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Originally this club was started by me (Donboy) because I moved away from my friends back home. I was new in town and I didn't know anyone who played RPGs so I was very isolated from the games I loved. I created this web site in March of 1998 strictly for the purpose of playing RPGs online. I had originally created the site with the intention of having my friends back home join me in playing RPGs like we once did, but they had already found other interests. So without wasting any time trying to convince them, I immediately began surfing the internet to recruit some new players to join me.
I decided to use the message board system because it allowed me to get in detail with my adventures and it worked out great for the timezone differences. Since some of the players I recruited were from Europe and Asia, the time differences were quite extreme. I quickly realized that playing by "chat room" would be quite difficult in getting everyone together at the same time. Plus it's always difficult for me to actually sit down and play online for several hours at once. Message boards were the best way....and they still are. Before long I had about 10 players in my Star Wars campaign, and one message board that was getting very full. I was digging myself in pretty deep, so over the next few months I began looking for other GMs who could help me out. In no time I had accumulated about 20 players (divided among 3 boards) and the club became quite popular. Players began telling their friends and many people joined in the fun. During this time, it was simply called "Donboy's SWRPG Club", since I couldn't think of anything better. In the fall of 1998, I purchased this domain name and afterwards, we were simply known as Role Playing Games.Net. Towards the end of 1998, I added about 10 or 20 more games of Star Wars RPG, and one of my players suggested that I branch out into D&D - specifically because he wanted to run the first campaign. So I added a message board for his D&D campaign and things just snowballed from there! In 1999, I added about 50 more D&D campaigns on the site, and meanwhile accumulating about 40 Star Wars RPG campaigns in total. During this time, Star Wars RPG began to see a gradual decline in popularity, partially due to the fact that West End Games went out of business in the summer of 1998 and books gradually became harder and harder to find. The Star Wars side of the house eventually stabilized at about 40 games and stayed there ever since. Hopefully the new release of SWRPG (designed by Wizards of the Coast, due to release in the Fall of 2000) will help to generate more interest in this excellent game. In the fall of 2000 the site was renamed to The Role Playing Games Network, in leiu of the partnerships we had formed. Unfortunately, none of these partnerships lasted beyond a few years, and the name was kept to signify the network of people who come together in mutual enjoyment of RPGs. In Fall of 2006 the site was modified to store all site data (e.g. posted messages, character sheets) in a database, rather than using flat files that had been the mainstay of the site since it was originally founded. In summer of 2007 the site held its first convention hosted in St. Louis, Missouri. Only about 10 people attended, but those who did manage to join us were from as far away as Oregon, Canada, and Mississippi. After having such a excellent time, we decided to make it a annual event. In 2008 the site was completely rennovated with a whole new look. Having worked on the changes over over 7 months, the pages were completely revised in both technology and appearance in keeping with modern Web 2.0 functionality. About 90-95% of the sites pages were completely updated. Almost nothing went unchanged. I must say that I'm pleased with everything the site has become and I look forward to what the future holds.
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