Online text-based role playing games date to 1978, with the creation of MUD1, which began the MUD heritage that culminates in today's MMORPGs.
Over the years, games have used TELNET, internet forums, IRC, email and social networking websites as their media.
There are varied genres of online text-based roleplaying, including fantasy, drama, horror, anime, science fiction, and media-based fan role-play.
Role-playing games based on popular media (for example, the Harry Potter series) are common, and the players involved tend to overlap with the relevant fandoms.
[7] While these are often seen as definitive boundaries, exceptions abound; many MUSHes have a software-supported combat system, while a "Role-Playing Intensive MUD" movement occurred primarily in the DikuMUD world, and both the first Internet talker (a type of purely social server) and the very popular talker software ew-too were based on LPMud code.
Such games may use code dice-rollers, to generate random results, and may include databases for the purposes of maintaining character records.