Written in 2025

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The internet has changed. When rpg-o-mania started, people connected by logging into IRC chats or getting in touch by exchanging ICQ numbers. A few years later, blogs came up, and people posted in their individual spaces, shared thoughts and commented on other people's blogs.

Then started the age of social media. Facebook came up, and people started posting there, even game-related topics. Twitter was a great place for gaming nerds to show pictures and tweets about the stuff they found. Gifs, images, you name it.

After all, everything changes in the flow of time. IRC channels started getting uninteresting, blogs vanished, social media platforms showed their true colors, being just corporate-driven algorithms that values interaction ovre substance.

rpg-o-mania was always there.

Interaction, in the old days

There were different ways of getting in touch with us. We had guestbooks, forums (in various iterations), participated in webrings, or even somewhat successful on twitter.

Back then, people wrote nice messages in the guestbook, discussed all the stuff in the so called ManiBoard, sent mail or commented on threads I posted on social media. It was never too big, but there was a small community of people that always came back.

Forums eventually died out. Those still existing still linger mostly based on their old communities, slowly draining, many of them. And I, not being active here on rpg-o-mania between 2009 and 2017, lost my old community. But twitter was the silver lining - the website allowed to reconnect to some folks from back then and even had me get to know some new people.

It is run by greedy corporations, and eventually many people didn't like a change in management (to put it mildly) - and the interaction died. I tried getting in touch with some people using other social media or technologies like the fediverse (Mastodon) or even BlueSky. But when I post there, nothing happens.

The issue at hand

rpg-o-mania has insane visitor counts nowadays. But these visitors are not real humans. They are AI bots to scrape the last content out of this little website. This isn't okay, but I can't fight big companies that don't care about copyright at all.

The problem is: I don't know if I still write anything for real people. I don't get any interaction in social media. No one contacts me using the contact form. No one sends me an E-Mail about what is going on after more than 80 days of not updating!

I love the stuff that I'm doing here, but I don't like crying into the aether, unheard, for crying out loud.

So what now?

If you are a human and like what you see, just send me some sign that you still read this and that you like to have new stuff. I have so many ideas but I don't want to waste them for no one to be read. You don't have to praise me. You don't have to encourage me. Just tell me that you are still here! A little message in the contact form, a short e-mail, a notification or even just a damned reaction on social media so I know that I'm doing this free work for anyone in flesh and blood!

Where can I contact you?

Here:

What if I don't contact you?

Then I will put rpg-o-mania into maintenance mode. I won't create stuff if no one is interested anymore. If times have changed - so be it. I will make sure rpg-o-mania will run and work, keep the domains and certificates up to date and have it as a remainder of things as they were.

And if I contact you?

Then I'll be some happy DocOwer and start creating new stuff right away.

So. Come on. Let me see there are still people out there.

And yes, I know it's kind of ironic that I complain about AI usage and then use an artwork obviously based on AI in the header. But I'm not a great artist and I spent hours creating a believable Katt from that AI slop.

Reactions

Honestly, I didn't think much of how the replys would turn out. I just wanted to see if there are any real people still reading rpg-o-mania. And it turns out - they did!

Messages

I got messages on reddit, on Mastodon, even using the contact form - just as I asked to. And let me tell you: Thank you so much! Really, knowing that there are still people out there who want to see content popping up here is enough for me to continue with what I wanted to do.

It's great that the internet sometimes still works the way it used to.

Next steps

So what are the next steps? Firstly, I will start writing projects I had in mind for some time. I also have some nice ideas for media content in my head, but you'll see.

I also noticed the usage of AI in my image, even if I reworked it heavily, was not seen in very high regard. So I will not utilize AI anymore in the future.

And thirdly, I need to interact in the english speaking world more. So I try to interact in Reddit or other - yet to be discovered - media more.

Onward to many more years!