[nvarsj]

Imagine an entire world of interactive, colourful ascii art.

I mostly started on my local BBS on Long Island playing tradewars in my teens, around 14 (where I memorably won as top player for a few months and got tons of credits).

I actually have no memory of how I discovered BBSs, I think I found some directory at the library then found my local one.

I expanded from there to some bigger ones (requiring a special telephone plan so it didn’t cost a fortune!). I played some rpg (maybe lotrd?) with like a hundred players and it was an absolute blast.

Other highlights:

I found a credit card generator and used it try getting free credits which got denied. The owner called my parents house and they had no clue what they were talking about.

Another time I was trying some exploits to get ops access and the admin caught me (BBS servers would echo the remote session). Admin interrupted my session and we started chatting. He recognised I was a naive script kiddie and we chatted about love of BBSs and computers. Pretty cool.

It was a magical time for sure.