Is there a simple(ish) way to simulate a BBS?
February 26, 2020 11:33 AM Subscribe
I'm running a mid-80s themed tabletop RPG, and I like to incorporate lots of props. I have some information I want to convey that they get through a dial-up BBS. Anyone know of a quick-and-dirty way to get this across without a lot of coding? I could probably rig up something in html if there's no better way. I could run it on Windows or Raspberry Pi.
I miss simple tools like Hypercard. Maybe there's obvious stuff like that in this day and age that I'm not clued in to. No need for door games or anything more than just different pages to navigate to. Keyboard or command line interface would be much more era-appropriate than point-and-click.
I miss simple tools like Hypercard. Maybe there's obvious stuff like that in this day and age that I'm not clued in to. No need for door games or anything more than just different pages to navigate to. Keyboard or command line interface would be much more era-appropriate than point-and-click.
jozxyqk beat me to it... I don't have any experience with any of the options out there, but Mystic BBS has an ARM package that would work on a Raspberry Pi. (I think the modern BBS experience usually involves connecting via telnet as opposed to a direct modem-to-modem connection)
posted by usonian at 11:54 AM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by usonian at 11:54 AM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
It's a *lot* of work, but a friend has 300 baud dialup over VOIP running Mystic on a Raspberry Pi
posted by scruss at 2:58 PM on February 26, 2020
posted by scruss at 2:58 PM on February 26, 2020
Most old BBS systems were pretty simple to set up, and afaik most of them had a "local login" option (so the sysop could log in). You could just run one of those locally using DOSBox, for that authentic flavor.
(Concurrency is an issue though, because most of those old BBS systems weren't designed for more than one person to be logged in at the same time.)
Ooo, I was just looking up WWIV to link to as a suggestion and discovered there's a modern version that you can log into via ssh or telnet. So that might be your best bet.
posted by neckro23 at 3:08 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
(Concurrency is an issue though, because most of those old BBS systems weren't designed for more than one person to be logged in at the same time.)
Ooo, I was just looking up WWIV to link to as a suggestion and discovered there's a modern version that you can log into via ssh or telnet. So that might be your best bet.
posted by neckro23 at 3:08 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
You could get a lot of the way there in HTML with this sweet old-school Bootstrap theme. It wasn’t unusual for BBSes to use a screen-based interface where you’d hit A, B, etc to go to the next screen, which would be pretty straightforward in Javascript.
posted by pocams at 5:10 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by pocams at 5:10 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
There are quite a few classic-style BBSs accessible by telnet these days; could you put the information on one of them (with the sysop's permission)?
posted by offog at 5:04 AM on February 27, 2020
posted by offog at 5:04 AM on February 27, 2020
Response by poster: Learning a whole new set of software to provide a few clues seemed like overkill, plus a lot of these are not simple to make look like a 1984-era system. So I just coded up a bunch of print and get and gosub lines in c64 basic in an emulator. I couldn't get the screen size right on the pi, so I ran it on a different machine and used vnc on the pi to display it on a TV screen. Backassward? probably. But it worked like a charm.
posted by rikschell at 4:09 PM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by rikschell at 4:09 PM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
I haven't done it myself so I can't suggest any specific software, but google shows a few results.
Just add screechy modem sound effect.
posted by jozxyqk at 11:50 AM on February 26, 2020