The RPG Realm has a long history in the business of giving people the RPG info that they want, and we plan to continue it in the future.

The first version of the RPG Realm was called Greg's Fantasy Realm, and it was made sometime in 1997 (I seem to remember Greg saying he started it in May of that year). Greg Davis, the original owner, was tired of looking all over the web for ROMs of the role-playing games he wanted to play. Greg amassed an impressive collection, numbering among its members somewhere between 95% and 100% of any SNES RPG released in the United States. The web site was featured in GamePro as one of the hottest sites in the emulation scene.

Alas, the success was not to last. For a variety of good legal reasons, Greg's Fantasy Realm was shut down for violating copyright. The RPG Realm has never carried a ROM of any game since then, and in 2002 we removed our emulation support entirely.

The RPG Realm that you know was started on 05/03/1998. Greg, again, was in charge and was the sole owner. Under his control, the RPG Realm became one of the premiere RPG communities, and the message board was second to none. Greg got distracted by real life for three months that summer, unfortunately, and the bills were not paid -- killing the site for three months and stranding those message board visitors who had not bookmarked the board separately. This chased most of the visitors away for the next few years.

Greg is, and has been as long as I have known him, an overachiever, and he keeps himself very, very busy. Without the lure of ROMs, and with the equivalent of two full-time jobs, Greg single-handedly brought the Realm back up, but he couldn't bring it back to its former popularity without the help of others, so he began to enlist some of the regulars from the message board. He didn't have much luck with staff members, as the most talented of his friends and staffers didn't last much more than a year. Geo, probably the smartest member of the old message board and its de-facto leader, took over the emulation section in 1999 but lost interest in the internet community and disappeared without a trace about a year later.

Dalamar, Shin Lord, and I were among the original members of the RPG Realm message board, all of us joining before the 3-month downtime in 1998. Several members including Dalamar, Brain, and Viper3010 started a sister site to the RPG Realm called Dimension RPG and I later joined. When Brain left Dimension RPG it shut down, and Dalamar and I attempted to start our own website (it was a non-starter) before we joined the RPG Realm to help Greg out -- me in 2000, and Dalamar in early 2001. Shin Lord was lord and master of Shin Lord's Domain, a popular site that he used to host his Dream Bouts. Shin Lord's Domain lasted until late 2001, when it was forced to shut down, and Shin Lord moved his content to the Realm and became one of our leading staff members in the middle of 2002.

Starting with me, every staff member Greg has gained has stayed in contact. Greg (for some unfathomable reason!) appointed me co-owner in late 2001/early 2002. At this time, we had moved to the Ikonboard forum, and one of its most popular members Erin Clark joined in 2002 as artistic talent (3 days after Shin Lord) and expanded her role, aiding us with the forum and general troubleshooting. Sarah Clarke joined our talented right-brain staffers soon after.

Around this time, the RPG Realm started to find its footing. Greg and I started reviewing games, in particular Sony's games, although we also communicate with other companies. In 2003 more forum-goers, Archmagi1 and Arkwin, joined our staff. Soon after that, we had one of our major trials -- Paul Tipton, a.k.a Yoda joined our staff. While extremely talented, his goals were inconsistent with what we considered our unwritten rules and core values, and Paul and the Realm parted on bad terms.

Greg now holds several career positions, and in 2004 his duties became too much to allow him to continue with the RPG Realm. As co-owner, I've been put in charge, although Greg is still listed as an "inactive" staff member and he retains an RPG Realm email address (not the same one he's kept before, however!). Everyone was disappointed to see him go, and we wish him the best of luck in the future.

I know I'm rather long winded, but I figure if you clicked on the link then you wanted to read! This is as far as we've gotten so far, but I'll update this page when new developments happen.

© 1998-2006 RPG Realm. All Rights Reserved. The RPG Realm is not affiliated with any company or product mentioned herein unless explicitly stated. The RPG Realm was created by Greg Davis on 05/03/1998 and is owned and operated by Alex Wreschnig.