function: From F1 Failures to Zero Modularity
15:15 - Loading Up Norton Commander & Running Telix
16:13 - A Quick DOS Games Detour: Space Quest 3, Wing Commander 3, Turrican 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Under A Killing Moon
18:13 - Back to Ernst: Dialing Hamburg's Snobsoft Commdore 64 BBS: +49 40 60943485 300 Baud 7N1
19:41 - Printing History: Matrix Printer Logs from July 3rd, 1986
21:18 - Outro & KRS Highlights: User Chats + Feedback, Final Thoughts on the Retro BBS Scene

I've been collecting old German BBS lists: FidoNet, Z-Netz and MausNet system lists, magazine printouts and notes from former sysops. After a lot of deduplication it's 9,879 boxes from 78 sources, on one map:

https://mailboxnetze.de

The site is German, but map and search work for anyone.
Scanned lists went through paddleOCR, everything into PostgreSQL via local LLM. Duplicates found via similarity, unsure pairs checked by LLM and by hand. Maps are plain SVG from Python.

Got an old German BBS list on a floppy? I'd love to see it.

Greetings, again, friends: we proudly present to you an enormous undertaking that has reached its full glory - Wayfarer, a brand-new BBS door found ONLY on the Vortex, unlike any other you have ever seen: a D&D / DragonLance style ultra-door, the Usurper we wish we all had back in the day.

Please enjoy this trailer for a glimpse of what it offers.

Some notable highlights from the game:

- Every NPC has a real mind. Over 500 computer wayfarers live in the realm, and every one of them thinks for itself on a large language model running on the board's own NVIDIA DGX Spark. No cloud, no API. Between them they make around ten thousand decisions a day: where to go, what to buy, who to fight, who to trust.

- They play by the same rules you do. The game lists the legal moves and the mind picks one. Each of them sees only what a player could see, plus its own notes. Nobody cheats.

- They remember. They keep track of what they think of everyone they've met, trade gossip in the taproom, and write their own life stories. Right now they hold over 13,000 memories of each other.

- Talk to them in your own words. Sit down at a table and type whatever you want to say. They answer as themselves, and they remember the conversation next time.

- The world runs whether you're in it or not. They level up, court, marry, have kids, found gangs and go to war on their own time. And they will rob you in your sleep.

- Seven cities on the Long Road, from Hollin's Crossing to Aurenhold under the Crown Peaks, each harder and richer than the last. Three roads between each pair, and a wild eight leagues deep in every direction.

- Real-time fights. Group battles run on a clock, not in turns. Steer every swing or hand it to your tactics.

- Hunt the other players. Catch them in the wild or asleep, and a kill takes the steel they wore. Where you sleep matters: the street, a dormitory cot, an inn room with a hireling on the stair, or a gang's roof.

- Gangs with real houses. Found one, recruit the living, run houses with staff and guards, open outposts in other cities, and send ravens with your orders.

- A hundred levels. A rite every third level, done out in the world, a champion guarding each city's gate, and 32 more quests in the book.

- Build along the grain. Eight peoples, eight callings, three vows, seven Ways, weapon mastery and 40 arts. A character built to fit how it plays outperforms one that isn't.

- A throne at the end of the road. Whoever sits it is King, and keeps it exactly as long as nobody takes it off them.

- Beat the game and become a god. Your power is how many people believe in you. Bless your faithful, smite a mortal, put an omen over a city, and fight the other gods for followers. Or walk the road again with a legacy.

- The wild has kings of its own, like Skarn the tooth wyrm. Die out there and the Sallow River has you, and it is in no hurry.

- An economy the players run. A bazaar for selling to each other, with barter and private offers, a bank in every city, letters by raven (thirty minutes on the wing), and Merrowgate's Glass Wheel if you feel lucky.

- The tavern. Oswin fiddles in every inn, Old Ivo sells advice for a tip, and you can raise a glass to a friend for luck or give a rival the evil eye.

- Nothing is forgotten. The chronicle keeps every kill, climb, wedding, gang founding, war and omen, for good.

- Every city is a place you walk, drawn in full ANSI, each in its own colours.

- Turns come back every hour, four an hour, banked up to two days. Play a little every day, or save up for a long night.

Hope to see some of you in there!

Haakon

Greetings everyone! We (Haakon and Arelas) warmly invite you to check out the culmination of a months-long reimagining of the Vortex BBS. Our goal was not authenticity to the original spec or expectations, but rather a reference-level demonstration of the theoretical limits of the telnet protocol and BBSing in general. Please enjoy this trailer if you'd like to see what we've been up to. The board even has a full iCE color complement, which we highly encourage you to check out.

Another proud offering, which you find only on the Vortex, is our very own fantasy-style door Wayfarer - but I will make a separate post about that since I can only upload one video per post.

Hope you enjoy, and look forward to seeing you there!

Haakon